Jo Ramirez

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Jo Ramirez (born August 20, 1940, 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, Ramirez was born in Mexico City and studied engineering at the university. He dropped out in 1960 to follow his friend Ricardo Rodriguez to Europe. When Ricardo died in a racing crash, Jo took the job of being Lamborghini's test driver of their new line of high performance road cars.

During the 1960s and 70s Ramirez 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 team.

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

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

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