John Watson

I could have chosen any of my five Grand Prix wins as they were all special in their own way. Likewise there are many races that were personally satisfying, even if the results seem to show otherwise.

But, thinking long and hard, I am sure the most significant race of my life was one where I didn't qualify particularly well and where I went off just after half distance badly damaging the car. But that race gave me a yardstick against which I could judge my ability. On my performance in that race I based my entire career!

The story of the Easter '69 Thruxton Formula 2 meeting began with Gerry Kinnane, who was in the motor trade in Northern Ireland but who'd raced himself in the fifties and sixties.

He bought two ex-works Lotus 48s putting John Pollock in the ex-Graham Hill Gold Leaf car, and me in the ex-Herts and Essex Aero Club car that had been run for Jackie Oliver.

We didn't have a chance to run the cars before Thruxton so my international debut was all about learning the car - it was the first time either of us had driven a car with wings, and F2 cars had those high, high wings at that stage - as well as learning the circuit. Thruxton was the first, what you might call, high speed circuit I'd raced on with that very fast section of corners round the back.

Practice was spent getting to terms with the equipment and with Thruxton. and trying to cure a misfire which we did by changing from Champion to Autolit plugs. I think, thought it may have been the other way round.

The Wills trophy was split into two 15 lap heats and a 50 lap final. The first nine home in each heat would make up the 28 car final from the 38 strong entry.

To be honest I don't remember much about my heat, other than having to pit with that misfire which gave me a lowly grid position for the final, 20th.

But the thing about the race was that I started making progress up through
the field. I was catching and passing people and doing things that were very hard for me, at that particular time, to understand. I remember passing Francois Cevert by catching him in the corner, slipstreaming up the straight and drafting past before the chicane. A classic manoeuvre that I carried out as if I'd been doing it all my life.

It was all very confusing. Until then I'd watched these guys racing and regarded them as superstars in the same way kids looked at Senna and Prost. Yet here I was overtaking people like Cevert, Jo Siffert, Derek
Bell, Clay Regazzoni, Johnny Servoz-Gavin and catching people like Rindt, Stewart and Beltoise and finding it essentially very easy.

The car helped, of course, for as with other Lotuses I had driven it had certain qualities, a lovely feel in the way it just seemed to work for you. But it was that meeting that made me realise that these guys, superstars that they were, only had two balls like the rest of us!

It proved to me that given a certain amount of natural talent, the rest of it is all in the mind. Before the race I was just this bloke from Northern Ireland with a beard and a brown trilby hat -people were looking for the straw I ought to be chewing - but afterwards I realised I could make it.

I got up to fifth place by half distance but the fairytale had a realistic ending. I don't remember quite why I went off. AUTOSPORT'S report said I locked a wheel - all I recall is missing the apex at Cobb and basically just understeer-ing off. I unfortunately went into the bank and did a severe amount of damage to the car, though not to myself. Mind you, the bank was a lot closer to the track then than it is now.

But despite that ending, the race gave me an opportunity to find out how good I really was - club racing in Northern Ireland was fun, but gave me no idea whether I could make a career out of the sport.

Hypothetically, if I hadn't crashed I might have made it to F1, maybe two, seasons earlier than I did. But there's no denying that had I not done that race the prospect of my becoming a professional racing driver would have been substantially less...