McLaren introduces the air-starter to their cars and Brabham races to catch up with the technology.

I was intimately involved with the making of the cars. I helped to design them and I helped to prepare them. I also made changes to them. I was the inventor of the air-starter. Nearly all race cars these days have an air-starter on them; not an electrical starter. The little air motor: this was my invention.

I used to spend many hours at McLaren not doing anything physically, because I’d got beyond that as the boss. But instead of going to the hotel and getting pissed or going home to the family as all the other managers were doing I stayed at work. This meant that, when there were decisions to make about anything, I was there to do it.

During the day I was making decisions so night time was the only time I could do any paperwork. I used to stay at work, do my paperwork, wander round, and giving advice. And then I started to play. One of the things I knew was that we had a big battery and a big starter motor that weighed a lot and didn’t work efficiently. We had air drills in the factory used to drill holes. They’d make a loud ‘whoop whoop’ noise. We had air all the time: compressed nitrogen bottles that allowed us to change the wheels quickly. We took them all over the world – a fantastic source of energy packed inside a bottle. Wheel off, ‘whoop’, wheel back on! And I thought, we must be able to start the engine with this.

So I fooled around and I ended up with a tiny air motor, just a few ounces. I put one on the car, fiddled with it... and it worked. You had to be able to start the car twice in the pit road and I put this little tank on and it started without any problems. In fact it started it far better than the battery starter because it drains the battery.

I invented the air-starter and, stupidly, I didn’t quit. I should have left McLaren and become an air-starter manufacturer because I could have sold hundreds of thousands of them and I’d be a multi-millionaire. We went to the first race with them on and I’ll always remember Teddy coming downstairs and he said: ‘Oh boy we’ve just done a deal. We just had Bernie on the phone’ who had his own race team with Brabham‘and he wants to buy four air-starters and he’s willing to pay £10,000 for them.’ Now £10,000 was what I earned a year but I said no way. I told Teddy to ring him back and tell him he can’t have them. The whole idea with Grand Prix teams is if you bring in a new invention, they all have to copy it and it takes them time and energy. If we sell them to them, it will be easier for them to catch up.

Teddy had to go upstairs and tell Bernie we couldn’t do it because we’d changed our minds; that we hadn’t got the time. When I went to work for Brabham I spoke to them about this and he told me how they couldn’t buy them so they had to spend a week or two doing nothing else but air-starters because Bernie wanted them in his car for the next race. They were less effective in the next race because they’d spent so much time just doing the air-starter. Within months all the Grand Prix teams had air-starters.

• 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