When Harri met ‘JJ’
YOUR COVER FEATURE about the McLaren F1 and Le Mans 1995 in Octane 208 brought back memories of a tour of Europe I made in 1995 with two good friends in my daily driver 1973 Jaguar XJ6, destination Côte d’Azur but taking in the 24 Heures du Mans on the way.
For all of us young Finnish boys, it was quite an experience! Following an endless convoy of British motorsport fans in their classic and exotic cars, we found a parking area and didn’t even camp; we stayed up for most of the 24 hours and grabbed some sleep in the car.
At first, we didn’t know that fellow Finn, JJ Lehto, was driving a McLaren, and I was mostly cheering for the XJ220 Jaguars. Over the night it was increasingly exciting to see JJ’s dominance in the rainy conditions, and hear about it on the small radio headsets. We got really close to the finish podium and I took a few good photos of Lehto, Dalmas and Sekiya.
Exactly ten years after that, in 2005, cars
