I was at the Canadian Grand Prix in 1989, and in those days, you could walk all over the paddock and go in and out of every team garage. I was a huge Ayrton Senna fan, so obviously, I was hanging around the McLaren pit, and I was taking loads of photos of everything. It was on a Saturday at noon, so there was no action, but everyone was buzzing around, including Ayrton. One by one, everyone left until it was only Ayrton left. He was very curious about what I was doing. I was alone at the McLaren garage with Ayrton, but I choked and could not get a word out, all I could do was nod. He continued eying me, until he noticed that I had a patch on my jacket of his helmet, at which point he turned around and left.

In 2004, McLaren ran a competition in the United States in the Saks Fifth Avenue stores, in which fans had to attempt to set the fastest lap time on a simulator around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The winner would get a paid trip to that year’s US GP. I was a die-hard McLaren fan and very familiar with the layout from playing video games.

I was just short of the quickest time on my first two attempts, and had a break before coming back for the third, final attempt. I ended up being the last person to enter the competition before it closed for good… and I won. I am getting goosebumps now thinking about it. I was a young kid and so freaking excited. I ran over to my dad and jumped into his arms, telling him that I had won, and we were going to Indy for the first time.

A few weeks later, we were whisked off as guests of McLaren. We were in hospitality, had a tour of the garage and I met David Coulthard. Kimi Räikkönen wasn’t there but someone from McLaren took some memorabillia from me for him to sign. We rode to and from the hotel every day with the team and had a police escort. To this day, it was the greatest experience I’ve ever had at a racing event. I love this team, and I hope my story makes someone smile as much as I did when I got to experience it.

One of my favourite memories is getting up on a cold Sunday morning to go to Woking to see Mika Häkkinen driving his 1999 title-winning car around Woking. The highlight was when I met and shook his hand to congratulate him on his success, followed shortly afterwards by meeting Ron Dennis. There was an amazing sound to the engine as he revved his car just before parking up. It was definitely worth getting up early, it’s a memory I will never forget.

In May 1972, I was a young law student paying my way through school by lettering race cars at Indianapolis, and I was fortunate enough to do the lettering on Peter Revson and Gordon Johncock’s McLaren cars. Great machines, great crews, great people!

Back in the early 60s, before I was born, my dad raced an MG at Mosport. He was also a radio personality in Montreal and after the Canadian Sports Car Championship races, he would grab a driver, preferably the winner, and interview them at a pay phone for the radio station. I later learned that was how he met my mother – they hit it off after he had asked her to hold the pay phone while he ran and got the winner of one race.

During this time, one of the drivers he interviewed was Bruce McLaren. Him and Bruce must have got on well, because tucked away in all my dad's memorabilia was a McLaren Racing business card. Handwritten on the back was Bruce's name and home phone number. I don't know where the card is today, but thankfully I do have a photograph of it. This is the reason that I have always been a McLaren fan.

In 1995, I worked for an engineering company that manufactured Plastic Injection Mould tools. McLaren contacted us to undertake an urgent machining job related to the MP4/10 car. The job was to machine the tooling that would be used to manufacture the cockpit of Nigel Mansell's car. The urgency was because Nigel could not fit in the car, so the cockpit had to be made larger to accommodate him. This began my real interest in F1, and I have followed McLaren ever since.

We took our four-year-old granddaughter to the F1 at Silverstone and walked the track after the race. She was wearing her race suit, and Lewis Hamilton’s Engineer saw her and asked us to pass her through the pit wall fence. Of course, we did, who would miss that chance? They took a photo of her standing next to Lewis’ car when they were stripping it down after the race. Wow, what an amazing opportunity. This is a fantastic memory. Thank you, McLaren, for making my granddaughter’s day.