This past Sunday, I was able to attend the Autosport Awards for the first time. I have been reading Autosport magazine since my early days of racing in England and have always followed the awards. I was hoping to have the opportunity to go in person and thanks to the invitation of David Richards and Tony Schulp at Prodrive, I was able to go as part of the team.

 

 

 

The ceremony is held in London, one of my favorite cities despite the cold that day, and it was a very nice and very elegant event. It brings together so many big names in the sport and I was able to see a lot of old friends and meet some new people like Jenson Button through a mutual friend. For me, it was interesting to see a lot of the drivers in Formula One that I have followed from across the ocean. Even though I was in other formulas like Indy cars or sports cars, we still have a lot of the same things in common.

 

The program for the evening is structured so that you do have time to socialize. I was able to meet Gordon Murray, a top Formula One designer and designer of the McLaren F1 GTR road/Le Mans car and introduce myself to Kumui Kobayashi, who will be Sergio Perez’s teammate next year. My good friend Jo Ramirez was there and I was able to spend time with some friends that I haven’t seen in awhile like Pedro de la Rosa, Dario and Marino Franchitti, driver manager Julian Jacobi (he managed Ayrton Senna and many of the top drivers today), Adam Cooper and Tony Dodgins who write for Autosport and Michael Brown who was a photographer during my Champ Car days.

 

Actually, there were several people I ran into that I knew from my days in Champ Car like Rocky – Guillaume Rocquelin –  who is Sebastian Vettel’s engineer. I also visited with Christian Horner, who I met when Sergio was driving for his team in GP2, and congratulated him on his championship and I had the opportunity to congratulate Adrian Newey as well.

 

It was a first class event, very well done, and it was nice to be a part of the comradeship of the auto racing industry that this award show brings together. These awards have been going for many years and they really work hard to keep this tradition. I wish we had something like this in Mexico. We have it to a point, like when I was inducted into the Hall of Fame a few months ago, but not like this and I think that is what makes the racing industry in England so strong. It would be nice to see something similar to the Autosport Awards develop in Mexico especially with all the rising talent we have now.

 

I have to thank David Richards and Tony Schulp for the invitation and for having me as part of the Aston Martin team. It was a great evening which not only brought back a lot of good memories but created many more.