"Okay, so, where was I?"
"You were about to tell us about your first
season," said Saarinen.
"Ah, yes, that's right," said Conor.
"Okay, so… Brazil '87 would've been my first F1 race. You can imagine I
was a bit nervous going into it. I'd done all the testing, I'd done the practice
mileage, but now I was actually going to race the thing. As luck would have it,
there were only, I think, 25 entrants that day, so at least I didn't have to
worry about making the grid - there was no 107% rule in those days, of course, so
all you had to do was actually set a quali lap and you were on the grid, no
questions asked. Mind you, with the gulf between the turbos and non-turbos, a
107% rule wouldn't exactly have been fair.
"Now, Allen, of course, had a bit more F1 experience
than I did, and he'd driven the circuit before, whereas I hadn't, so he gave me
a few pointers on the best lines to take. I took in the tips, did my best
during the practice sessions, went out for qualifying, and ended up 20th, with Allen
22nd. Can't remember how many non-turbos there were on the grid that day… five,
maybe six? ….but we were slap-bang in the middle of 'em. From our point of
view, that was the important thing: we weren't racing the turbos, except for the
slower ones like Zakspeed and Osella. We were racing the other non-turbos.
"So I lined up on the starting grid, for my
first-ever F1 race. I remember I was alongside Martin Brundle, in his Zakspeed,
and as the flag dropped - it was a flag in those days, not five lights - when
the flag dropped, I actually got a better start than him, and managed to get
past him for a bit until his turbo kicked in and he went straight back past me.
Funnily enough, though, he retired on lap 15 when his turbo gave out. Allen
retired as well… I, uhh, I think his engine blew up. I don't remember exactly,
but there was a lot of smoke coming out of his car when I drove past it, so it
was either an engine problem or some kinda oil leak.
"I actually finished the race. Now, I've probably
said that the cars in those days were difficult to drive, but actually, the
Hildebrand wasn't all that difficult once I'd gotten the hang of it. Yeah, it
was slow, but that made it all the more easy to handle. It was a good
beginner's car, I think. I think if I'd leapt in at the deep end, with a turbo team
like Brabham, I probably would've struggled more in that first season than I
did with Hildebrand in the end. So while it wasn't a great first season in
terms of results, it was excellent in terms of allowing me to find my feet in
F1. So if you guys can only get offered a race seat at, say, Marussia or
Caterham, don't just assume it's below you and turn it down. Any experience is
good experience, and many of the sport's greats started out at the bottom like
I did. Fernando Alonso, for example. He started out at Minardi, and look how he
turned out.
"Anyway, uhh… I finished 12th out of 13 finishers at
that first race in Brazil. Nearly finished 11th, but Streiff in his Tyrrell
leapfrogged me at the final round of stops. I wasn't sure how to feel about the
result, really. On the one hand, I'd at least finished, and I hadn't really
been expecting to do that well in the first place. On the other hand, no matter
how you look at it, I was second from last. I wasn't looking forward to my
prospects for the season. I chatted to a couple of the other guys about it and
they basically all said, well, you've only just started. Get some experience
under your belt, get some good results, and if you prove yourself, then it'll
all fall into place in the end. So I figured, alright then, might as well tough
it out. Got nothing to gain from giving up after only one race.
"Things stayed like that for a while. By Imola,
there were now enough entrants that some people weren't going to qualify.
Nelson Piquet crashed during practice, had to sit out the race, and that took
the pressure off a little, and in the end both me and Allen qualified. I
finished 11th out of 14, helped by a couple of cars running out of fuel but
still getting classified, and Berg retired again. At Belgium it was my turn to
retire, after my gearbox gave out, and Allen finished 10th out of 11. Then came
the big one: my first Monaco Grand Prix.
"I'd never been to Monaco before, never raced that
circuit, but of all the races on the calendar that year, that was the one I was
looking forward to the most. That, and my home race at Adelaide. When we got
there, I must've spent hours just wandering around, taking it all in. It was
weird, though, 'coz I mean, a couple of the guys actually lived there, like a
lot of 'em do now, they knew the people and the places and everything. They'd
be stopping their neighbours on the street and having a chat with them. The
famous guys, like Senna, Berger, Prost, they were constantly getting stopped
and asked for photos and autographs and shit. I didn't get stopped once. Nobody
knew who the hell I was!" Conor chuckled, grinning fondly. "I dunno
if I preferred it like that, or the constant autograph requests I got after I moved
to Ferrari. They both had their perks, if I'm honest, but they were both pretty
annoying. At that time, I wanted to be known like the others. By '95, I was
walking down the street wishing nobody knew who I was still!" He chuckled
again. "Yeah, good times, though.
"Hildebrand managed to book rooms for me and Allen at
the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel and Resort. Oh, man, it was the best fucking hotel
I'd ever slept in. I felt like a king. It was at that point - standing on the
balcony of my room, looking out at the Monte Carlo sunset - it was then that I
thought, I can't give this up. What does it matter if I'm finishing
second-from-last every race, and struggling to even get on the grid? This is
the greatest ride I've ever been on, and I'm being paid to take it. I'll be
damned if I'm getting off."
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