So why did I leave mighty Lotus for up-and-coming McLaren at the end of 1973, you may well be wondering? After all, Id won the World Championship for Lotus in 1972, and Id started the 1973 season extremely well too, winning three of the first six Grands Prix of the year, in Argentina, Brazil and Spain, and finishing on the podium in the other three, in South Africa, Belgium and Monaco.
Well, as the 1973 season wore on, I began to have a few mechanical issues and reliability problems, which Id never had to contend with the previous year. It was terrible, to be frank. Having scored a lot of points in the first six Grands Prix of the 1973 season, I scored just one point in the next six. It was really frustrating but, in spite of my recent run of bad results, as we arrived at Monza, I still had a mathematical chance of catching Tyrrells number-one driver Jackie Stewart for the World Championship. My team-mate Ronnie Peterson didnt.
So we made an agreement: if I was leading the race within 15 laps of the finish, and Ronnie was running second, he wouldnt try to overtake me; but if Ronnie was leading the race within 15 laps of the finish, and I was running second, then Colin Chapman, the Lotus boss, would hang out a pit-board to instruct Ronnie to let me pass, so as to keep my World Championship chances alive.
Ronnie had qualified on the pole, and he took the lead early on. Id started from fourth place on the grid, but I soon worked my way up to second place behind Ronnie. As we reached the 15-laps-to-go stage, I expected Colin to signal Ronnie to let me pass. But he didnt. So I began to drive as hard as I could, right on the limit, and I caught up with Ronnie, and we began to race flat-out for the win.
Ronnie was a great guy I didnt blame him for not letting me pass because Colin never signalled for him to do so but in the end I finished second, less than a second behind Ronnie, with the result that Jackie, whod finished fourth, more than 30 seconds behind Ronnie and me, was World Champion. It was ridiculous. I was so angry with Colin, and that afternoon I decided to leave Lotus at the end of the year.
At around that time I was approached by some senior executives at Philip Morris, the parent company of Marlboro cigarettes, with a very attractive offer. Choose your next team, Emerson, they said, and well sponsor it, whichever team you end up choosing.
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