Video: Ramirez lifts the lid on McLaren's golden era

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Former McLaren team manager Jo Ramirez has been talking about his time working for one of Formula 1's most iconic and successful teams.

The Mexican was employed at Woking from 1983 until 2001. He worked shoulder to shoulder with some of the marque's greatest talents including Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, David Coulthard and Mika Häkkinen.

In this video shared by the McLaren F1 team, Ramirez explores that famous combative relationship between Prost and Senna when they were team mates.

His unrivalled experience and in-depth knowledge of Formula 1 means that Ramirez is in the perfect position to explore their differing styles and temperaments. Remarkably, he was able to stay on friendly terms with both drivers.

"I had a good relation between the two," Ramirez recalled. "When the situation started going more hard, I used to crack jokes between them. Relax them, and cut down their stress.

"Ron [Dennis] used to be the hard man," he said. "They signed the contracts with Ron.

"I helped them to get everything they needed. The favourite helmets, uniforms, travel arrangements. I made a lot of favours for them and they made a lot of favours for me."

During his career in the sport, Ramirez was involved in 479 Grands Prix, with 116 victories. As McLaren team co-ordinator he participated in seven constructors championships and nine successful drivers titles.

As well as McLaren, he also worked for Ferrari, AAR Eagle, Tyrrell, Fittipaldi-Copersucar, Shadow, ATS and Theodore Racing.

Since retiring from the sport, Ramirez has published his autobiography and currently writes a Formula 1 column for the Mexican newspaper Reforma.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.