USA Grand Prix - October 3 1965

Though we didn't manage to pull off a win at Watkins Glen in the United States GP we did succeed in giving our rivals a run for their money. With second place for Dan Gurney and third spot for myself we did rather better than we had hoped, because our engines were beginning to get that end-of-formula feeling. In fact, the surprising thing is that we have been getting much better reliability in the second half of the season than we did at the beginning, and this in some very hard­fought races.

We took over two cars and four engines to Watkins Glen. Practice produced the usual result with the 32-valver; Dan tried it out again, but it was not producing any more power than the older type and was again losing oil. So we swapped it for a 16-valver on the night before the race. There was some (Japanese) writing on the wall during training, when Richie Ginther was going great guns in the Honda; I thought the car went very impres­sively, and it looked as though the team were getting things properly sorted at last. In fact, the Hondas again had a disappointing race, but I know from my Formula 2 experience with them that they are learning all the time.

Dan and I could only manage the fourth row of the two-by-two grid. Maybe one or both of us could have got nearer the front for the start, but frankly we wanted to conserve our mach­inery as much as possible, remembering that we had to go on to Mexico for the final GP.

Both Dan and I got a reasonable start, but we both had a bit of trouble getting past Bandini's Ferrari. It wasn't long before Jackie Stewart disappeared from the scene, which was one threat out of the way-this boy really drives very well indeed. Then the race became a battle between Graham Hill and our team. There were two lots of rain during the race, but unfortunately they were only showers. If the rain had been heavy I am sure that it would have helped us in our battle with Graham's BRM, because both our cars and tyres seemed to be working extremely well in the wet. Graham had a brief excursion during the first lot of rain, which enabled us to catch him up, and 1 managed to get into the lead for about half a lap. Then I had a moment when I found I couldn't stop at the hairpin by the pits. I didn't spin, but the car went off the edge of the road and the mud made it difficult to get back on. By the time 1 had recovered from this mistake I was back down to third and Graham was back in the lead.

When the second shower stopped and the road starting to dry out the extra power of the BRM began to tell, and Graham was able to pull away from us, though Dan had quite a go. If we had had about ten more horsepower l reckon Graham would have had a fight on his hands. But he drove a splendid race and well deserved his third successive win at the Glen. It was disappointing for Hondas that they didn't shine, because Mr Honda himself had made the trip to watch his cars in action ... but of course he was to have something to smile about in Mexico City.