In September, 2000, a small group of us gathered in Oxfordshire to celebrate the completion of the Kieft Grand Prix car. Actually, it was the completion of the chassis and body, it took a tad longer for it to be fit to run in a race. It was actually two more years, almost to the day but, what is two years in a project which was started in 1953?

The Kieft must hold the record for the longest gestation period of any racing car. It finally raced in a VSCC (Vintage Sports Car Club) race at Silverstone on 21st September, 2002.

I was at Silverstone to sign copies of my new biography of Colin Chapman (nobody has ever accused me of not taking every opportunity to plug one of my books), but I would have been there anyway, because I wanted to be present when the Kieft first ran. It was a promise that I made to myself, to Bill Morris, who restored the car, and to Cyril Kieft.

Kieft (the name is Norwegian, but Cyril is Welsh) was a high-flyer in the British steel industry and he was still only in his twenties when, in the late 1930s, he was running one of the world's largest steel mills. After World War II, the Labour government nationalised the steel industry and Cyril resigned.

He had his own forging and machining companies, clients included Rolls-Royce, and he was a racing enthusiast. He once entered a hillclimb but one of his children came up to him at the start and said, "Mummy says, please be careful." He completed his run, cautiously, and hung up his helmet.

Cyril is now 91, his joints are a bit arthritic, but his mind is as sharp as a pin and he arrived at Silverstone with his Spanish finacèe. He plans a new life in Spain, where the weather will be kinder to his joints. Yup, Cyril is 91 and is about to embark on a new life with a new, very attractive, wife. There is hope for us all.

More than 50 years ago, with the steel industry under government control, Cyril needed a challenge and decided to make 500cc racing cars. Unlike most of the people making their way in postwar British motorsport, he was a man on equal terms with captains of industry and he also knew the value of publicity. By 1951, Stirling Moss was a Kieft F3 works driver and also a director of Kieft Cars. The Kieft 500cc cars provided Cooper's biggest headache and they won more than 130 races largely thanks to a tough little character called Don Parker who had turned 40 before he even saw a motor race.

Kieft production cars were not that great, which is why Moss resigned and returned to Cooper. Don Parker, the works Kieft driver, used to take Kieft components and build his own machines. Don won nearly 120 races in Kieft-Parker cars, was winner of the British F3 Championship in 1952 and 1953, and missed the hat-trick in 1954 by half a point.

I got to know The Don pretty well in his last days, he was a wonderful guy, built like a jockey, who never weighed more than eight stone in his entire life. In 1998, I had the honour to deliver the eulogy at his funeral.

On the wall in Don's garage was a photograph. In 1954 a guy who wanted to get into motor racing latched on to Don. He would hitch hike to races to help out, hoping to get the right introduction. Don's unpaid helper was a chap called Hill, Graham Hill.

Kieft was the first constructor to race with the Coventry Climax FWA engine, at Le Mans in 1954. Through his industry connections, Cyril helped to turn a one-litre fire pump engine into an 1100cc racing unit which brought Cooper, Lotus and Lola to the fore. Cyril never got recognition for that because, by the time the FWA went into production, a new government had re-privatised the steel industry and he had returned to his first love.

Prior to the the FWA, Kieft had, with Cooper, HWM and Connaught, persuaded Coventry Climax to build an engine for the 2.5-litre Formula One. The notion tickled the fancy at those at Climax, many of whom had racing in their blood, so was developed the FPE (Fire Pump Engine, an in-house joke) which was soon dubbed the 'Godiva'.