Fittipaldi leaves McLaren for his brother's Copersucar-sponsored Fittipaldi Automotive team.

At the end of ’75 Fittipaldi kept warning Phillip Morris that he had another job. They didn’t believe him. Formula 1 is quite simple really because there’s twelve teams with two drivers and by half way through the year everyone knows what half of them are doing and by three-quarters of the way through the year everyone knows what most of them are doing and by the end of the year everyone knows what all of them are doing. By the end of ’75 Formula 1 was locked up solid and Fittipaldi was driving for McLaren but he kept asking for more and more money. McLaren, through Phillip Morris, kept telling him no.

He kept saying to me: ‘Alastair you must tell them that I have a negotiating position,’ and I said: ‘Well, I don’t think you do: who can you drive for?’ What I didn’t know was that he was building his own race cars in Brazil. On Christmas day I went in to clear the old Telex machine (the predecessor to the Fax machine) and there was a press release: ‘Fittipaldi announces that he will be driving for Copersucar.’ And then another telex came through saying: ‘I quit.’

So then I received a phone call from James Hunt: ‘Hello, I think I’m your new Grand Prix driver.’ I said: ‘I guess you are.’ The same week Mrs Hesketh, who provided the money for the Hesketh team, decided her boy had wasted enough money on his racing team and stopped financing it. Hunt was out of a drive, and we were out of a driver. The pairing was inevitable.

• 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