Larry Perkins

The Monaco Formula 3 race of 1975 wasn't exactly the race of my life, but it was the race which most affected my life.

It was my second full year in F3 and I was racing in the newly-introduced FIA European Formula 3 Championship. By the end of the year I was the inaugural champion and was on the verge of entering Grand Prix racing.

F3 in those days was very much the place to be. You really had to be there to go anywhere. It was very healthy. They had something like 65 entries at Monaco and it was whittled down in the heats to 22 starters.

I remember I was struggling in practice to secure pole position for my heat. The traffic was bad. I waited for gaps and I finally lined one up and, on the very last lap of practice, I took overall fastest.

I went on to win my heat and so I had pole position for the main race. Connie Anderson was my big rival in those days. He had a brand-new March-Toyota 753 and he was third on the grid - having finished second to me in the heat. Renzo Zorzi had won his heat, so he lined up second.

It was staggered grid and I reckoned that all I really had to do was to get ahead and stay ahead.

As the flag dropped Connie was past me before I had even moved. I managed to hold on to second place, but I was following my arch-rival. I thought that I had blown it.

The pair of us drew away from the field and after about 10 laps the word came out on the boards that Connie had been penalised a minute for jumping the start. I did not have to worry about him any more.

I was lapping really quickly and beating the lap record. I was in the groove and all I had to do was keep going because I was about 20 seconds ahead of the next guy.

Then one of my main sponsors appeared out of nowhere, standing on the track in the pit straight. He was urging me to slow down to hold on to the lead and not take too many risks.

I went past him and as I headed off round that lap, I was thinking to myself: 'How am I going to slow down? I'm really enjoying myself. Why should I be slowing down?'

This must have caused me to lose some of my concentration because when I arrived in the Swimming Pool complex my foot slipped off the brake pedal and instantly touched the throttle pedal. The car spun around and backed itself into the fence. I climbed out and walked back to the pits. I had blown it.

Well, there followed a lot of chat around the racing scene that maybe I couldn't hold concentration. You just don't do things like that at Monaco. I liked to pride myself that I didn't make mistakes like that - and yet I had. I had done the unforgivable. I had lost concentration and I would end up paying a very high price for that accident.

Without that I could have gone on into F1 in a much more solid manner than I did. The mistake never affected my performance, but there was an element of Fl drivers watching the race and witnessing an unforced error. They did not forget it.

I did get to F1 in the end, and I did it on my ability to drive not my ability to pay. I never paid anyone to get there and I was extremely disappointed that I wasn't allowed to serve my apprenticeship in the formula properly. You simply cannot hop into a car and put it on pole position.

Bernie Ecclestone and the Brabham team did very well for me to get me a drive, but the commercial pressure was building up at that point and I had no money. I put in some good performances in practice - but I had bad performances too. I crashed the car on the warm-up lap in Japan when it was pouring with rain.

I look at the people in F1 now and I have some feeling still within me that I never did what I could have done. To get into F1 was a good step, but I would have preferred to have got solidly into it. The reason I didn't do that was because of Monaco.

I suppose you just have to accept such things. Some blokes never get to Fl and they all think they are World Champions. When I was a boy I thought all I had to do was drive quickly. I was naive. When I was in F1 I thought that the team managers I was coming across were pathetic and, initially, I had no trouble forgetting about F1.

But I know deep down that Grand Prix racing is the top of the tree. Just above the ground is touring car racing - Australian domestic races, Bolivian domestic races, they are all the same.

I am disappointed with what happened, but I suppose you just have to live with it...