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...

Another one of my favorite Grands Prix; the sheer enthusiasm for motor racing of the Italian people, plus their unswerving loyalty to their own beloved Ferrari is a pleasure to see. The 'Tifosi' are unique in the world for their almost obsessive passion. If you watched the podium celebration after the race, you got a brief glimpse of the amazing sight of a river of people filling the whole length of the straight. It must have been very rewarding for the Ferrari team. Perhaps we should stop knocking them even though they are perhaps making Formula One boring, they have been working damn hard for the last seven years or so to get to this status, therefore everyone else should keep working to beat them. In this business nobody is unbeatable.

Yes, I would have loved to have been there to see it, but I have had my fair amount of racing fix since the Belgium Grand Prix so I can't complain. The weekend after Belgium I went to the Goodwood Revival, which at the risk of sounding old, I would say that year after year it is growing to be one of my favorite meetings. The circuit is great, virgin and untouched, the racing is superb, the cars are collector items, the drivers are personalities, legends but humans, and the atmosphere is second to none.

I am sure that I am not alone in my feelings as I notice that every year more and more fans are making the effort to dress up in the 50s style. I reckon this year about 90% of everyone there, fans and participants, were wearing something appropriate. Standing in the middle of the paddock, I had the feeling of being in Jules Verne's Time Machine. Well done Lord March, on behalf of British motor racing heritage, you have done so much to keep the past alive, which in some ways is better than the present.

The following weekend I went to see the Rockingham 500 race for the American CART series, since there are three Mexican drivers competing in the series, and recently my native country has nominated me as the Grand Marshal for the last CART race of the year in Mexico City. I do not know what exactly this means, but it is an honor to have been chosen, and I feel happy that my countrymen still remember me. Let's hope that this event will prove to be the renaissance of Mexican international motorsport.

The Rockingham race track is a wonderful facility, a well designed oval with grandstands that allow you to watch the action all the way around. The racing was OK but there were far too many yellow flags, which at times made it a bit confusing, but I guess it is what you are used to. However, what was sad was the lack of spectators there! Is it the declining situation of the CART series at the moment? The time of the year? The location of the track? Or what, since I believe the entrance prices were reasonable. Anyway, my Mexican friends failed to score, but I was pleased to see the 'local' driver Dario Franchitti winning the race, perhaps giving him a mathematical chance of winning this year's championship.

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Thinking of Monza, two Grands Prix come to mind. Firstly, the 1973 Italian Grand Prix in which Jackie Stewart took his third and last World Championship. He qualified 5th, but his engine dropped a valve during the morning warm up. Ken Tyrrell, who seldom took chances, especially in a race that could decide the Championship, decided to go for a used and proven engine which we were carrying in the transporter and which still had enough miles left to complete the race.

When Francois Cevert, Jackie's teammate, learned about Ken's decision to install this used engine he completely lost his cool. He went straight up to Ken, shouting: 'You can not do this, you cannot fit that engine from my car in Austria, it was a complete dog, this is a very important race for Jackie and you are going to ruin it for him!'

Ken was adamant that we should fit a proven engine, since Cosworth had had a batch of suspect valves, so that was the engine that we fitted, even though Francois was not at all happy. In the race, Jackie kept his qualifying position until the 7th lap when he came into the pits with a left rear puncture. We were more or less caught with our trousers down and made a complete balls-up of the pitstop, Jackie resuming in 12th place.

From then on he drove like the champion he was, breaking the lap record several times, and gradually eating his way through the pack. He needed to be fourth to clinch the Championship, and by lap 49, six laps before the end, he caught and passed Francois into fourth and it was then, within sight of Peter Revson's third place, that he made his last lap record, almost a second fastest than his own qualifying time!

After the race, I was asked by Franco Lini, then the leading Italian motorsport correspondent, to go to the press room to assist with translation. Francois Cevert was also present looking very reserved and introverted and uncharacteristically silent. I can imagine what was going on in his mind - he had a good car, strong engine, he drove as fast as he could, had seen Jackie slowed down by a lazy tyre change, but still saw him larger and larger in his mirrors and finally pass him for his World Championship, and he had done all this with an engine that he knew to be well under power at a power-dominant circuit. He had enough reasons to be feeling down.

As we said goodbye, I told him to cheer up and put it all down to experience. Jackie had at least half a dozen years on him and Francois had all the time in the world to learn from the Master. Sadly I was wrong. He did not live long enough to cash in all he learned from Jackie, undoubtedly the sport's greatest ambassador.

And how could I ever forget the 1988 Italian GP, the only race that escaped us through the impatience of Ayrton Senna as he collided with Jean-Louis Schlesser, who was standing in for Nigel Mansell, who had 'flu, in the Williams. Ayrton and Alain fought hard in the first half of the race until Prost's engine exploded and then Gerhard Berger started to close the gap on Ayrton, who had barely enough fuel to finish the race, let alone start another battle with Berger.

Two laps from the end Ayrton was only 4 seconds ahead of Berger as he decided to overtake Schlesser for the second time just before the chicane. Schlesser, panicking, moved to the extreme right and lost control under braking, spinning out of the circuit and collecting Ayrton's McLaren on the other side of the chicane, ending the one and only chance for McLaren to win all of the Grand Prix in the season.

With barely a month since the death of Enzo Ferrari, many believe that it was him up there who put a jinx on Senna in order to allow his beloved cars to win the Italian GP, in one-two formation, and yes, the atmosphere was a bit spooky!!!

As a result of Ferrari's death, the Automobile Club of Italy launched the Enzo Ferrari Trophy, a very strange and very heavy sculpture designed by a prominent Italian artist. This was going to be presented to the first team that won the Italian Grand Prix three times. We won it then in 1989, and I was invited to their annual dinner at the end of the year to be presented with a very elaborate and elegant manuscript saying that we had won one-third of the Enzo Ferrari Trophy, and believe me, we were very eager to have this Ferrari trophy in our trophy room. We won the Italian GP again in 1990, and again I went through the rigmarole of the dinner and the second manuscript.

By the time we won it again two years later in 1992, the Automobile Club was not happy at all, as naturally they wanted Ferrari to have it. I was not surprised that I did not receive the usual invitation to their end of season party in Milan, and they avoided any correspondence and declined to answer my faxes demanding our trophy. Finally, the week before the 1993 Grand Prix, I categorically stated to the hierarchy that the trophy was ours, and that if we did not receive it I would have to go to the press and say that they were a lot of liars and thieves!

They finally agreed to present it to Ron Dennis in a small ceremony just before the start of the race and needless to say that trophy now stands proudly in one of the prominent spots in our trophy room.

And so it is goodbye to the European Season, arrivederci fino Japan,

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.