Brazil. First race of the 1988 season. We had three days of testing followed by a break of a week before the race, so we had plenty of time to become experts at our new sport of ‘flameouts’. Brazilian cars ran on fuel called Alcool, a distilled sugar beet also used for alcoholic drinks. It’s quite sweet. They had to put a foul-tasting chemical in the fuel version to prevent people drinking it directly from the pumps. We soon worked out that if you put your foot down in a hired VW Beetle and turned off the ignition, the alcohol would collect in the exhaust, and then switching the ignition back
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