Oriental Surprise

My story of winning the 1981 Macau Grand Prix actually began two weeks before, when I first raced the Hayashi 220P-Toyota at Suzuka, Japan. I had never seen the car before and really never heard of Hayashi, a wholesale wheel manufacturer. My involvement came through Vern Fotheringham who was their American distributor.

It was wet for practice and right off I realized the car needed some work. As the team was Japanese they couldn’t really understand me when I was trying to get them to change the car, and Yamanashi, the team manager, told me through our interpreter that he didn’t want me to change it because I didn’t know the track yet, I said I didn’t need to know the track to know the car wasn’t working very well, I could learn the track and set the car up at the same time.