Patrick Head on J-L

“Jean-Louis was a pretty good test driver and worked well with us. He was always strongly opinionated and I am sure that, if we had left it to him, he would have engineered the car himself. Which might not have been all that bad as he had a pretty good idea of what he was doing.

“He was certainly capable in the work that he did for us — and fairly quick too, which is why we asked him to do that race at Monza when Nigel was ill.

‘When you look at it, he has had a remarkable career. His achievements with the Mercedes sportscar squad were outstanding in a team that included a young Michael Schumacher. And to then switch to these long-distance desert raids, with a highly individual technical approach, is amazing.

“And he is still driving them now!”