In the early 1980s you could buy a ticket to Silverstone practice days for a quid. Although barred from the pit lane, you could wander freely round the paddock. For car-obsessed parents of carfixated kids, it offered cheap but epic weekend child care.
At the time we lived close enough to the circuit to hear race meetings on the wind, so my dad took us to practice regularly. On 14th May 1982, 11 year old me was strolling round the Silverstone paddock clutching a pen and the Motoring News. It was open at a half-page advert for the Pace Six Hours, a round of the FIA World Endurance championship. Every so often, my dad would point out a figure. ‘Go and ask for his autograph,’ was his simple instruction. Every person I assaulted that day was unfailingly charming, and obliged by scrawling their name on my paper. It was a fine day's autograph hunting, thanks to the good natures of Michele Alboreto, Hans Heyer, Jean Rondeau, Jurgen Lassig, Derek Bell, Ray Mallock, and a bloke called Mike Wilds.
I would never meet most of these legends again, although I
