RIP Murray

Last great memories with Murray Walker: the opening race of the “Grand Prix Masters” series at Kyalami in December 2004, that he commented live for the BBC with Derek Bell (at his right on the main picture).

On Saturday night, we dined together like the veterans we were, Jacques Laffite, Derek, Murray and myself, remembering the good old times of the Kyalami Ranch!

Later that night, Riccardo Patrese and Paul Owens, who had been his engineer at Chevron in F2, joined us… until late in the night, Murray telling us many stories and Derek recalling the 1970 Spa 1000 km in his yellow Ferrari 512S entered by the Écurie Francorchamps.

We also talked about Riccardo’s F1 debut at Shadow in 1978, marked by the terrible accident of Ronnie Peterson at Monza: Hunt was very severe towards Patrese, but must be said, James was not completely innocent in the drama…

Seven months later at Silverstone, Murray made us laugh by commenting the ‘performances’ of the drivers on a video game (picture below, with Johnny Herbert), imitating himself, full of ‘Murray-talk’, a great moment of passion and British humour! RIP Murray