1943-50. Alastair Caldwell is born in England and at the age of seven moves with his family to New Zealand.

I was born in 1943 in England. I’m a Yorkshire lad, my father was Scottish, my mother was English. He was a vet before volunteering for the army and joined as an officer. Sheffield, our hometown, was bombed and my father decided to join the War. After the war was over he spent two years running Hamburg with the army of occupation; getting all the systems going and holding local elections to restore the Government and establish a democracy. When he returned to England he discovered the infrastructure was worse than it was in Hamburg.

My father became disillusioned with England and its progress, so he decided to emmigrate. He looked for places where vets were needed; vets were heavily in demand back in those days. He could have gone anywhere but fortunately for us he chose New Zealand for various reasons (one of those was trout fishing because he loved to trout fish). We went to New Zealand by boat and I had my seventh birthday on the crossing.

I was brought up in New Zealand and have a New Zealand passport so I considered myself a New Zealander. Having more than one passport is very handy when travelling all over the world because there’s some countries that don’t like the English and love New Zealanders and others that don’t like New Zealanders and love the English. You can get round VISA problems by using the alternative passport in some countries. You can’t have too many passports. It’s like driving licences, you can’t have too many driving licences.

• 1943 Alastair's early years
• 1955 Licence to drive
• 1957 Alastair's High School years
• 1959 Evading the police
• 1960 Becoming a mechanic
• 1966 The Tasman series
• 1966 Leaving New Zealand
• 1967 Joining McLaren
• 1967 CanAm Door Catches
• 1967 Monza
• 1968 South Africa
• 1968 CanAm
• 1969 Driving the Formula 1 Cars
• 1973 Fittipaldi joins McLaren
• 1973 McLaren Team manager
• 1974 Montezemolo
• 1975 Hunt replaces Fittipaldi
• 1975 Hunt gets paid little
• 1976 Inventing the Air-Starter
• 1976 Six-speed Gear Boxes
• 1976 Misbehaving in Canada
• 1976 Japan
• 1977 Adidas Uniforms
• 1977 Changing Tyres
• 1977 Leaving McLaren
• 1979 Nelson Piquet
• 1980 Skirts on Formula 1 Cars
• 1981 Leaving Formula 1
• 1981 Making Lists
• 1981 Signing on
• 1981 Creating Space Station
• 1991 Highland Fling
• 1991 Classic Marathon
• 1992 Getting the Austin A35
• 1992 El Salvador
• 1993 Carerra Panamerica
• 1993 Centre of attention
• 1993 Nicest car in rally
• 1993 LeJog
• 2000 London to Sydney
• 2000 Porsche Racing
• 2000 Porsche Crashing
• 2001 Ferrari
• 2001 Inca Trail
• 2004 Berlin - Moscow - Berlin
• 2005 World Cup Rally
• 2007 Norway
• 2008 Liège-Brescia-Liège
• 2008 An Icelandic Odyssey
• 2008 North & West Africa
• 2009 West Coast America
• 2009 London to Casablanca
• 2010 New Zealand Festival of motor racing