Jo Ramirez

I've been in Fl for most of my life, and if I count all the Grands Prix won by the teams I've been involved with, I think it's something like 76.

One I really remember is Adelaide '86 with Alain Prost, when Mansell had his blow-out and we won the championship. That was a fantastic race; I had never seen Alain quite like it. He was ecstatic.

But for a race when the team itself was very involved, I'd choose Daytona in 1971 with Pedro Rodriguez, because of the way we actually won it. I remember the day after the race the local papers said 'John Wyer mechanics rescue the race for Porsche'.

I had not worked with Pedro before that year. I knew him for years, of course, since we were children, but I was more friends with Pedro's brother Ricardo, who was the same age as me. Pedro was a bit older than us, he was a bit different. Ricardo and I had more or less the same type of character; Pedro was more reserved, a man of few words. Riccardo had been more extrovert.

When they were together, Ricardo was always quicker than Pedro, always. Pedro had to try so hard. When he didn't crash, he'd spin, trying to get on the same speed as Ricardo. He just didn't have the same ability, same talent. Ricardo was a natural, Pedro had to work very hard. But Pedro went a lot better when Ricardo was no longer around. He was more relaxed, and much quicker.

Pedro was not all that good at setting up the car, but in the last 20 minutes of practice, when he realised he couldn't get the car the way he wanted it, he would always adapt himself to the car - a true racer. He was always quicker than Jackie Oliver.

Daytona was a very important race for the team and the manufacturers' championship, but there were more people in the pits than in the grandstands! Most of the race, if we were not leading we were right in there. Maybe when we had a pit stop we would drop back, and then get back into the lead, and so on. The big trouble was the backmarkers; each lap they had to pass so many cars. Mark Donohue's Ferrari was fast, but it had crashed, and was full of tape.

We were leading the race in the 21st hour when the car came in. We had already changed into clean clothes and were looking pretty for the finish! I believe Oliver was driving, and it was stuck in fourth gear, completely seized inside. In the rules, you could not change the gearbox, but you could change all the inside. So Ermanno Coughi, Peter Davies, Ray Jones and myself got to work on the car.

We had to use heat and hammers. It took well over an hour to actually take the gears out, and in the mean time we had to take all the parts out of another gearbox, and literally throw them in, and close the 'box.

Pedro went out to do the last two hours. And from the first lap, he just flew. I remember all of us waiting with fingers crossed for him to come by the first time. And he came by, and put his thumb up; the car was all right, and there was relief in all of us because we just didn't know how it would work.

Then after that it just started raining a little bit. Pedro in the rain was a master, and he regained first place. It was an absolutely fantastic feeling of achievement, being part of it. There was so much participation from the mechanics.

Of course, during a 24-hour race you don't sleep, and after the race we had a big celebration with Pedro. God knows what time I went to bed, but I was totally dead.

It was about seven years since I had been back to Mexico. I asked John Wyer if could I go to Mexico for a week, and he said yes. And I had to get a plane in Miami which is a long, long way from Daytona.

When I woke up, it was 11am and the flight was around 2pm. And the ticket I had, I couldn't change. Luckily, I had a fast car - a Ford Mustang or something like that - and I was doing 120mph all the way. I got within an hour of Miami, just about on time, and suddenly I saw police lights and heard a siren.

When they stop you at that speed, you are like a criminal. It was handcuffs and all the way to jail, without passing Go collecting your $200! It was awful.

I was really lucky, because when the judge came he was quite good about it, gave me a $120 fine, and let me go. But I had to ask them to send a telegram to my family in Mexico because they were all going to be waiting at the airport, I finally got there the next day...

In June I had just bought a house in Maidenhead, literally three or four miles from Bray, where Pedro lived with his girlfriend. I said to him, "Well, you must come to dinner at my place, see my new house." He was coming that weekend, then he called me up - on the Thursday I think - and said, 'My friend Muller has asked me to drive his Ferrari at the Norisring. I have no other racing or anything so do you mind if we do it next week?' So I said, 'Yes, no problem'.

It's funny, but I never even thought about that race, I completely forgot it. I had just moved into the house, I was very busy. And then suddenly a friend called me on Sunday night, and told me Pedro had been killed. I just could not believe it. But that's how Pedro was.

If anybody offered him a wheelbarrow to race, he would go and race it. He was just a racer all the way.