Patrick Tambay

Sometimes, obviously, you put a lot of effort into the races where you finished sixth, seventh or eighth or whatever. But I think the best race - no doubt - was Imola in '83 with the Ferrari.

I was not alone in the car that day, for a lot of reasons. It's gonna sound metaphysical, its gonna sound like an encounter of the third kind, it's gonna sound strange, but I believe it.

You know what happened the year before between Pironi and Villeneuve. Villeneuve was robbed, that race was stolen away from him. Two weeks later he dies, and I take over, and you know the whole environment, what happened.

All the races for Ferrari were so intense, so full of meaning. The relationship with the crowd, the Ferrari crowd, was so strong. You have a constant relationship with the people, and you get the feeling that they are really pushing you. They are really behind you. They really want something to happen.

At Imola I qualified exactly on the same spot as Gilles had qualified the year before - third. And as I arrived to take the position, painted on the track was 'Win for Gilles', and a Canadian flag.

You can look at the pictures; I'm about two metres behind it. And I arrived on that 25 minutes before the start of the race. And it was a very, very difficult 25 minutes. There was a lot of pressure in there for me. It was very awkward, very strange.

Anyway, I take the start. We had soft tyres I think in the first half, so we had to change tyres. My team-mate Arnoux is pushing, he's on the soft tyres, he's got blisters, he pits sooner than me, and he's behind. I pit for a second set of tyres, and I'm in the lead.

But I have a problem with my engine in the long left-hander there; every time I come out of that corner it dies, then it suddenly picks up again. So I'm losing quite a bit of time. So Patrese catches me, passes me, and two laps later he goes off the road and I'm in the lead again. The crowd goes wild.

And always in that corner, every time I go through that corner, the car dies, and I don't know if it's going to start again. But it does pick up again, and I can go to the Tosa, and start another lap. And every time I come back to that big long left-hander, it dies. It was a fuel pick up problem or something like that, I don't know.

And I get the chequered flag three laps later. The car dies on the in-lap; halfway through. I can't even make it to the pits.

So...I don't even get to arrive back at the finish. I'm there, out on the track with the crowd. They jump over the fence, they throw me up in the air, one tries to get my helmet, one steals my gloves, some others are trying to rip the badges off.

And it's car number 27. They don't care with whom or whatever, it's a Ferrari, and it's number 27. And Villeneuve in that car had been so strong. So I don't even know if it's my victory; in some ways it's not really. But it felt good.

I shouldn't say this, but I called Gilles' wife afterwards. But I guess I can say it now, as Didier is dead also. I have a lot of respect for him, because he was the one who called me to replace Gilles, and he suffered a lot in his own accident.

Anyway, I called Gilles' wife, and I said 'venge'. You know what I mean? Revenged. Now he can rest in peace. That's the way it happened. He had been robbed the year before, but he was in peace now.

And I had been talking to him the whole race...