End of an era at Silverstone

While Senna, Mansell, Prost and the rest were doing their thing on Friday, I drove out to Becketts and Stowe and Club, pausing a while at each, savouring perhaps for the last time the sight of Grand Prix cars where first I saw them. And it occurred to me that much of my life I could chart here.

My memory is of the selective kind, photographic for certain things, like a sieve for others. Ask me who won Indy in 1952, or the Belgian Grand Prix of '61, and I can tell you without more than a second or two of thought. Ask me to ring you in half an hour, and chances are you'll need to call to remind me.

Motor racing and music have always been triggers for my memory. As a true child of the sixties, I hear the opening chords of Del Shannon's immortal 'Runaway', and instantly think of Moss at Monaco, because it was on that day, in May of 1961, when Stirling beat the Ferraris, that first I heard the record. Music is wedded to events in my life, as it is for most people, and motor racing works the same spell on me.

At Becketts I watched, and thought of the Grand Prix in 1973, of a single instant within it. As they came into my sight that day, Ronnie Peterson's black Lotus 72 was in front, apparently with an ample lead over Jackie Stewart. Up to the corner Ronnie put the brakes on, but the Tyrrell behind seemed not to slow at all, and momentarily it seemed that Stewart had lost his bearings, forgotten about Becketts.

He had not. He had missed the braking point, but he had not missed his braking point. By the apex of the corner, it was Tyrrell from Lotus, and out of the corner Ronnie was shaking his head, disbelieving in such sleight of hand. To put a move like that on a man like Peterson, within a mile of the start, was the mark of sublime confidence, and I've never forgotten it.

It was all for nothing, of course, as it turned out, for at the end of the lap Jody Scheckter got a little behind with his steering at Woodcote, tried to bring the McLaren back off the grass, spun across the road into the pit wall, and took half the pack with him.

The BBC commentator of the day became hysterical, in a Hindenberg sort of way, moaning that 'this was the end of Grand Prix racing, as we know it'. It wasn't, of course. It was the end of Grand Prix racing for about an hour, by which time the mess had been cleared away, Andrea de Adamich transported to hospital with a broken leg, and the race restarted.

This time Stewart blew it, for once, spinning into the high wheat at Stowe, and losing the chance to win his last race in Britain. No matter; my memory of the day is crystallised not by Peter Revson's victory, but by that instant when Ronnie shook his head. Mention of that famous wheat brings back a moment in practice, in 1977, when Mario Andretti brought his Lotus in. He had clearly been off, for stalks protruded from the suspension, the sidepods, even the mirrors. "Maybe," Mario drawled, "we should export it to Russia..."

It was that weekend, of course, that we first saw Gilles Villeneuve in a Grand Prix car, and the beginnings of that free and audacious spirit which I found so captivating.

At Becketts he spun in pre-qualifying, and at Copse, Stowe, Club, perhaps even Abbey. But I don't believe he spun anywhere twice, and he never hit a thing. Not knowing him then, I rather diffidently suggested that perhaps he was being a mite adventurous. "Look," he said, "I have one chance, maybe, to make it into Formula 1. I don't know the car or the circuit, and I don't have much time to learn them. The only way to find the limit is to go over it, be ready for the spin, then remember how fast is too fast..." It was hardly a classical approach to Formula 1, as she is spoke, but it worked. In qualifying, and the race, he was brilliant.

Stowe I remember for 1967, the summer I moved to London, and nothing seemed too much to hope for. I saw Gurney and Foyt win the last real Le Mans, and then watched what turned out to be Jimmy Clark's final appearance in England.

The Lotus 49, without wings, without slicks, was wayward in that first season, and the all-or-nothing nature of the original Cosworth DFV amplified its shortcomings. It was the most powerful car in the race, and also the most difficult to drive, yet Jimmy walked his last British Grand Prix. That lap it was understeer through Stowe, this time an opposite-lock slide, and throughout one had the impression that Clark was amusing himself, having the fun that genius allows. The last afternoon at home for a quiet man.

For third place there was a noisy fight, however, between Brabham and Amon, and through most of the afternoon Chris felt like the wrong end of a knife-throwing act. Etiquette on the racetrack was never Jack's strong suit, and for 60-odd laps the Ferrari was peppered with stones as the Brabham put a wheel off. Accidentally, of course. "That was one thing," Amon later recalled, "but then a couple of more solid things came my way. Turned out they were his mirrors! Jack apologised afterwards, and said the vibration loosened them, but I always wondered if he'd wrenched them off, and pitched them at me..."

I was at Club two years earlier, in 1965. It was another Clark victory - inevitably - and I remember it for the closing stages, when Graham Hill was closing in. Jimmy's oil pressure was plummeting, to the extent that he was switching off the engine through the corners, then dropping the clutch and firing it up again at the exit, trying to make it live a few more laps. Graham, for his part, was virtually without brakes, so we had the intriguing spectacle of a Lotus that wouldn't go being chased by a BRM that wouldn't stop.

At the flag they were a couple of seconds apart, as I recall. I recall, too, that some time in the middle of that night I dropped my girlfriend off, continued on towards home, dozed momentarily and awoke to find my mother's car in pieces around me. Small pieces. Strangely, the radio was still working, and in the dawn air the only sounds were chunks of stone wall crashing down into the valley, and the voice of Joan Baez. All that came back as I watched at Club on Friday. It brought back other days, too. I was there in 1969, when Stewart and Rindt fought their mesmeric fight, the two greatest drivers of the day at the bitter limit for laps without end. The Lotus faltered, as it usually did that summer, and the Matra won.

Two years later we had another Stewart victory, but this time it was a drone, for Jochen was gone.

I don't know what plans there are for the paddock area at Silverstone. Already, stalag fencing has disfigured it, but essentially it stays. Will they flatten that little section at the near end, I wonder, where I got Lorenzo Bandini's autograph, where Mark Donohue routinely hosed down his Porsche 911 before leaving the circuit?

It was at that spot, too, where I saw perhaps the broadest victory smile in memory. Were you there, that day in 1979, when Regazzoni took the first win for Williams? As driver and team owner shook hands, the emotion was almost tangible. "Bravo, Frank," Clay quietly said. I have seen scores of victory ceremonies since, but remember none so well. If Clay Regazzoni missed greatness as a racing driver, he lacked nothing as a man who knew how to behave.

Williams had the place to itself, of course, in 1987, when Mansell put together the schoolboy's dream of a day.

He sat behind Piquet in the early part of the race, then made an unscheduled tyre stop, purely because a balance weight was gone. Nelson had the big lead, Nigel the fresh tyres, and it became a matter of calculation: had he laps enough to get on terms in what was assuredly a grudge match?

He had, just. And his pass of Piquet, feinting right-left-right into Stowe, stands as one of the great moments of racing times. The whole day was a private affair, everybody else forgotten.

It is Saturday evening as I write, with the last British Grand Prix on the old circuit a few hours hence. I hope we remember it well.