{"id":26353,"date":"2014-07-07T19:05:10","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T18:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/my-only-grand-prix-9\/"},"modified":"2019-07-21T03:07:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T02:07:03","slug":"my-only-grand-prix","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/may-2004\/27\/my-only-grand-prix\/","title":{"rendered":"My only Grand Prix"},"content":{"rendered":"

1967 Mexican GP at Mexico City by Jonathan Williams<\/strong><\/p>\n

How did you end up driving for Ferrari in Mexico?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’d just competed in the Can-Am races at Laguna Seca and Riverside, and was waiting for the Las Vegas race. [Ferrari team manager] Franco Lini just said, ‘You’ve got to be a good company man and come down to Mexico. By the way, bring your overalls you never know…’ Nobody actually said there was a good chance of getting into the Fl car.<\/p>\n

So there was no suggestion that you were actually going to race the spare?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. I was very happy in Southern California. I had struck lucky because Chic Vandagriff; who was a Ferrari dealer, had given me a 275GTS to run around in. This vehicle had netted me a very nice little blonde.! was doing fine with her and could see no reason to go to Mexico to watch Chris Amon drive a Formula One car! It was rocking the boat from my point of view.<\/p>\n

Did you finally understand the team’s plan when you made it to Mexico?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Franco wanted to give me a run, but Ferrari wasn’t sure. With the problems of communication in those days, Franco was waiting for a telex from Ferrari to say yes or no. It really was a sloppy affair.<\/p>\n

Amon had rejected the car on the Saturday is that when you found out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even then they didn’t say that I would be driving it that day. It was well into the practice session when they suddenly said, ‘Get changed. Look like a race driver. Jump in it’. I remember I damaged its nose on a track marker.<\/p>\n

Despite the lack of preparation, were you very excited to find yourself sitting on a grand prix grid?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Honestly, I thought, ‘How sad is this?’ Even today I don’t like making a fool of myself, and I thought that’s what I was about to do. Chris was a lovely man, but he was too busy and had no time to give me any tips or hints. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. But you led Jackie Stewart for a while… (above)<\/strong><\/p>\n

That just showed how bad that BRM H16 was! I was ahead of John Surtees as well in the Honda at one point. I had a long battle with Jean-Pierre Beltoise in the new Matra. He knew what he was doing in that car, and I didn’t. I could get a healthy lead on him on the fast straight, and then he’d embarrass me on the twisty bits. I managed not to bust it and made it to the finish in eighth.<\/p>\n

Where could the drive have led?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If they had given me half a dozen races I’m sure I could have put the car where it should have been. I think I could have driven in ’68, but I managed to hit something solid in testing at Modena. They wouldn’t have asked me to test unless they thought they could use me. The phone never rang again!<\/p>\n

You’re officially a Ferrari grand prix driver. What has that meant to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m happy to have done it, of course I am. If you’re into trivia, this is big time, isn’t it? I spent most of this morning sending off autographs to people who’ve dug me up. They’re better than Interpol! There’s some guy selling my signature on eBay for $10. I wouldn’t be upset if it was $100…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,936,199,115471,37300,236,24879,34101,35051,34641,36258],"issue_decade":[121591],"issue_year":[121637],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/26353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/26353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251265,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/26353\/revisions\/251265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26353"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=26353"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=26353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}