The white 2001 Rover 75—acquired for a crisp £100 note from my neighbour, an eccentric collector of late-era Austin Rover products—decided to boil its coolant precisely as I crossed the parish boundary. Steaming gently like a Christmas pudding, it clattered into the sleeping, grotesque village of Nettle-under-Thimble, deep in the Wiltshire countryside.

Here, in a thatched cottage guarded by a pair of rusting Weber carburettors and a single Gibson Les Paul leaning against a porch chair, resides Bob Williams.

At nearly ninety years of age, the man who nearly denied Sir Jackie Stewart the 1971 World Championship remains a picture of effortless 1970s swagger. The mutton-chop sideburns may be snow-white now, but the glint in his eye is pure lead-footed playboy. He hands me a mug of tepid Earl Grey, glances at my smoking Rover with mild approval, and sits down to reflect on a life lived at 9,000 RPM.

Iberianmph: Looking back at 1971, Bob, what stays with you the most from your title fight with Jackie Stewart?

“The sheer noise, old boy, and the distinct lack of power steering. Jackie was a tactical mastermind, always neat, always pristine, driving that Tyrrell with surgical precision. I, on the other hand, preferred driving with my trousers slightly on fire and relying on bravado. What I remember most wasn’t the points tally—it was the camaraderie. After a race, Jackie would offer me a glass of orange juice and a lecture on circuit safety, while I was usually trying to find where the local hospitality tent kept the gin. He was brilliant, of course. A absolute gentleman, even when he was executing a pass on me into Woodcote that left my ears ringing for three days.”

Iberianmph: We have to talk about ‘The Incident’ at the season finale—the locked caravan door and the dodgy meat pie. Do you still harbour a grudge against cheap locks or bad race catering?

“I haven’t stepped inside a towed caravan since October 1971, and if I see a meat pie, I break into a cold sweat. People remember the locked latch, but it was the combination of a stuck brass bolt and local catering that did for my World Championship hopes. There I was, suit zipped up, helmet on, ready to go out and beat Stewart, trapped in a two-berth plywood box while the mechanics were outside hammering on the door with a wheel-nut spanner. You have to laugh. If you don’t laugh, you spend fifty years brooding over a ten-shilling lock mechanism. Though I did send the caravan manufacturer a rather sharp letter in 1974.”

Iberianmph: After hanging up your helmet, you traded a 400-horsepower Cosworth V8 for a blues guitar. How did that transition go, and is hitting a slide guitar solo anything like hitting the apex at Monza?

“Surprisingly similar, actually! Both require flawless timing, absolute commit, and a complete disregard for your own hearing. A Cosworth V8 at full chat in fifth gear has a natural key—E flat, usually—and bending a string on a vintage Fender isn’t all that different from holding a four-wheel drift through Curva Grande. When I left racing, I needed something to replace the adrenaline, and loud blues music fit the bill. A good guitar solo is just a lap of Monza: you enter slightly too fast, improvise wildly in the middle, and hope you come out the other side without hitting the wall.”

Iberianmph: Now here we are in 2026. What does a typical day look like for an octogenarian racing driver turned bluesman? Are you watching modern, telemetry-heavy F1 with disdain, and are you still playing gigs?

“A typical day involves trying to remember where I left my reading glasses and tinkering with a lawnmower that sounds suspiciously like a 1968 Matra V12. As for modern Grand Prix racing… well, it’s impressive, but there are too many buttons on the steering wheels! In my day, the steering wheel was a piece of wood attached to a steel shaft; if you wanted telemetry, you looked at the oil pressure gauge, and if it read zero, you jumped out! I still watch, but I do miss the smell of castor oil and spilled petrol. And yes, I still play! The local pub, The Blind Ferret, lets me sit in with the house band on Tuesday nights. I’m slightly slower on the fretboard now, but I’m still louder than anyone else.”

Iberianmph: Finally, Bob, what do you make of Formula E and the modern push towards electric gimmicks in motorsport?

“Oh, it’s all terribly sensible, isn’t it? Very quiet. Very clean. I watched a race last month and thought my television sound had gone off! They’re blazingly fast machines, mind you, and the driving is top-drawer, but I do miss the thunder. If you don’t feel the vibration of an internal combustion engine rattling your teeth loose in your skull, are you really racing? Mind you, if they had electric starters back in 1971, maybe my mechanics could have heard me screaming from inside that caravan!”

Before I could offer a polite exit, Bob stood up, grabbed his battered sunburst Stratocaster, and insisted on demonstrating the precise, aggressive stroke required for the opening chord of The Who’s “My Generation.” “Townshend had the right idea, you see, but he lacked the wrist action of a man who’s held a four-wheel drift at Spa,” he shouted above the feedback of a small Vox amplifier. Just as he struck a deafening Power A chord, a beige two-berth Bailey caravan crested the hill outside his cottage window, towed at a serene fifteen miles per hour by a diesel hatchback. Bob’s eyes locked onto the rolling plywood box, flashed with fifty-five years of unhealed trauma, and without missing a beat, he swung the Stratocaster overhead and brought it crashing down through his coffee table in a flurry of flying mahogany and splintered maple. He dusted off his cardigan, took a calm sip of his lukewarm tea, and muttered, “Brings back the rhythm, doesn’t it?”

PS The preceding was a work of satire.