There have been suggestions that Alan Henry is actually several people, such is his prolific output. Formula 1 correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, editor of the prestigious annual, Autocourse, regular contributor to several magazines, author of over a dozen books about Formula 1, Henry is a veritable industry of Grand Prix words.
His first race-related writing took the form of a letter to the editor of Autosport in 1968, wherein Henry suggested that the correspondent covering a certain club race was "an idiot." Henry had been there as a flag marshall and saw things quite differently. Some weeks later Henry's bluff was called and he was invited to set the record straight in Autosport, by covering a meeting of the Romford Enthusiast's Car Club. The date is indelibly imprinted in his mind: April 7, 1968, when Jim Clark was killed at Hockenheim.
Thus Henry's journalistic career was launched, fortunately enabling him to avoid being the solicitor his father had hoped he would be. Words about racing Henry understood, but "constitutional law and land law might as well have been books printed in Cantonese. I grew up on a steady diet of Jenks in Motor Sport and it intrigued me that people could actually make a living from being a racing journalist. Anyway, I would have made a bloody awful lawyer.
"It's slightly hypocritical to have to say I don't like some of the qualities that the enormous infusions of money have brought into Formula 1. I sometimes walk down the pit road with a rather bewildered feeling, wondering how all this money is being channeled into what sometimes looks a rather specialized business. I am amazed by the affluence. It is not a real world.
"The journalists have benefited from the influx of money over the last 20 years but my particular irritation concerns team owners and drivers who are super-critical of anything written which is vaguely critical about themselves. But, on the other hand, they won't give you the time of day to explain the situation. There is a big gulf of understanding between a lot of teams and drivers and the journalists.
"But I think it is important to remember that the pressure on them now on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday is so enormous. If you meet a guy that you perhaps think is a bit of a miserable sod over the weekend and then you meet him on a Thursday, or perhaps at a test session, you are going to get a totally different impression of him.
"I think the drivers are superstars right enough, but I am not in awe of them. The last person I was in awe of, and still am, is Mario Andretti who had more charisma in my opinion, more star quality, than anybody I have ever met - probably the sum total of the rest of the drivers I have ever met put together.
"I admire the mechanics and engineers and the design process, how they're all so committed and so thorough over such a long time. We have the winter off, they don't. But I don't think it is a problem for them, I think they thrive on it. Nobody comes into this sport unless they are totally obsessed with racing and in fact a lot of people work phenomenally long hours.
"But all this is only a game at the end of the day. I mean, our life isn't on the line. Everything is just a footnote to the race. As Jean Behra said: 'Life is racing, the rest is waiting.'"
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