After forty years of working in Formula One, former McLaren team co-ordinator Jo Ramirez joins the millions of racing fans who watch the action on TV. Now writing for Atlas F1, Jo follows the 2002 season in a personal column, which comes straight from the heart of a guy who is, after all, just a racing man...

The Hungarian Grand Prix was always among my favorite races. Budapest is a fabulous city and the people are always very hospitable and very humble and in the 16 years of this race, it has been a pleasure to see how year after year the city has improved in all respects. In the 80s it was extremely difficult to rent a car and most of them were undrivable, and there was nothing worth buying in the shops. Nowadays you can rent Mercedes and BMW, the restaurants and hotels are as good as anywhere, and of course during Grand Prix time in the middle of August the atmosphere is great around the Danube and the city does not sleep.

My favorite hotel was the former Duna Intercontinental, now the Marriott, by the river in the Pest side of the city. If you had a room facing the Danube you could be sure of a wonderful view and a late night show!

Traditionally it has always been a reasonably successful Grand Prix for McLaren, and after DC won in Monaco I really thought that perhaps we could take another win off Ferrari, but obviously they had other plans! I am sure that every morning Ron Dennis must swear at himself in the mirror as he is shaving for signing a deal with Michelin!! It seemed a good idea at the time! But he made his bed and he must lie in it, although I am sure he is giving the Frenchmen hell every race to get them to raise their act. Neither Williams nor McLaren will ever beat Ferrari on their own, they will definitely need the help from Michelin.

Didn't Anthony Davidson get more than his fair share of publicity for his Grand Prix debut! More power to him, if this was one of the objectives, he certainly achieved it and he did not do badly either, although I did predict that he was going to spin before the end. He just did not look strong enough to me to be strapped into to a sauna rollercoaster for one and three quarter hours without losing concentration.

But it is sad that a newcomer to Grand Prix racing's main preoccupation is not to get in the way of the leaders when they are due to lap him. Obviously he did not want to get any more fines, or in the black books of his future fellow rivals. Not having been used to being lapped would not make it any easier, since nowadays you practically have to change down and get on the grass to let the red cars and the rest past. This is something that I found very unfair as those guys at the back are also racing! If Schumacher and co have forgotten their beginnings, they should try a Minardi for a race to refresh their memories! I for one remember being very upset if any of my drivers lost any time when they were lapped during my Shadow, Theodore, Fittipaldi or ATS days.

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Another of the highlights of Hungary for me was the fact that being in the middle of August, with the next race in Belgium, the trucks did not need to leave for Spa until the Tuesday before the race. I always took that week off and went to my house in the South of France in a beautiful little village called Cogolin, 6 kilometers from St Tropez.

I normally took a lift straight from the race in Budapest with Ayrton Senna in his fabulous 125 jet, and I was able to have moules marineres that evening in St Tropez after my wife and daughter picked me up at Nice airport - more often than not celebrating a good result.

The first couple of times we took a helicopter right from the paddock to the airport, but I have to say that they were very scary, even Ayrton was not very impressed with their condition, and also the price rocketed up once the owners got wise! However I also used to organize a police escort every year, which was always great fun, although some years got spoiled by the racing boys brigade driving as if they were going to get an inheritance!

In 1992, the year Ayrton won his last Grand Prix there, he decided that he no longer wanted to have a frightening experience going to the airport in the old dilapidated egg-beaters that the Hungarians very proudly called helicopters, and he asked me if my escorts worked well. I said they were great, quite funny and everyone loves them. Right, he said, we will go by road. So I had to make sure that the boss's own escort was going to be secure and that he did not accuse me of only looking after Ayrton and Number 1. As soon as the race was over, I went down to the car park to make sure that our police rider was there and so he was, together with the ever ready Christine, my personal interpreter, because of course no one spoke a word of English. She had also made sure that Ron Dennis's motorcycle man was there too.

I got back to the motorhome to see to it that no one had drunk my share of champagne, as in those years we were not winning as much as in the 80s, and therefore when we did, I wanted everyone to be aware of the fact! It was a good race for McLaren with Gerhard Berger finishing third while Mansell was second, which was good enough to secure the 1992 World Championship, so this of course did not make Ayrton too happy. Still a win is a win, and Ayrton was pleased about that. After the press conference he came to the garage to say thank you to the boys, something that he always did, then on to the motorhome for a race debrief with the engineers and finally came out shouting for me that it was time to go.

I don't know why but in Grand Prix racing you always seem to feel guilty whenever you take time off, so I tried to slide off without being seen, through the back door and into the Honda Legend once the autographs hunters had let go of Ayrton. We started to follow our police rider who had a smile from ear to ear once he realized who was he escorting, we had already started leaving the area on anything but roads, talk about cross country! If you thought Ayrton was good on the circuits, believe me he would have made a good rally driver - he went through gaps that I could not imagine possible and the closer Ayrton came to the biker, the more throttle our man wound on his bike. Barry Sheene had nothing on him, he was brilliant!

At one stage we arrived at a windy road under a railway which had cobbles rather than tarmac and it was wet right on the corner. Our intrepid kamikaze rider arrived full on, and Ayrton and I were shouting 'No! No! Slow down! We are not in that much of a hurry!' We could just see him splattered all over the wall! However, nothing stopped this guy. He had a mighty spin where the back wheel nearly overtook the front, but he gathered himself back together again pointing in the right direction and with a tremendous sigh of relief from Ayrton and me, we continued on to the more open roads closer to the airport. By this stage we had been joined by some other members from the Grand Prix brigade, including Thierry Boutsen and Domingos Piedades from Mercedes right behind us.

As we got on to the elevated part of the airport express road our motorcycle guy was gesticulating to the oncoming traffic to move to the left to make more room for us, since the convoy was by now pretty large. As he was doing so, a little old Trabant was approaching - the driver panicked and jammed on his brakes and as he did, the right wheel folded under the car and the left took off leaving the poor old boy at the wheel completely non-plussed as the guy behind had to take a quick avoiding action!

As we got to the airport, not quite believing that we had made it with our escort alive, Ayrton told me to open his briefcase on the back seat, and give the driver the local money that was there. I can't remember exactly how much it was, but I said to Ayrton that in English money it was about 450 pounds. 'Good,' he said, 'give it to him, it was worth it, he probably earns that in a year!' I can not describe the expression on his face when our Evel Knievel saw the florins, just that alone was worth the money.

Shoes off and into the nice high-pile carpet of the 125, I sat comfortably in the soft leather seats with Viviane, Ayrton's sister, who had not dared to look out of the window during our epic voyage to the airport. I was regretting the champagne that I left in the circuit, as beer was the only alcoholic beverage on the plane, so I had to make do with that!

I took the opportunity during the flight to try to persuade Ayrton to stop negotiating with Williams, because we were going to get better, but with Honda not yet decided whether or not they would stay in Grand Prix racing, and Williams being head and shoulders above the rest, he was set to go to Williams the next year if Frank would make a deal. Fortunately for us, Mansell went across the sea and Frank got a deal with Alain Prost, and elevated his test driver Damon Hill to have a crack as a titular driver.

Ayrton had to wait for another year to drive the Williams and the rest of the history is a sad one. Meanwhile in 1993 we had one of the better chassis to come out of Woking and although we became a Ford customer and had an underpowered engine, thanks to Ayrton we won five races in style, notably where driver influence made a difference: Brazil, Europe (Donington), Monaco, Japan and Australia, his last win.

I will talk to you again in two weeks' time from Spa Francorchamps, home of some of the greatest races in history and my first experience of a Grand Prix win.

Jo X

About the author:
Jo Ramirez began working in Formula One in 1961, when he arrived to Europe from Mexico with his childhood friend Ricardo Rodriguez. He worked as a mechanic and a team manager with Dan Gurney, Emerson Fittipaldi, Ken Tyrrell and many others, before making McLaren his home for 18 years - where he worked as team co-ordinator between the years 1983 and 2001 and where he made life-long friendships with the sport's top drivers. Jo retired from F1 at the end of the 2001 season. He joined Atlas F1 as a regular columnist in February 2002.