Ken Hensley

Final practise in the morning and qualifying in the afternoon and I was ready!! But first I had to do the “work” that the magazine had brought me here to do. I was to interview three-time Formula 1 World Champion Niki Lauda for a feature called “Heroes of The 70’s”. Actually, Niki won the championship in 1975, 1977 and again in 1984 and most people will remember his horrible accident at the Nürburing in 1976 where he nearly died in the fire.

I prepared for and came to this moment as a fan and he received my questions patiently and gave me answers in much more detail than I had expected. He is a singe-minded man with an extremely low tolerance for what he perceives to be bullshit and in the end we all felt the process had been successful. He took time for pictures and the interview will be published soon…. It was a moment I will never forget and for which I will always be thankful.

Nor will I forget how the atmosphere changed when Bernie Ecclestone arrived. He is the undisputed “king” of F1 and it really was like royalty descending on us!! Cool!

But there was another surprise already!

I was introduced to Bernd Mayländer, one of the drivers of the safety car which is brought out to control the cars while accidents or debris or whatever are cleaned up and while it would be dangerous for them to continue racing. There are two safety cars and two medical cars provided by Mercedes-Benz and they are highly tuned, specially equipped, super powerful versions of one of Mercedes top-of-the line road cars.

I sat in the car and Bernd invited me to start the motor which I did and it scared me half to death. Just to feel that much power (600 hp) was shocking. Bernd explained to me that, when they are on the track, they must run almost flat-out (around 280 kph/170 mph) so that the race cars behind them don’t lose tyre temperatures, tyre pressures and hydraulic pressures.

In the Williams centre, one of the ladies from Allianz described a ride in the safety car as “terrifying”. Bernd called it “spectacular but not particularly fast”! Oh well…..

For morning practice Peter and I first went to Parabolica, a frighteningly fast right-hand curve but the cars were just a blur there so we moved to Ascari which is a very scary piece of track. The cars come into the left turn very fast and it is considered one of the more dangerous parts of the circuit which was modified after Alberto Ascari died there in a testing accident for Ferrari. We arrived there less than 2 minutes after Kimi Raikkonen had his big accident so it’s still a bit frightening….

We had lunch at Red Bull while there was some legal commotion in the pits. It is well known that the Italian police know how to get into a circuit for nothing!

I have to say that the staff in these centres are incredibly efficient, professional and polite, even under extreme pressure. The service and attention were easily equivalent to what I know (or knew) is received in a first class restaurant. And the food was good too. Red Bull brings a new chef every month!! However I would suggest a change of DJ!!

Eventually we made it back to the hotel where we had to pack, ready to check out the next morning. Traffic on race day would be really horrible so we wanted to get a jump start on it and we had already plotted a way out of the circuit after the race that would avoid traffic and enable me to get to Malpensa in time for my flight to Barcelona.