Dr. Annie Gray

And Ayrton was incredibly good at doing that and getting people on side.

I recall it being a little bit overcast.

There was talk of rain, we weren't sure how much.

Then of course, come race time, it was torrential and it didn't ease off.

It got worse and worse and worse.

The conditions in Estoril on the 21st of April were probably some of the worst I've witnessed.

There were floods across the circuit.

The biggest challenge of those conditions is just the pure lack of grip.

And you don't know from lap to lap when it's raining how much water is going to be on the track, even the next lap around, because there's just so much water.

So the whole thing is a challenge.

It was a masterful piece of driving and Ayrton had an ability to use half of his capability, half of his capacity to drive a racing car faster than anybody else, which left him with another 50% of his capacity to be aware of what was going on around him and being able to just log all that information that was in front of him, where the damp patches were, where the rivers were,

where some of the other guys had gone off, he would have been logging all of that lap by lap just to give him the edge that he regularly had.

And himself said, you know, there were two or three times when he had such a close-run thing for actually leaving the track but managed to keep it all together.

It was a massive excitement when he finally crossed the line and wheel-jumped over to pit wall and ran out onto the track.

He's always maintained that that was the most difficult Grand Prix he ever won because there were no driver raids.

It was driver, steering wheel, gear shift and clutch brake and accelerator races.

His ability to concentrate 100% and just be aware of what the grip was the lap before, if he was a foot away from the kerb on the previous lap and felt there might have been a little bit more grip if he'd been right next to the kerb on the current one.

He'd be looking and looking for all those little bits of information to keep him going and keep him going quick and fast.

He never stopped concentrating for a single minute, not till he crossed the line.

If he'd started at the back, he would have probably still won, provided no one took him out on the way through.