Maurice Hamilton - Green Races Red

In the end the spacer needed to be redesigned and remanu-factured. But that’s where Ferrari excel. Because they are so big they can take a chance and, if necessary, they can get things changed. Jordan, for example, could never try and bring a car out that late, because if something went wrong, they would be finished. That’s not a criticism. It’s just a statement of fact. Jordan could not afford to do something so adventurous, and the very same thing applies to the majority of teams.

Having said that, it seemed very disorganised at Ferrari mainly because we were in so much trouble with so many things. Every time I went to drive the car, something happened. If it wasn’t the spacer, then it was something else. We would fix that and then the fault with the spacer would raise its head again. It was problem after problem; quite unreal.

I felt very sorry for the team because the car was beautifully engineered, and extremely well made. It was just incomprehensible that so many things could go wrong. And, as the deadline for the new season approached, life became absolutely frantic.

Ferrari was receiving sponsorship for the first time from Asprey, the jewellers. Naturally, they wanted to make an impact and a very formal function had been arranged for one evening at their premises in London’s Bond Street. Michael and I both had to be present. Personally I felt like a bit of a puppet standing around in my bright red driving overalls while everyone else was dressed to kill. Anyway, it was all part of the job, although a much more serious duty was waiting for me at Ferrari’s Fiorano test track in Italy.

The original plan (of many!) had been for me to finish final testing at Fiorano, fly to London for the Asprey function and then leave Heathrow the next afternoon for Japan, en route to Australia. Some hope. With everything in such chaos, I was needed in Fiorano the next day.

I got up at 6 am to fly to Milan, and then drove like mad to reach Fiorano because I needed to catch a 2 pm plane from Bologna back to London in order to make the connection with the Tokyo flight. On the way down the autostrada, I rang my engineer to make sure everything was ready. He said, ‘Yep, no problem. We’re just about to take the car over to the circuit.’

I got to Fiorano, only to find that the car had suddenly developed a fuel leak. Yet another new problem had surfaced from nowhere. These things happen, I suppose. I was told there was no longer any point in me waiting. For once, I was quite happy about the setback; at least I would be able to make a quick return to London. So I set off and, just as I pulled up at Bologna Airport, I received a call from Fiorano with the message: ‘Come back’.

The implications were too much to even think about. All week I had been booking flights and changing my plans. My travel agent reached the stage where he did not want to answer the phone because he knew it would be me with another alteration. At one point, I was booked on several flights and I didn’t have a clue which one I was going to be able to catch – British Airways, ANA, JAL, you name the flight to Tokyo, and I was on it.

I returned to Fiorano, hopped into the car, drove 200 yards – and there was yet another problem. I had gone beyond the stage of being either surprised or upset. I was almost past caring. The intention had been to go to Tokyo for some meetings and to do a couple of interviews. I could forget that because now I would be leaving London the next day. I just switched off and relaxed. It was a very pleasant afternoon, so I sat in the sun and waited while they worked on the car.

Everything was ready to roll just before dark. We did a couple of runs which were actually quite useful because we discovered something very interesting in connection with the engine temperatures. Once I had finished, I had to see Montezemolo and tell him what the car was like. Then I had to report to Jean Todt, the team manager, and discuss what we had found.

All the while, I was aware that I really needed to catch the last flight out of Milan. I didn’t want to leave my departure until the first flight the following morning because the risk of being fogged in at Milan was too great. Either that or not being able to land at Heathrow for the same reason. Travelling between two of the foggiest airports in Europe was leaving too much to chance if I wanted to catch the next flight to Tokyo.

I had not driven the Ferrari flat out during the brief test at Fiorano; that was not the point of the exercise. Certainly, I was far safer in the F310 than I would be during a wild drive to Milan. I have to admit, I drove like a lunatic that night. The little Fiat Coupe I had been given was capable of 140 mph. I was doing all of that – most of it on the hard shoulder! I was overtaking on all sides, absolutely flat out. I just had to catch this flight. It was madness. I was watching the traffic, knowing it would only take some guy in a little Fiat to wander into my path and we’d all be history. I’ve never been so scared. I reached Linate airport with five minutes to spare. I stopped at the front door, ran inside the terminal, dumped the car keys at the Alitalia desk and said someone from Ferrari would come and pick up the car on Monday. This was a Friday night! That’s the fantastic thing about driving for Ferrari. Once the Italians hear that name, nothing is a problem any more. They rushed me through and I got on the flight by the skin of my teeth.

Despite arriving in Japan a day late, I managed to rearrange my schedule without too much difficulty. It helped that I felt completely at home in Tokyo. I really love going there. Having spent three great years racing in Japan and being based in the capital, each time I return, it seems like I’m reliving my childhood.

All the European or foreign drivers – there was usually about half a dozen of us – would stay in the President Hotel. It was home-from-home and so much more convenient than renting a tiny apartment. Everyone knows me there. I quickly fall into a familiar routine.

I will walk down to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, then amuse myself by playing Space Invaders or checking out the latest magazines. Then back to the hotel, perhaps for a snooze before dinner, and then on to the night clubs. I know my way around. I feel very comfortable in Tokyo and, in some ways, it is even better than being in Dublin. It feels more personal. I live near Dublin so I’m obviously in the city quite often. But it’s somehow special visiting Tokyo, a bit like returning every now and then to a favourite holiday haunt.

It is an appropriate description because this was the first time I had been able to relax for quite some time. I had arranged to share a flat in Bologna but I had been unable to find time to unwind as the team would regularly call me to Fiorano. It is a forty-minute run on average – I’ve done it in twenty-three minutes but it’s not healthy at that rate. I prefer just to plod along. Inevitably I would show up and a problem would have arisen. I would then return to Bologna, but being on call meant it was impossible to organise anything, and I couldn’t even go to the gym. It made life very difficult.

I had to be ready for action at all hours. The team was prepared to run until dark. Sometimes we would go beyond that. There were occasions when it was pitch black but we needed to take the car out, if only to discover what was going to go wrong next. Testing is very spectacular at night because the disc brakes glow bright orange and the row of little lights on the dashboard, indicating when it is time to change gear, flash back and forth. The exhaust pipes spit flames. It’s all very dramatic. Fantastic, actually.

It is all part of the atmosphere at Fiorano. The test track, which is owned by Ferrari, is on the edge of Maranello and there is always a sizeable crowd pressed against the fence. As a Ferrari driver, you are continually under the microscope. All the talk among the crowd is about lap times. It doesn’t matter that you might be trying various ideas out on the car and lap times are out of the question. In front of the tifosi , there is always this pressure to perform. When I completed my first laps at Fiorano, I was trying to do decent times – and I could tell the team were encouraging that because they kept giving me fresh tyres. With Michael, it was the reverse. They were trying to slow him down because he was a known quantity and they didn’t want him to show his hand with the new car.