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want to watch the news reports confirming Senna’s death with me. I didn’t go to school that day; Dad granted me a rare day off. Next day even friends who didn’t follow motor racing tip-toed around me because even they knew whathad happened and what it meant to me. It was a nightmare: Ayrton Senna wasn’t supposed to be killed in a racing car, he was invincible. I was shattered.
    But ultimately neither Senna’s death nor my own Oran Park mishap affected my determination to keep racing. F1 and Ayrton Senna were a long way away from where I was, after all. But by the time we went to Adelaide we were really at the Last Chance Saloon. If we got blown away in these races, with no results to speak of and no cash, we would probably have to pull the pin on the whole thing. But I fell in love with the street track straightaway, and we were quick the whole weekend.
    So much so that we were on the front row alongside that year’s champion, Steven Richards – and then the bloody battery failed. Once I got going I drove through the whole field on the formation lap to take up my position, which you are not supposed to do. The stewards black-flagged me – the sign that a driver has been disqualified. I was livid, but all I could do was complete the first part of the race and then dutifully pull in. We returned to Queanbeyan spitting chips, but happy that our first crack at Adelaide had gone well despite that final disappointment.

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Wingless Wonders: 1995–96
    T HE END OF 1994 WAS A CROSSROADS FOR D AD . H E HAD TO decide whether to put up the money for us to go round again or not. In that first year he had funded me himself and he couldn’t commit to another year without finding some sponsorship support and seeing some results.
    At the first round of the 1994 Australian Formula Ford Championship at Amaroo Park in Sydney in February, everyone – Dad and me included – was being introduced to the category’s new media and PR officer.
    I remember saying to her, ‘You must be important, then!’
    Little did I realise just how important Ann Neal was going to become, not only in my racing career, but in my life. She thought I was a bit of a smart-arse when we first met. ‘But I liked how bold and cheeky he was,’ she says, ‘and how mature he seemed. When I asked someone how old hewas, I was shocked when they said 17 – he was confident beyond his years.’
    Ann was born in England; she got into motor-sport journalism by writing for a magazine and local newspapers about oval racing. She took a passing interest in the exploits of Derek Warwick, whom she’d seen in Superstox racing on the ovals and who became one of the few drivers to graduate from there to car racing. When Ann met Derek at a function years later she was introduced to his brother Paul, who was 10 at the time. Paul wanted to emulate his big brother and when he moved up to Formula Ford, she followed, handling his press and PR work. One thing led to another: she was introduced to Mike Thompson, the founder of Quest Formula Ford cars, who asked her to look after the media for a young driver, Johnny Herbert, in 1986. Johnny had just won the prestigious Formula Ford Festival.
    Ann married Australian Rod Barrett in November ’87. He had gone to the UK to seek his own fame and fortune as a saloon-car driver and was working at the famous Jim Russell School for up-and-coming racing drivers. Rod lived at Carlton House in Attleborough in Norfolk, a bed-and-breakfast that was home away from home for many young international racing drivers. Every young Aussie was beating a path to their door at that time too, guys like Paul Stokell, Russell Ingall – they always had a nucleus of Australians around them. After they married they bought a house in Kent and Rod became Media Director at Brands Hatch. Ann was providing copy for all the Brands Hatch programs, which meant four race circuits in the group as a whole, and was part of the press team at the British GrandPrix when it