Herbie Blash, FIA Deputy Race Director, will retire at the end of the 2016 season, having held that post since 1996. He's been in the sport for a long time and has come a long way since he began washing F1 cars in 1965. In the following interview (from my book Grand Prix People,1990) he was working for his friend Bernie Ecclestone's Brabham team...
Herbie & Bernie (brdc.co.uk photo)
His real name is Michael but no one has called Herbie Blash any such thing since he was a schoolboy. "I used to do very silly things and Herbert, in those days, was used as a term for people like that: Oh, he's a right Herbert! And of course the worst thing I could have said was, don't ever call me that. So that was it, the nickname Herbie stuck."
Now listed as the Commercial and Marketing Director of Brabham, Herbie has been in Formula 1 all his working life, beginning in 1965 with a job as an apprentice mechanic for Rob Walker. His first duties were to wash the Walker team's Lotus cars for the likes of Jo Siffert and Jo Bonnier. Meanwhile Herbie attended college and studied mechanical engineering, cramming a seven year course into four and one half years. He must have been a brilliant student.
At Lotus Herbie came to know Rindt's manager Bernie Ecclestone. "After the death of Jochen, Bernie did an awful lot of work to sort it out and I helped him in some ways and we became close. When Bernie wanted to buy Brabhams I checked out the quality of the bits and pieces for him beforehand. Then I started on the Monday morning when Bernie took over, had a disagreement with Ron Tauranac, and I left after four hours!"
"This is much more of a business now than when I started. You only have to see how much money everybody was earning in those days. Then, you only went motor racing because you wanted to go motor racing. But now, a lot of the mechanics, even, are making a very, very good living out of it. I suppose I prefer the old days, when it was more fun. A lot of this is just serious work now...unfortunately."
Herbie & Bernie (brdc.co.uk photo)
His real name is Michael but no one has called Herbie Blash any such thing since he was a schoolboy. "I used to do very silly things and Herbert, in those days, was used as a term for people like that: Oh, he's a right Herbert! And of course the worst thing I could have said was, don't ever call me that. So that was it, the nickname Herbie stuck."
Now listed as the Commercial and Marketing Director of Brabham, Herbie has been in Formula 1 all his working life, beginning in 1965 with a job as an apprentice mechanic for Rob Walker. His first duties were to wash the Walker team's Lotus cars for the likes of Jo Siffert and Jo Bonnier. Meanwhile Herbie attended college and studied mechanical engineering, cramming a seven year course into four and one half years. He must have been a brilliant student.
“No, I was desperate! With Rob
Walker, you bought a car and you just ran it. I wanted to become more involved
in the building of cars and to understand it a lot more. I was very fortunate
that I went straight on to the Lotus Formula 1 team as a mechanic, with Jochen
Rindt and Graham Hill in '69 and '70."
At Lotus Herbie came to know Rindt's manager Bernie Ecclestone. "After the death of Jochen, Bernie did an awful lot of work to sort it out and I helped him in some ways and we became close. When Bernie wanted to buy Brabhams I checked out the quality of the bits and pieces for him beforehand. Then I started on the Monday morning when Bernie took over, had a disagreement with Ron Tauranac, and I left after four hours!"
Blash worked with Frank Williams
for a while, returned to Brabham when Tauranac left and, apart from a sojourn
with FOCA when Brabham wasn't racing, he's been a Brabham man ever since. Part
of the attraction is the special atmosphere on the team.
"Every team has a different
character to it. Very different. I think our team has always been very hard
working, which every team has to be, and it's very dedicated. But it's also a
very happy team. I just hope it remains that way, because a lot of teams are
very unhappy. But happy teams can win. We've won two world championships. Part
of my job is to make sure that we keep on as we've always done, which is in a
lighthearted but very serious manner."
In keeping with that philosophy
Blash describes the most exciting part of his Grand Prix weekend as "When
I go home! But seriously, the start of the race is to me still the most
exciting. And the most frightening as
well. But apart from that, to me,
because I've been doing it all my life, it's the same as going to any other
office and doing any other job."
At the races Blash's office is
in the team motorhome, but he discounts the oft-repeated theory that all the
wheeling and dealing in the paddock is where the real Formula 1 racing takes
place. "Basically a world championship is won back in the factory, not at
the race circuit. And the motorhome is
between the factory and the race circuit. Still, all these motor homes are not
just purely for socializing, there's also a lot of business done here.
"This is much more of a business now than when I started. You only have to see how much money everybody was earning in those days. Then, you only went motor racing because you wanted to go motor racing. But now, a lot of the mechanics, even, are making a very, very good living out of it. I suppose I prefer the old days, when it was more fun. A lot of this is just serious work now...unfortunately."
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