Lill-Lövis "Greatest Race"

Hittade detta på www.autosport.com

I think the race I'd choose would have to be the Sebring 12 Hours, at the beginning of 1984. I wasn't really meant to do the race, but I got called in at the last minute to drive for Reinhold Joest in a Porsche 935. It was me, Hans Heyer and this Colombian guy called Mauricio de Narvaez, who was paying for the race.

Hans and I were going to leave Frankfurt airport on the Thursday. We boarded the plane and sat down, and there was an hour's delay. Then there was another hour and another hour, and eventually we had to get off the plane again, and we still didn't know the story. We sat down and waited in the terminal for an hour, and then two hours...

To cut a long story short, I think we were 30 hours delayed leaving. Normally it was a direct flight to Miami from Frankfurt, but we had to go to Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam to New York. We had to stay overnight in New York because we arrived there so late.

In the morning when we left the hotel. I pulled my back while taking my bags down to the lift. I couldn't even stand up, I was like a cripple! Eventually we arrived in Tampa, and we drove from there and arrived at the track on the morning of the race.

We were supposed to sign-on, and I went along with my licence, but nobody had a clue who I was, because I wasn't even entered. They said "Don't worry, just get on with it!" We asked if there was any chance to go around the track in a road car or something, just to see the circuit. But there was no way they would let us do that, because the race was due to start in a couple of hours, at about 11 am.

I'd never seen Sebring, and I didn't have a clue which way the track went. I'd never driven a 935 before; the only sportscar I'd raced was the 956, which was a pretty sophisticated machine compared to the 935. De Narvaez had obviously qualified the car, because he was the only one who'd been there, and it was terrible, we were desperately far back on the grid.

So he started the race, and gradually we began to work our way up. And then I did my first stint. It was about 2pm, and it was tropical heat, hot like you can't believe. I got in this car, out of the pitlane, never even sat in the damn thing before. There were cars passing me left, right, centre, because first I had to find out which way the track went. And at Sebring you've got this 200 metre wide track, and it takes you a long time to find the line.

The 935 really was the most difficult car I've ever had to drive, because it had this locked diff. You had these fast corners, and when you lifted completely and were turning right it would just go to the left. You always had to have a little bit of throttle on, but nobody had told me before I went out...

I was really fighting with this thing, and of course you get more and more tired when you don't get on with the car. So they literally had to lift me out of the damn thing after my first hour.

So the other guys did one stint each again, and I was able to sit down and think about it. You can then start understanding what's going on, what you're doing wrong, you think about braking and so on.

The next stint it got better and better, and I got into the groove and was lapping at the same speed as the leaders. We were really starting to pick off cars, and pick up more places. A few people had problems, so we got up to fifth or fourth. And by then they'd dropped de Narvaez, so it was just me and Heyer alternating for a while.

The windscreen had probably been in the car for the last 10 seasons; honestly, you couldn't see a damn thing. It was a nightmare, especially on the long back straight when the sun was going down. You had to look out of the side window to see where the track was, and when you saw the 300 board you had to hit the brakes. If someone had been in front of you, you would have piled in so hard!

In the last three hours we were really going. It was dark then, and I really got stuck into the groove. I stayed in the car, just stopping for fuel and going out again, picking up more places. It was just one of those days when it was like walking on the pavement to drive at 110%.

And then in the last hour I took the lead from Stuck in the Coca Cola car, and eventually we won the race. That was great, it was nice to win after so much trauma before it.

Both the other drivers were already upon the rostrum, waving and smiling, and I came running up from the car. And they wouldn't let me on the rostrum because they didn't know who I was! They said "In the programme it says Heyer and de Narvaez, who the hell is Johansson?" I had to fight my way up, but I got there in the end.

I never drove a 935 again. That was enough...