TAKEN FROM MOTOR SPORT, JUNE 1999

Not long ago, I spent a couple of hours sitting at a table in a French hotel, signing my name five hundred times. I was rewarded at the rate of two dollars per scribble, which strikes me as the kind of work I’d like on a regular basis!

The posters to which I added my signature were a limited edition of a fine lithograph commemorating Porsches’ first win at Le Mans in 1970, courtesy of Dickie Attwood and Hans Hermann. All the surviving drivers of Porsche cars in that year’s race had been tracked down by an enterprising American, Michael Keyser, and it was this activity which caused me to think back to that weekend, nearly 30 years ago. In the spring of that year Nello Ugolini, former Ferrari team manager, and at that time working for Scuderia Filipinetti, telephoned me in Rome, where I was living at the time, to ask if I would like to co-drive a Ferrari at Le Mans. I had driven for them at Le Mans in 1968 in their 250 LM, and while that race hadn’t exactly reminded me of Club Med, I accepted the offer at once; it was, after all, the only one I had.