Blame It On the Grid Girls

I was fifteen years karting, and ten years karting and car racing. I started with Mercedes Benz as a mechanic; I lived about 100 meters from their factory. In my time I learned to build many things, in my motor racing career this has helped me with a lot of technical parts. Beginning with karting, I built the engine cell, and chassis. All this helped me to develop cars I raced. When I was young, to race you had to have a license and you could only get this license when you were eighteen. In Holland, which is only 60 kilometers from my home, you could race at sixteen. So we started to race on a Sunday morning in Holland. In Holland I became two times champion in my first years, 1962 and 1963. When I started kart racing in Germany, I was with all the young guys who had no racing before. I was two-time champion already and won all my races in Germany. They must have thought I had more practice!

In the beginning, kart sport was very nice but all the people who came from the kart sport were now into the motor sport, like Keke Rosberg, and Ronnie Peterson; they made their names in karting and then they moved. Later in my career I went to Italy, to Lancia, I learned the Italian system, which is very good, but I liked being with friends at home. From the big people to the little people, you can have a lot of friends, I felt free to do what I wanted to do.