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I GREW UP OUTSIDE RACING, but I watched people such as Count Wolfgang von Trips, a few of the famous Italians and, of course, the Argentinian wonder man, Fangio. I admired them – although admiring is not the same as hanging onto their personalities and saying how glorious they are.

Later, when I’d got into racing, it was people such as Jackie Stewart who I really got to know. I thought Jackie was – and is – one of the greatest for the simple reason that he’s a very modest man. He was very focused on what he was doing. I mean, he won three championships – that was fantastic.

I drove against him in Formula 1 a little bit in the beginning. He was in a different league from me, in different cars. We also drove together with the Ford Capri at the Nürburgring, and he was very quick. He was a good driver, and he said to me: “You know, my car is a bit funny. Can you drive mine and I drive yours just to see the difference?”

So we did, and it was very quick, but I was a bit quicker than him still in his car. So he jumped out of his car and he said: “It must be me then!” and he tried harder and he went quicker – but I still had him a little bit.

It was most remarkable how this man jumped into any car and was very quick, whatever he drove. I really felt “that’s a great man!”. He was not glamour seeking in motor racing. He was just delivering, you know, and that was just wonderful. And, of course, he had Helen, his lovely wife, who I liked a lot.

There were quite a few things that I found remarkable. The way he talked about setting up a car at Monaco, for example. Jackie said that it’s better to drive only with a fourspeed gearbox set-up at Monaco, because every time you change gear you lose a little bit of time. Not so much, but it adds up. He said if you use the torque, it’s always smoother applying the power; going through the corner early on the power and you could stay on it, you don’t have to back off, and things like that.

When you look at the cars in those days, they were quite high off the ground, but when you look at the times Jackie was doing at Monaco, they are remarkably close to today’s times.

Of course, there were other guys I admired, too. It was a privilege to drive with them and against them, and to see how good they were and how they handled their lives and how focused they were. It was a good time to get into racing, because it was getting a little bit safer –and that was really because of the various attempts of Jackie Stewart and some other guys.

ABOVE “That’s a great man!” Mass and Stewart – here at Monza in 1973 – had a great friendship on and off track.

We all wanted to survive. There were some, such as Jacky Ickx, who didn’t like it [the safety campaigns]. He felt that you race because it’s dangerous, because it shapes your character – and if you take all this out of racing, then racing is losing something. That was something I could follow – but on the other hand, we lost too many guys. We lost good drivers, and we lost them for safety reasons.

Jackie, you know, he sort of put his finger into the open wounds of tracks and cars and things like that. It was really remarkable. He was very outspoken and he was very intelligent, the way he put it to people – and they always associated him as a spokesman for all that. Simply wonderful!