10 replies to this topic

[Lights]

Link to McLaren blog

Just wanted to share, found it a very interesting read.

[arttidesco]

Link to McLaren blog

Just wanted to share, found it a very interesting read.

Wow ! What an amazing blog, every sentence is positively dripping with passion

You can also follow Emerson on FB here.

[Gary C]

Emo = respect.

[Lights]

You can also follow Emerson on FB here.

Thanks

[Michael Ferner]

Very nice, really! But I have to admit that one of his sentences struck me as odd, namely that Frank Williams went to see him in a private plane... in 1969!!!? Really?

[Michael Oliver]

I think John Miles might also be slightly miffed that Emerson has forgotten him and says that Graham Hill (driving for the Brooke Bond Oxo-Rob Walker team) was his team-mate at the 1970 British GP...

[MCS]

I think John Miles might also be slightly miffed that Emerson has forgotten him and says that Graham Hill (driving for the Brooke Bond Oxo-Rob Walker team) was his team-mate at the 1970 British GP...

Yes, I wondered about that and then thought that this hasn't been Emerson's work, merely the words of a journalist who doesn't know the facts.

The previous post from Fines also bears my last remark out.

[Gary C]

'Graham Hill (driving for the Brooke Bond Oxo-Rob Walker team) was his team-mate at the 1970 British GP... '
Gosh, I really should have spotted that myself.

[arttidesco]

I'll, naively perhaps, give McLaren and Emmo the benefit of the doubt reference Graham Hill who was obviously Emmo's hero, the point being he qualified alongside his hero in his first Formula One race in a similar car.

As for Frank Williams flying to see him again a slip of the memory perhaps, or maybe Frank told Emmo he flew up to see him, but did not mention that he flew up in a car. To my mind there is something quite authentic about the blog that says if Emmo did not write it in English at worst someone may have translated it from Brazilian.

[Michael Oliver]

I'll, naively perhaps, give McLaren and Emmo the benefit of the doubt reference Graham Hill who was obviously Emmo's hero, the point being he qualified alongside his hero in his first Formula One race in a similar car.

As for Frank Williams flying to see him again a slip of the memory perhaps, or maybe Frank told Emmo he flew up to see him, but did not mention that he flew up in a car. To my mind there is something quite authentic about the blog that says if Emmo did not write it in English at worst someone may have translated it from Brazilian.

I expect he had a chat with a McLaren PR, who then wrote it up and didn't check their facts as sometimes people say something with such conviction that you think 'Well, they must be right, they sound so sure'. Unfortunately, I've learned not to trust the recollections of drivers, mechanics, team owners with double-checking as they are often wrong, quite understandably when you think about the passage of time and the number of races they have competed in during their careers.

I have to say that I do really enjoy it when I read first-hand testimony from drivers of those times - to make it from FF to F1 within a year was quite remarkable. Can't really see that happening nowadays, I guess someone like Raikkonen would be the closest recent example?

Things might have been very different if he had signed to drive that de Tomaso for Frank instead, mightn't they? Makes you think. Also, if he hadn't crashed Rindt's new 72 on the Friday at Monza, it would have been him at the wheel of 72/2 on the Saturday afternoon and not Jochen. Potentially, he could have been in two accidents that would have claimed his life if he'd made two different choices during 1970...

[David McKinney]

... to make it from FF to F1 within a year was quite remarkable.

...after many years of top-level racing in Brazil

Agree entirely with your main point