WHEN I DID my first book back in 1981, I said, ‘So far, I have expressed my life in my racing, and who I am will not come out until I’ve finished.’
So who am I? We all know about my racing, I was a Formula One World Champion, and while millions have had that dream, only 33 have pulled it off. I was the 18th to do so – the second Australian, and hopefully not the last.
But I am more than that. I have been both a good and an equally poor father, and I have been the same as a husband. I love my family, all of them.
Above all else though, aside from a few times of stress, I have always been able to sleep at night without fear or shame. I try to be a good person, I act with honour and I am honest, which is why I fire up if someone questions that.
Deep down though I am just a bloke who is as happy sitting in the corner at the bowls club having a beer with himself, as I am walking the paddock and talking car racing with people, or even attending the odd function in a dinner suit. Just the odd one, mind you.
I am 70 now and trying to slow down. The twins – Zara and Jack – are in their last years of school, but I would imagine education is not nearly done for them, so there is no freedom on the near horizon.
I have a few things I am working on in addition to the TV, which I really do enjoy. I am an ambassador for a few different products – Lexus cars, Ageless supplements – and I enjoy all of those in my own little way.
I am not the sort of person that could just stop and do nothing. I found that out on the tractor all those years ago – not that cutting hay is exactly doing nothing. I’m actually getting very close to perfecting drinking; I’ve been putting a lot of work into that and I’m nearly there.
I was grifting and grafting in the 1970s to make enough money to live and to invest in my career. With Brian I was buying and destroying racing cars and working on a dream. When I needed help from people, they weren’t there then. When I was successful and didn’t need it, they were everywhere.
I don’t know if it is any easier or harder today than when I was young. One thing I know is that there is no use sitting in a pub somewhere drinking another pint and lamenting what might have been.
Winning my World Championship was a ten-year exercise; I was not an overnight success. I was great with the mind games, I was able to read people and know exactly what to say. I didn’t write things down, and while my memory has never been that great for many things, it worked really well when I needed to remember the weakness of a competitor, or the trick I used to get through that bloody right-hander at Zandvoort.
My life has been an amazing journey with few regrets. I said earlier in the book, I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes as my father. I was not going to leave this earth without having given my all to get to the top.
As it turns out, I did get to the top. Hopefully this story will help inspire a young driver to make sure I am not Australia’s last world champion – but that is out of my hands.