Breakfast with ... Tetsuo Tsugawa

piquet_1990_england_01_phc

Which driver did you find most interesting to work with?

Most interesting was of course Nelson [Piquet]. When people are talking about him they are talking about a completely different guy. Because in reality, he is a generous and very funny guy but very straightforward and inside he is very strong mentally. Not superficial. He has a very strong heart, like a lion heart. Same as [Ayrton] Senna, I worked with Senna also and he was the same, completely different in reality compared to the person he showed to the outside world. I worked with Ayrton at Toleman for the first four races of ’84. These champions put on a “champions style” for the outside world. Inside they have a lot of weak points but they cover them up. I think now [Lewis] Hamilton or other champions are all the same.

But this time, my right foot did not move and it got caught under the jack and broke my big toe.

Why did you decide to stop working as a mechanic?

Age first of all. I was forty years old. When I re-joined Benetton I was 41. In Monaco that year was when I realised I was getting too old. It happened in qualifying and this was a time when only a few people were working on each car, maybe three or four. So, qualifying tyre changes were very busy, so last minute. Nelson was coming in to the pits, I was ready on the front jack, ready to lift the front of the car up, but Nelson could not stop the car and overshot the mark by 15 centimetres. I could see it coming and it was something that had happened a million times before and my right foot had always come off easily to move out the way. But this time, my right foot did not move and it got caught under the jack and broke my big toe. I carried on doing my job but I decided at that point I had got too slow. I had never made any mistake during my life as a mechanic and I thought what if that had happened during the race. I didn’t want that to happen.

So you carried on as a journalist and broadcaster instead, but living in the English countryside.

I love Formula 1 and that’s why I stay in England. If there was no F1 in England I would go back to Japan. When I walk around the paddock, everyone knows me, people talk to me from each team and that is very nice. I don’t want to go back, but maybe when I retire I will go back to Japan, but this F1 colony is my colony.

Everyone loves Suzuka, what is your best memory of the Japanese GP?

1989 and ’90. Sandro (Nannini, Piquet’s team-mate at Benetton who had a helicopter crash just before this race) had badly damaged his arm, and then [Roberto] Moreno came to replace him. Moreno and Nelson were very close, like brothers and they finished one-two. It was my last-but-one race, my last one came next in Adelaide when Nelson won again – my last race. For me, in my mind, Suzuka and Adelaide was like one race and special for me. That Adelaide GP was also the 500^th Grand Prix in the history of the sport. Nelson won and gave me a bottle of special Port wine, which the Australian GP organisers had produced to commemorate the occasion and the winner got the number 1 bottle and he gave it to me.