There are so many, what I would call, “Tyrrell moments” in my life. It was a very gradual process. You have to remember that Dad started racing himself, before he moved up to run cars for John Cooper. Subsequently, he made the step to running F2 cars for Matra and then the huge step to Formula One cars for Matra, and this was all done from the same location—the “Woodyard”—a small bungalow, really. But we were brought up with it and so were accustomed to it. Certainly, I went to a lot of races in the ’60s and ’70s and I knew there was something special going on. At the time, we suspected that those days wouldn’t last forever but perhaps we didn’t appreciate just how short they would be. Certainly losing Francois (Cevert) was a big blow. I don’t think we appreciated what a big step it was for Dad going into Formula One, though looking at it in retrospect, well, it was enormous.
As far as the F1 team was concerned, there are a lot of big memories. We had such a good relationship with ELF and Francois Guiter. For six or seven years they supported us, and when the British Grand Prix was on, they would come over to our family home and we would all get together, and the same would happen when we went to France. It was very close knit. The same applied to the drivers. Francois bought himself an aircraft and he flew over and picked up my wife, Sandy, and I and our children and flew us down to the Isle of Wight for the day just to have some fun. I remember those things very well.
