McLaren begin wearing smart uniforms for the races. Pictured here in red adidas, the whole traveling Grand Prix team is dressed to impress.

That’s Teddy Mayer in the front, who was the owner of the team. He was pushed out by Phillip Morris and Ron Dennis when I left. That’s me with the headphones on.

We were all wearing red Adidas trainers: I introduced this, it was one of the things I did; the smart uniform. McLaren was one of the only teams that wore smart uniform for years. The idea came from American, guys like Tyler Alexander had been doing it with their teams for a while. We went to the British Grand Prix and we had white trousers and yellow shirts and people took the piss out of us. All the other teams went: “Eurgh, nancies,” because they wore ragged clothes, dirty overalls and we had these smart outfits, which were made by the Bowler Shirt Uniform company in Los Angeles.

The shirts were horrible because they were rough cotton and by the end of the weekend your neck was red raw. But McLaren's were the introducers of good-looking cars and good-looking teams. Philip Morris was very keen on this so as time went by we were always the leaders in this innovation of looking good.

One of the ideas was to wear trainers and then, because the trainers got dirty, on Sunday morning he had a new set of trainers delivered for everybody. At 10 o’clock the guys all had to go into the truck and have their new trainers and clean uniforms put on, which he had cleaned. They had new shirts, new trousers and new trainers. And the cars were kept smart and the truck was kept smart and we had the best trucks and we had the best cars and we had the best girls. We had the best of everything.

• 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