THE OCTANE INTERVIEW Riccardo Patrese

James Elliott meets one of Fl's longest-serving drivers, a veteran of 256 Grands Prix who kept Senna honest

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The scowl would be visible from space.

A superfan (more likely an eBay shitehawk) starts delving into his third carrier bag full of goodies during the signing session, wilfully oblivious to the huge line of people behind him as well as the rictus grin of the F1 ace in front of him. Riccardo Patrese, dapper to a T but slightly hunched of shoulders in demeanour to give the impression of permashrugging, dutifully presses on with the signing and leaves it to the organisers to remove the offending ‘fan’. Eventually, somewhere towards the bottom of bag four, our barnacle is spirited away and Patrese instantly becomes more sanguine, shrugging (or not, who can tell?) insouciently when asked if he was that bothered by the incident: ‘Only because he was stopping other people having the same opportunity. I don’t know if he was a real fan, and I don’t really care; if he sells something and makes a bit of money, fine. It’s still a compliment. What's really interesting is…

And with that, from race number and livery alone, Patrese reels off the most intricate detail of every single model, picture and book he has just signed, identifying every car and race, his times and placings and every incident, small or large, in paddock, pitlane or on track. It is an astonishing, encyclopaedic display of knowledge that can be only partially explained by the fact that he has recently researched and written his autobiography.

‘It came about when I realised my new wife [of 17 years!] didn’t know anything about my former life because I retired from F1 in 1993,’ the 72-year-old says with a mischievous smile. ‘So I started to tell her my stories about funny things, bad things, too, and she said I should write a book, so starting in early 2024 I did, with a very good Italian journalist called Giorgio Terruzzi.

Currently available only in Italian, the book –