FOR MANY YEARS I went home to Australia for the European winter via the Macau Grand Prix. Macau is a bit like Monaco, in that it is a stupid place for a car race. It was challenging, that’s for sure. When you have a hairpin bend that is so tight and narrow you nearly have to do a three-point turn you know it is getting silly.
But the big difference was the cars and the people. This grand prix, I think, has pretty much always been run in the slower and smaller Formula Pacific and then Formula Three cars that I essentially cut my teeth on in the UK. It was run by Teddy Yip, a sensational bloke and a multi-squillionaire from Hong Kong, and he was the one who had me racing there.
So he started paying for my flights home as long as I would run the race, which I did for many years. I never won it, but I did get pole a couple of times and was leading when the car died on me.
I think it was in 1978 when Bob Harper, a big Ford dealer in Macau and China, had three Chevrons in his team for Keke Rosberg, Derek Daly and Riccardo Patrese. The cars were all lined up in the pits and there was a row of new tyres on the wall behind them. When I saw the cars lined up and those tyres, it shifted my mindset. I wasn’t sure we had any new tyres and I was pretty certain we didn’t have any qualifying tyres.
So I asked Sid Taylor, who was looking after the team, if we had any. He said, ‘My word, we have,’ and showed me a set or two of purple-tinged tyres. When tyres have been used, they get that look, so I knew straight away.
‘Sid, they’ve been used.’ He said, ‘They’re fucking good these. Don’t worry about them. They were on pole last year.’
‘Are you serious?’
I went and grabbed Teddy. ‘Teddy, come here a second. I want to show you something. These are my qualifiers.’ Then we jumped in the car and went to look at Bob’s, and because Bob Harper was his nemesis I knew where this was going. I showed him the three brand new Chevrons all lined up and all the brand new tyres.
Of course, being Asian, for Teddy that was a major loss of face and Sid was in a bit of trouble. He went, ‘I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking cut your balls out. I’ll have you floating in the harbour.’ Teddy, settle down. Then he got his head into what we needed. ‘Right. I want nine sets of qualifiers …’ I said, ‘Teddy, we only really need one or two.’ ‘No, no, we need six.’
In the end, we had a wall of tyres flown in overnight from England. We used to prepare the cars in Teddy’s garage, which was on the track but not near the pits. If we didn’t get the equipment out each day before they put the Armco up in front of the garage, we had some issues.
Down in the pits I looked up the next morning and there was an army of blokes headed our way, each carrying a tyre. There must have been about 50 of them, so I’ve gone from one set of purple qualifiers to about 600 tyres overnight. What am I going to do now? Thank Christ, I put it on pole after that. I led the first lap, but a combination of a fuel cut-out and concrete dust in the track ended my day early.
We had a bit of a party in my room at the hotel that night. We all used to stay at the Hotel Lisboa and we all got a bit carried away, as you do when you’re that age. It was loud. There was a bang on the wall from next door. It made no difference; we abused them and kept going.
Then Jones’ Law came into it. At the very moment I stepped out of my room, the bloke that was banging on the wall stepped out of his room. It was Dan Gurney, who’d tried to get me to drive his cars in the States. Oops. ‘Hi, Mr Gurney. I’m sorry if Keke made all those noises last night.’ Dan, by the way, is responsible for drivers spraying champagne on the podium – he did it after winning Le Mans in 1967, and everyone has done it since. Well, I was an exception, which I’ll come to later.
I loved racing in Macau for all the reasons I hated Monaco. To this day, I still love Hong Kong and pretty much everywhere in Asia. I like the food and I like the people and the frenetic atmosphere and pace. You get the hydrofoil over to Macau from Hong Kong, which Teddy owned in partnership with Stanley Ho, who you know is not exactly a pauper.
Then you’d check into the Hotel Lisboa, which I think Teddy half owned as well, so you got a fantastic room. We’d go downstairs and there’d be this pretty ordinary dining room with Formica tables and everything, but the food was just absolutely exquisite. You know, you’d just have a ball.
Teddy used to have a garden party on the Thursday night. He had a sentry post outside his house with a guard in it, to keep the riff raff out. He was mad, but he was just an absolute character. It was just a great weekend. Then on Sunday night, every year there’d be a major party going on somewhere, often in my room. That’s when I think Beverley made the mistake of flying straight to Australia and not coming to Macau. She shouldn’t have left me by myself in Macau; she’s got no one to blame but herself.
On the Monday, you’d inevitably get up with a shocking hangover and I’d start winding my way back to Australia, where I’d stay for as long as I could … maybe three or four weeks.
Frank eventually asked me to stop running in Macau, so 1978 was my last one. Frank figured he was investing a lot of money in me and he didn’t want me taking unnecessary risks. So over time, all the extras disappeared from my schedule.
I respected Frank for his approach – and it worked both ways. After a major crash in testing in 1980, we worked together on getting a test driver rather than risk me. I was, of course, more interested in spending time watching Christian grow up, while Frank was totally focused on me as an investment. Now I’m not saying the other bloke was expendable, but why pay a bloke a million dollars and send him out to test something? Better him than me.