- Yeah, I'd like to be remembered as a racer.
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In my era, you were much more,
the car and driver were much more as one.
You take a car, whatever car it was,
and then you'd modify it to the way
you want it to handle.
You want more oversteer, more understeer,
or steering ratio changed, all those things
you could do and make it the way you
wanted it to be, so in other words
you personalized the vehicles.
Jack Brabham, for instance, had a Cooper.
I would drive a Cooper, but if he drove mine
or I drove his, we'd be miles slower,
although it's the same car,
but because it doesn't suit the way you drive.
Some drivers, I was a very late braker.
Some drivers go very wide around the corner,
some come very narrow, and it depends
on your style as to which is fastest for you.
Braking late is not just putting your foot
on the brake a bit later.
It's a lot more than that because when you take
a normal car, when it's stationary it's dead stable.
When you start moving, it gets more difficult.
When you start braking, the car has reactions
which you have to compensate.
Therefore, getting a car right under braking
is quite difficult.
Normally with a rear engine car I would say
I'd probably have 65, 70 percent brakes on the front.
What you're trying to do is you take a car
and you sort of surge into a corner
far faster than it normally would be expected to go
and then you have to sort the thing out.
So therefore, setting up the car up
to your style of driving is a very important
thing to do, and I knew sufficient technically
to set up the car the way I'd want it.
If you let two pounds out of my tires, front or rear,
I would certainly know that you'd been
messing around with it.
When a problem crops up, you've got to find
some way around it, depends on what the problem is.
Sometimes you can sort it out in practice
and get that problem done away with
so it doesn't re-present itself.
Sometimes you're racing, you have to be aware
of what it is and what you can do to get over the problem.
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That's the point.
When you're racing, you're not on your own,
you've got other people around you
who are trying to beat you.
Therefore, it's quite important to understand
what the track craft is, when you're gonna
try and pass somebody, and how you're gonna do it,
and slip streaming and the use of the car
in front to get more speed.
When you should use it and when you shouldn't.
It's quite a complex arrangement.
The Lotus, I think, was a faster car
than the Cooper but certainly not as nice to drive.
The Cooper was a very agricultural by comparison,
but a much more forgiving car.
And really, if you're racing hard,
to have a car like that is much more
pleasing to drive than another one.
A Lotus is actually a better car if you're fast enough
to drive it, but the downside is
that it's three and three-quarters hours,
and that's a long time with them.
I would also, of course, try and make them think
it's easier for me than it was for them.
I'd see them round the hairpin and every time
I'd sort of wave across like I'm enjoying this,
and yet I was actually flat out.
Every time I try and do a perfect lap,
which, of course, you can't do, then you'd come out
and I had maybe six inches to spare on the outside,
which I should have used up, and said
I'm gonna try and do the perfect lap from here,
and kept doing that, because a hundred laps,
it takes tremendous concentration.
If you can concentrate, anybody can concentrate
for three hours on one thing,
it's very difficult to do.
But it's made easier because my life was at stake,
so therefore because I had an input into it
that made it more important.
I'd like to be remembered as a racer
because racing and being a racer are two different things.
If you're a real racer and there's a gap,
you go in there, you don't suddenly think,
"What am I doing here?" because it's inbuilt
into you that you are fighting somebody
and so you take every benefit that you can.
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