1960s cars had no wings and small tyres and were so incredibly fast.

I got to drive the cars myself a lot, I used to have a lot of fun with them. For some reason over the years it became almost unquestionable that, when we got to the race track, we would get the cars out of the truck and I drive them to where they needed to be. I would go round two or three times in the race car to get it warm, check for any leaks, then park her up again and say: ’Yeah she’s good.’ One year we had a garage that was on the far side of Johannesburg, it was like being on the wrong side of London. We’d have to get up to collect it, drive through town stopping at the traffic lights, then out through the other side into the countryside, and onto the race tracks. It was about twenty miles driving as fast as we could go in Formula 1 cars.

Spa in Belgium was a classic. Spa was a big race track and we used to have a garage at the bottom and the pits were up the top. In the morning we started the cars up and drove half way around the track to the pits. After practice we drove them around the other half back towards the garage, the cars were red hot and raring to go. There was a big straight called the Masta straight, which had a railway line right across the middle. The chief mechanic who worked on Denny’s car when I worked on Bruce's’ car used to climb in and say: ‘What do you reckon tonight, 9000?’ So we got onto the straight at 9000rpm with the car was screaming at top pitch and we’d get back and look at the charts and say: ‘Ooh 160mph.’ The next night he’d say: ‘9500?’ and I’d say: ‘Yeah, 9500.’ We’d charge across this railway line and say: ‘Ooh 180mph.’

We got up to 190mph, the cars were very fast in those days.

• 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
• 1982 Making Lists
• 1982 Signing on
• 1982 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
• 2010 New Zealand Big Sky Adventure