The accident at Morecambe had been pretty frightening, but this was worse. I was actually paralysed for a few hours and the fear you experience when you cannot feel your arms and legs is truly shocking. I looked at the X-rays of the broken vertebrae and shuddered. The doctors had very serious expressions on their faces as they told me that I was lucky not to have permanent paralysis.
Rosanne went back to Birmingham, because she had to go to work the next day. I think that the shock hit her quite badly. She was tired and despondent. We had been burning the candle at both ends to support ourselves and now we were left wondering whether it was all worth it.
I hated being so far away from her and the rest of my family. The hospital was in Kent, over 200 miles away from my home. I felt isolated and depressed. I couldnât wait to get out of there and get home. After a few days, I tried sitting up and the following day I told one of the nurses that the doctor had said I could walk to the toilet if I felt strong enough. He hadnât said anything of the sort, of course, but I wanted to speed up my release from the hospital. The short walk to the toilet and back took nearly an hour. I was roasted by the doctor when he found out. He said that I should be flat on my back for several months, not walking around. Didnât I understand how serious an injury I had?
The walk to the toilet had been like rolling in broken glass, but it gave me the confidence to discharge myself, much to the dismay of the specialists. Iâd had enough of lying around in the doldrums, I wanted to get going again. I was in a position to win the Formula Ford Championship and I couldnât do it from a hospital bed.
Back home again, things didnât look too bright. With me having quit my job a few weeks before, we had only Rosanneâs salary to live on. The situation only served to harden our resolve. The accident had been a setback for sure, but we were not going to let it get in the way of our objective. As the weeks passed I took longer and longer walks every day and gradually my neck began to feel better. Seven weeks after the accident I was back in a racing car.
I had missed a few rounds of the championship and had dropped a few points behind the leaders, but I managed to pick up the pace when I returned and soon began winning again, although in my first race back I had a bit of a scare. On the second lap I took off over the back of another car and flew through the air for a short distance. Luckily I got away with it.
As the season wound to a close I was back in contention for the title. My main rivals were Trevor van Rooyen and Chico Serra, the much fancied new Brazilian driver. Both had well-funded teams and plenty of equipment. Van Rooyen always seemed to have a few more horsepower than the rest of us and although everyone suspected that he had something special in his engine we could never prove it. Before the last race at Thruxton, which would decide who was champion, John Thornburn asked the stewards to announce that they would seal the engines of the top four finishers after the race and take them away to be checked. They agreed.
To win the championship I needed to get pole position, win the race and get the extra point for fastest lap. It was a tall order. Luckily van Rooyen didnât seem to have any advantage on the straights that day and through qualifying and the race I was able to pick off my objectives one by one. I started from pole. It was a very close race, but my determination saw me to victory and I became 1977 Formula Ford Champion.
It was hard to believe that only a few months before I had been flat on my back with doctors giving me little chance of racing again that season. It was not the first adversity I had encountered in my racing career and it certainly wouldnât be the last, but I had overcome it. I had set myself an objective and achieved it, which was immensely satisfying. In all I had competed in 42 races that year and won 33 of them. I felt that I had proved something to the people in the business who were watching. Rosanne and I allowed ourselves a little time to enjoy the satisfaction before turning our attention to the next step.
I wanted to drive in Formula 3, so I became a window cleaner and then we sold our house.
It is hard to imagine, looking at all the rewards I have around me now, that I was once a homeless window cleaner. I didnât have to do it, no-one was forcing me, but racing will make you do some crazy things once you get hooked.
Although I had a firm offer on the table for a well-funded works drive in Formula Ford for 1978, I knew that I had to move forward into Formula 3. That was the stage on which true talent was often recognised and I was confident that, given a fair shot in a decent car, I would be spotted by a Formula 1 team owner. The problem was that the stakes were much higher in Formula 3. It would cost several times my old salary just to compete for a season and I didnât have access to that kind of money.
I took a job with my friend Peter Wall, who had an office cleaning business. I did a little administrative work, but mostly I cleaned offices after the workers had gone home for the night. My speciality was window cleaning. It was actually great fun and quite satisfying when you saw the sunlight gleaming off a freshly cleaned window. The only problem was that the business was based down in Cirencester, some two hours drive from home, so I often had to stay at Peterâs house overnight, away from Rosanne.
I spent the rest of that winter looking for sponsors to help foot the bill for my move into Formula 3. Despite sending hundreds of letters I got nowhere. It was a fruitless search and although I learned a lot from it, I was still no closer to a Formula 3 drive and the 1978 season was approaching fast. So thatâs when we did what any right thinking people would do under the circumstances â we sold our house.
It was a tough decision, but as we could see no other way of raising the money we were left with no alternative. Rosanne was still working long hours as a demonstrator for the gas board and her salary supported us as we moved into rented accommodation. It was sad to let our place go as we had been happy there, but we both knew that it was the right thing to do.
We raised £6000 from the sale of the house and added another £2000 from the sale of some personal items. We were staking everything we had. I took the money to March, who had promised to help me if I could get enough cash together to start the season. They were confident that they would pick up enough backing along the way to mount a challenge.
The season started well. I was on pole position for the first race and came through to finish second behind Nelson Piquet. Little did we realise at the time that our careers would become closely linked in years to come.
On race morning I was practising standing starts on the Club straight when I was approached by two people. One of them I recognised as Peter Windsor, an Australian journalist working at the time for Autocar magazine. Peter introduced the other man to me as Peter Collins, another Australian, who had a job at Ralt cars, but who was soon headed for the Lotus Formula 1 team as assistant team manager. We chatted for a while and I think that they were both impressed by my single-mindedness. They told me years later that they had never encountered anyone at that stage of his career who had such a clear focus on where he wanted to get to. We hit it off immediately and they said they would keep an eye on my progress. It was to prove one of the most important meetings of my life so far.
The Silverstone race was an encouraging start, but after that, things went downhill fast. It was a very poor car and although Iâd been able to hustle it around Silverstone for that first race, I couldnât get it going quickly anywhere else. March blamed me. I knew that it wasnât me who was at fault. I did four more races and picked up some minor placings but all too soon I was told that the money had run out. They had found no backing, so that was it. End of season. Close the door on your way out.
Rosanne and I were devastated. We had blown everything in six weeks and there was nothing left. We had hit rock bottom.
John Thornburn, Nigelâs team manager in Formula Ford: âAlan McKechnie and I had decided to take a break from motor racing after a bad experience with a sponsor.