Jo Ramirez

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Autobiography published in 2005 "Memoirs of a Racing Man"

At a Scuderia Rodriguez event

Joaquín "Jo" Ramírez (born August 20, 1941, Mexico City) is an author and retired employee of several motor racing teams. From 1984 to 2001 Ramirez was coordinator of the McLaren Formula One team, including during the infamous Prost / Senna clash of the late-1980s.

The third of eight children, Ramírez was born in Mexico City and studied engineering at the university. He dropped out in 1960 to follow his friend Ricardo Rodríguez to Europe. When Rodríguez died in a racing crash, Ramírez took the job of being Lamborghini's test driver of their new line of high performance road cars.

During the 1960s and 70s Ramírez worked for several teams, including Dan Gurney's Eagle, Tyrrell, where founder Ken Tyrrell advised him to keep a diary of his time in the sport, and for Wilson and Emerson Fittipaldi in their Copersucar F1 team.

In 1984 Ramírez joined the front-running McLaren Formula One operation as team coordinator, becoming close friends with many top drivers including Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Jackie Stewart and Mika Häkkinen.

In 2001 Ramírez retired from McLaren and was advised by team manager Ron Dennis not to write his life story as no one would be interested. Ramírez was left in little doubt that Dennis' true aim was to stop any undesirable details of the team's inner workings from becoming public.

In 2005 Ramírez published his life story, to the interest of many Formula One fans.

In recent years, Ramírez has participated in the Carrera Panamericana, including the fourth place in the A+ Historic category in 2010 in a Volvo.^[1]