Martin Donnelly

I didn't know whether to choose this race at Brands Hatch or Macau in '87, because I won both races. I've chosen Brands because Macau didn't have the same pressures attached.

This was my first full year in England, and I'd signed up with Ralph Firman's works Van Diemen team for the FF2000 Championship, both in Britain and Europe.

That year there was Mauricio Gugelmin, Maurizio Sandro Sala, Andy Wallace, Anthony Reid, myself, and one or two others who were quite quick, like Gary Brabham. It was a good, competitive year.

To be honest, the car wasn't that competitive. Mauricio Gugelmin was the other sort of works driver, but he was with Pegasus at the time, and after about six races they switched allegiance to the Reynard, and started winning races straight away. We had a contract with Ralph so we stuck with him.

At the end of the year we had the BBC Grandstand Championship. I held the lap record at Brands Hatch with a 45.1s in the Van Diemen, and Ralph was saying that he thought the car was good enough at that stage to win the championship.

But for one reason or another, call it curiosity, we felt that we didn't want to take that risk, so we signed up with Dennis Rushen Racing to do the BBC Grandstand series in the Mauricio Gugelmin '84 Reynard, which had just won the European Championship.

What made it all the more difficult was that Frank Nolan said to me that if I couldn't win, as he called it, 'a poxy 2-litre championship', then he wasn't going to sponsor me for the following year. At that stage he was my only sponsor. He carried me all the way through to F3 in the end.

We went to the race and qualified on pole, with Gary Brabham alongside us. The main protagonists were myself, Anthony Reid, Julian Bailey, Andy Wallace and Rick Morris. There was a lot of pressure on. It was the Formula Ford Festival weekend, so we had half of Ireland over there as well!

The actual circuit was damp for the race, but everyone started on slicks, so you obviously couldn't afford to make mistakes and fall off.

I think in the first five or six laps I opened up quite a healthy lead. And then I came across a backmarker going through the kidney/Surtees section. I went for the inside, and he came across and swiped the front nose cone. The front wing was actually rubbing against the tyre. Of course, Murray Walker was doing his usual in the commentary box, saying I was going to get a puncture and this, that and the other.

I could see the smoke and after a few laps I thought: 'Well, I have to get rid of it.' I ran the car over the kerbs, decided to just stuff it and get it off, and it worked. I hit the kerbs at Clearways, the car bounced and that did enough to dislodge it, and then it fell off going down the main straight.

Once my mechanic, who was on the pitwall, saw the nose cone was bent, he walked away and said, 'Well, that's it, isn't it?' But I kept going.

Because I had understeer at Paddock and Clearways, everyone started to catch me up gradually. Well, they could catch me up in the corners, but because I was so quick in a straight line, they couldn't get past me into Paddock.

So, there was Murray Walker saying: 'Now you can see what the front of one of these cars looks like,' and so on. And, of course, there was a whole train of cars behind me now.

Wallace was into second place at that stage, and the next bit of pressure was the last lap. Going into Surtees, there was another backmarker in front. There was a dry line at this stage, but the grass was still wet. Wallace was right up my gearbox, and I thought: Well, if I brake, he'll be past me.'

So I just threw the whole car on to the grass on the inside, and Wallace went round him on the outside, and I was lucky enough just to hold on. I won, by about a tenth of a second.

At the end of the race, both Gugelmin and Ayrton Senna came up and congratulated me, and said just how did I do it? And I said, 'Some day, you know, I'll tell you...'