Ken Tyrrell

The race I remember most of all was the German Grand Prix. It must have been August of '68, at the Nurburgring. Our introduction to Grand Prix racing that year had been a little easier than some people's.

We had never constructed a car and had no intention of constructing a car but Matra, who we had been with for two years in Formula 2, agreed to build a chassis, if we could get the then new Cosworth engines.

We did that so it was a fairly easy introduction. We were using Dunlop tyres and Jackie had won the Dutch Grand Prix in the wet and then we arrived in the mountains around the Nurburgring for the German Grand Prix.

It was one of those very bad weekends for weather, which were fairly common at the old 'Ring. There was quite a lot of fog all around the whole of the track as we started practice and we sent Jackie off around the short loop just to bed brakes and pads. After we'd done that we sent him out to have a go on the long lap and just as we were about to do that they cancelled practice because the fog had got to be too bad. You couldn't see between the marshals' posts.

The practice, as I remember it, was lost for that day and then the next day, it had started to rain very heavily - and that went on for the rest of the weekend. Anyone who had been on the long circuit in that first half an hour of practice on the first day, who had completed a lap, was almost certainly on the first rows of the grid.

We hadn't managed to complete a single lap of the long track and therefore we had to make do with the time which Jackie set the next day in the wet. I have an idea that Jackie was about sixth on the grid, something like that.

Anyway, it got to race morning, and that dawned with the rain still coming down. There were rivers of water running across the track all over the place and so the organisers decided that they would put on an extra special practice on the Sunday. This was before the days when warm-ups became a part of Grand Prix racing. This meant that the drivers could go out and find out where all the water was. It really was awful.

We got ready for that and then Jackie came to me and said that he didn't want to go out and, for the first time ever and, I think, the first time since as well, on this particular weekend, I insisted that my driver went out to see what it was like.

He agreed very reluctantly and got in the car and went out and round to have a look. When he came in he told me that the conditions were appalling and that there shouldn't be a race and all that sort of thing. And I listened to him, and then, being a fan of cricket, I leaned into his cockpit and said 'Jackie, you think you've got problems. England are 86 for 6 right now!'

Well, finally everything was ready and the race started and Jackie got into first position by the end of the very first lap and he led more or less from the start to finish. It was staggering. I think in the end he finished up something like 4mins in front of the second place man which, if I remember correctly, was Graham Hill in the Lotus.

Why do I remember this particular race? Well, it was the first time I had had to make a racing driver drive a racing car and I didn't like that very much. But the fact that, although he was so reluctant to drive and the conditions were quite appalling, he still dominated the race was incredible. It was really a quite outstanding performance on his part.

I know he had a very nasty incident in the race with an ambulance, which he came up upon very quickly, as I remember it, and had some difficulty in avoiding it.

There is no question that Jackie was the best driver I have had and that was one of his greatest performances.