NSR's journalistic baptism

This was not the end of a long hard struggle, I should say at once. Far from it. At the time I was without a job, having escaped a few months earlier from the shackles of industry. For some time it had been my resolution to become a racing journalist, and eventually I concluded I must resign, thereby obligating myself actually to do something about it.

As the New Year of 1971 loomed things were looking shaky. I had written to Simon Taylor, then the editor of AUTOSPORT, receiving in turn a charming letter inviting me to report from such as Castle Combe and Charterhall. Taylor had missed the point, I felt; hadn't he realised I was talking about Formula 1? Looking back, my dismay was no rival for my naivety.

By the early spring the situation was getting serious. The Labour Exchange beckoned, and I doubted there was much call for Grand Prix reporters, no previous experience necessary. Almost as a last resort I dropped a line to Car and Driver in New York, and that day someone, somewhere was assuredly smiling on N Roebuck.

The magazine was without a racing journalist in Europe just then. More than that, though, my letter found its way to the desk of Caroline Hadley, the managing editor. She was originally from England, and that was good, but what was better was she didn't pitch my note into the bin. If you want to take a chance, she said, go to Barcelona - on your own coin - and write a story for us; if we like it, we'll run it...

I was in a daze when I put down the phone. At last! My nine-to-five days were over.

The euphoria lasted a day or so. And then I panicked. I didn't know anyone in racing, so how was I to write a Grand Prix report? To whom did I apply for a pass? And where the hell was Barcelona, anyway?

I decided to drive there. At the time I had a Lotus Elan, red with gold bumpers, subdued as a Mafia wedding, and about as capricious. Like all Elans, it went when it felt like it, which was not always. Hardly the ideal vehicle for a trip to Spain. But I never gave that a thought.

All day I pounded down through France, and through the evening kept putting off the idea of looking for an hotel. Narbonne... Perpignan... and finally, late in the evening, to the Spanish border.

There was a cafe there, and parked outside - joy of joys - was the Ferrari transporter. I immediately went in, for coffee and cognac, and there got into conversation with Giulio Borsari, the chief mechanic. 'Right colours - wrong make,' he said on seeing my Lotus, and then he presented me with a Ferrari Yearbook from 1970.

Back on the road, I now felt I could drive for ever, and at three in the morning arrived in Barcelona, parked on the only available spot - a building site - and slept in the car.

After finding a room the next morning, I collected a pass, then drove up to Montjuich Park. And that day will stay with me always. In dazzling sunlight I wandered about among my gods, too shy at first actually to speak to Ickx or Siffert, Stewart, Regazzoni or Rodriguez. It was enough simply to be there.

In a side street by the track I came upon the Ferrari transporter again, and there were the three gorgeous 312Bs, parked at the kerbside. While I gazed, feeling all was right with the world, I realised someone was sitting in the last of them, number six. Andretti!

I looked on, feeling almost like a voyeur, as he shuffled in the cockpit, gripped the wheel, played with the gear lever, adjusted the mirrors. Never try persuading me there was ever a driver who loved racing cars more than Mario.

The age of uniformity still had to arrive 20 years ago. The three practice sessions, all timed, were run in early evening, and under a low sun they came out finally to take on this most spectacular and daunting of all street circuits. At more than 150mph they turned slightly left past the pits, immediately launching themselves over a crest, then plummeting downhill to a left-hand hairpin.

It was here, in 1969, that the flimsy and tall rear wings on the Lotus 49s had failed, causing huge accidents to both Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt. And it was at this point, in 1975 that Rolf Stommelen's wing fluttered away, his car somersaulting over the barriers. Several marshals were killed, and with them died their magnificent circuit.

There were no disasters in 1971, however. The Ferraris of Ickx and Regazzoni were joined on the front row by Amon's Matra, but by the first corner Stewart's Tyrrell had come through to second place behind Ickx. They were not friends, these two, but their fight, if intense, was clean, Stewart eventually taking the lead before the hairpin, the two cars for an unforgettable second side by side and airborne...

Ickx gave chase, but finished three seconds back, and Amon, slowed by a broken shock absorber, was third, followed by Rodriguez.

They didn't have press conferences, nor press releases, for that matter. But neither, it seems to me now, did they have many press men. Afterwards, it was easily possible to talk to the drivers, nervous as I was; and five weeks later, in Monte Carlo, easier still, for now I was an old hand at this thing...

Stewart won there, too, and at Ricard, Silverstone, the Nurburgring, pretty well everywhere I seemed to go that first summer. It didn't matter, the absence of much actual racing. The narcotic of Formula 1 life had its hook into me, and while changes in the cast might loosen it from time to time, I doubt that anything will dislodge it. Imola, at the end of this month, will be number 220.