From Regazzoni to Rosberg
09/05/2016
37 years and 553 F1 races lie between Clay Regazzoni's first victory for Williams at Silverstone in 1979 and Nico Rosberg's in the Mercedes at Monza yesterday.
Not only Felipe Massa and Jenson Button announced their retirements, I also hung up my (F1) camera last night. After my photographic career began in Silverstone in 1979, I captured all but two Formula 1 Grand Prix races between 1987 and 2013.
Only the 1990 San Marino GP in Imola fell through after a skiing accident with a torn cruciate ligament, and a clash of dates in 1989 with the 500-mile race in Indianapolis prevented me from attending the Mexican GP.
At all of Michael Schumacher's races, somewhere in the world, I stood at the side of the track and captured his 91 GP victories with my camera. Over the years, I have photographed many happy moments, but also some very tragic ones, such as the two fatal accidents involving Gilles Villeneuve and Ayrton Senna.
All the negative changes that we as photographers have had to put up with in recent years have brought me closer to retirement race by race. The upcoming travel with the two "back to back" races of Malaysia - Japan and USA - Mexico gave me the final impetus to retire immediately.
It was an incredibly intense but also wonderful time that I definitely wouldn't want to miss. Many great memories will stay with me forever, but everything comes to an end. I will be reporting on many of these experiences on "zwischengas" in the future, allowing our readers to share in my intense life.
Motorsport is and will remain my great love, but in future I will indulge myself even more with historic cars. From now on, I will make use of the time I have now gained for our child "Zwischengas".
All that remains now is for me to thank all those who have accompanied and supported me over the years. Whether with my long-standing and loyal customers or in close cooperation with my journalist colleagues, drivers, mechanics and fellow photographers, we have always had an incredible amount of fun. Many of these long weekend friendships will certainly last forever.
