Herbert remembers Ford's last F1 win with 'Team Milton Keynes'

“It took me a while to adapt to the team and car, but once we had the electronic differential from Austria, it sort of clicked together a little bit better.”

The points still didn’t come though – until a classic case of driving talent, strategic nous, erratic weather and a little bit of luck all combined for Herbert and Stewart at the third-to-last race of the season for the European GP.

“I was sitting on the grid, and was watching this huge cloud coming over from Spa,” says Herbert.

“It didn’t deviate in direction or shape, and was very broad.”

As one of F1’s most chaotic GPs ever got underway, the ominous cloud inched nearer.

After a false start, a barrel-roll for Sauber’s Pedro Diniz, electrical failures for both Jordans, David Coulthard throwing it off the road and various pit-stop bungles for title contenders Mika Häkkinen and Eddie Irvine, Herbert was quietly slipping up the order.

He then made the right decision at the right time.

“The cloud just kept coming and coming and fortunately, they called me in and as it began to rain at the bottom end of the hairpin,” remembers Herbert

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s just gonna cover the whole track. This is an opportunity because this is going to be a lot of rain.’

“So I put wets on and then Rubens came in the next lap. That was where it made the difference.”

The canny move was helped by more fortunate circumstances, and before he knew it Herbert was in the lead.

“There was luck involved with Ralf [Schumacher] getting a puncture and [Giancarlo] Fisichella throwing it off the road, but that’s part of racing.

“It’s about not making mistakes, and an element of luck at the same time. That happens so many, many, times.

“It’s just nice that the team was able to cope with all that. They didn’t crack or make the wrong decisions in those tricky pitstops.”

When the flag fell, Herbert would take a massively popular third and final F1 win, with Stewart claiming a 1-3 – sandwiching the slightly bemused-looking Jarno Trulli on the podium, who finished runner-up for Prost.

Herbert would go on to score a fourth at Malaysia – “my best ever F1 performance” he says – as the team which saw both cars go up in smoke at the season-opener ultimately finish fourth in the ‘99 constructors’ championship.

“It was a family team with a family atmosphere,” says Herbert.

“I got on well with his wife Lady Helen, Paul and his other son Mark – Jackie could be a tough man to work with, but he still had that passion for driving side, he was always there to try and help.

“It was nice because we won in the ‘Green Hell’, where he had taken his famous win.

“It was the last hurrah. The last roll of the dice. Everything Jackie had been working for.”