Flashback: Barbara Woodhouse-like pitboard communication at the 1987 German Grand Prix

These days, communications between F1 drivers and their pitcrews are detailed and convoluted to the point of being unintelligible to anyone else. Which is the point, of course. Before the advent of verbal exchanges by radio, pitboards were the only means of keeping drivers informed. This one, propped against the Tyrrell pitwall at Hockenheim, caught my eye not long after the 1987 German Grand Prix had finished. ‘STAY’. What on earth did that mean?

“Oh gawd,” grinned Ken Tyrrell when I questioned him some time later. “You didn’t see that, did you? I thought we’d removed everything as soon as the race had finished!” Ken had every right to smile.

Only six of the 26 starters had reached the finish after 44 dreary laps. In fact, the single piece of dramatic overtaking had been when Ayrton Senna muscled his way past an ailing Zakspeed in the narrow pitlane. But the high retirement rate was good news for Tyrrell, the only entrant with both cars still running. At a stroke, the cash-strapped team with the normally aspirated Cosworth V8s had moved from eighth to fifth in the constructors’ championship – albeit in a different world from the turbocharged Williams-Honda team with eight times as many points at the top of the championship.

“Terrible race, wasn’t it?” said Ken, with typical directness. “I mean, the only two drivers actually racing were mine!”

Jonathan Palmer had been hounding Philippe Streiff when Tyrrell found the urgent need to instruct the Englishman to back off as the pair were suddenly elevated to fourth and fifth. “I had to put out a sign to stop them racing in case they crashed into each other!” said Ken. “We didn’t have a ‘HOLD’ sign, so we quickly made up one saying ‘STAY’. I’ll have to change that. Terrible, isn’t it? You’d think we had a bloody Labrador driving the car!”