I had a lot of time to think, and that is not good for your mind. And when it actually happened, it was not so much a celebration but the relief. It was an exorcism anxiety. After each race there is a procedure in which you get taken off to the podium and the TV interviews.

If I am pushed I will push back, that is the way I am. I am very British. We don't like to be pushed around. When the chips are down we might have to step into grey areas.

After you've had Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna as team-mates you don't give a **** who the next bloke is

To be honest, I think for part of my late teens my character didn't really develop very much. I was in a state of cold storage.

The British tend to shy away from the spotlight. We don't like being singled out in any way, and I think that is something which is important for me to learn to do.

The sport would not survive today if drivers were being killed at the rate they were in the 1960s and '70s. It would have been taken off the air. It is beamed into people's living rooms on Sunday afternoons, with children watching.

The problem comes when you say that danger is part of the equation. Then you don't do any more work on safety. That shouldn't happen.