JOHN
BLUNSDEN
The life of
the man from The Times has always revolved around words and wheels. Earlier
in his life John Blunsden often took a turn behind the wheel of racing cars,
wringing out whatever performance they were capable of and writing about it. He
pioneered motor racing track tests in the UK, and such was Blunsden's prowess
in the cockpit that he sometimes went faster than the regular racers.
"I
suppose I drove more than a hundred different racing cars, from Formula 1 down
to modified saloons. It was sometimes nerve wracking because some of them
weren't screwed together terribly well. But it also blew away the cobwebs and
enabled me to resist the great temptation to become a driver on a professional
basis, rather than a journalist. So I had the best of both worlds. I had the security of an income from
journalism, with the satisfaction of being able to hop into far more racing
cars than most people ever had a chance to drive.
"I
think it enabled me to put driving performance into context more vividly. I think only if you've actually driven
quickly in all racing conditions - wet weather, heavy traffic, and so on - can
you appreciate all the elements that a driver may experience in the course of a
race. Unless you've experienced that you don't really know, or you can only
guess at, the problems that the driver encounters. When a driver loses a second
a lap, or something like that, there are so many ways in which that can occur
which has nothing to do with the driver's ability as a driver. Anything can be happening in the car. I think it taught me to question, to dig
deeper, to establish the reason for particular elements in the changing of lap
times.
"The
other great advantage I had was that I could go up to a driver and put a
question to him in a competitor's terms.
And they immediately opened up because they knew that they were talking
to somebody who knows what is going on in the cockpit, rather than a journalist
coming up to them and asking. 'Why are you suddenly two seconds a lap slower?'
The answer is often terribly complicated and you can't always blame them if
they turn their back on you, because there's a certain element of accusation
behind those sort of questions.
"One
has to be competitive to track test properly.
Unless you're on the limit of the car, you can't really analyze what the
car is doing because they'll all understeer like pigs until they're up to full
performance. And it was pleasing at that time to be respected by professional
drivers and, occasionally, to be able to bend the odd lap record."
Blunsden's
entry into the world of speeding wheels was a result of some advice given to
him by a prospective employer. After he left school he was offered work as a
junior clerk in a shipping company in London. "He told me I could have the
job if I wanted but he said, 'Don't accept it. As you walk out of my office,
look at the expressions on the faces of all of the people working here. They're
not living, they're just existing.
They're old before their years and if you come and join us you'll be one
of them. So decline the job, wander down to the London docks and get yourself a
job on a boat and see the world.'"
Instead,
Blunsden wandered into the editorial offices of a motoring publication,
introducing himself by presenting plans he had drawn for making scale models of
cars. His skills at this hobby were impressive enough to gain him employment as
an editorial assistant. After doing his National Service, in Egypt with the
Royal Engineers, Blunsden returned to the world of wheels, in 1950, as a
salesman of second hand cars, eventually establishing his own dealership. He
also wrote a motoring column for a local newspaper, The Croydon Advertiser, and
when the motor trade slumped badly during the Suez Crisis Blunsden took up his
pen in earnest for another motoring publication, Commercial Vehicles, in 1956.
He had been active in rallying and belonged to several motoring clubs, so a
position as Associate Editor of a new magazine called Motoring News seemed
appropriate. Blunsden was editor of that publication when he left in 1961 to
become a freelancer.
He joined
forces with Alan Brinton (a partnership which continues today), at first
working out of offices at Brands Hatch, producing several magazines and
providing editorial services, always with the accent on motor sport. In 1972
Blunsden was invited by The Times to become its Grand Prix Correspondent and
he began with the Italian Grand Prix of that year, chronicling a win by Emerson
Fittipaldi in his Lotus Ford in the elegant prose that is his hallmark, at
least in The Times.
"I
would always seek to be aware of my audience before committing myself to words.
There have been times when I have simultaneously been writing for an incredible
variety of media, including one of the girlie magazines such as Men Only, where
I used to do a car feature. So one is aware of the audience and also the editor
and his requirements. I think for a writer to have been an editor is a great
advantage, and vice versa.
"I try
to make what I have to say readable and interesting, bearing in mind that I'm
aware that a considerable percentage of the people, particularly the people who
read The Times, may start to read me with no great dedication to what I'm going
to tell them. It may be that they're just trying me out in the first paragraph
or two, and they're quite likely to be switched off by boredom after that.
"If I
was called upon to do so as a professional journalist I believe I could write
in a suitably bizarre fashion for the tabloids. I wouldn't get any sense of
satisfaction out of it whatsoever, but I believe I would have the ability to do
so should the need arise. Something like" 'Speed Crazy Mansell!'
"In
the Formula 1 paddock it is impossible for any journalist to be everywhere at
the same time, so a certain amount of sharing of information goes on. If I hear
about an upcoming press conference I will tell everyone that I meet about it.
In no way am I undermining my own position by doing that. But my first
responsibility is to my newspaper and if I had sought to talk to somebody and
received a scoop, I would guard that with a jealousy that knows no limits
because it was my own initiative which caused me to be aware of that fact. If I
pick out an important story somewhere in the paddock area I would do that very,
very privately.
"There
is one element of it that disturbs me slightly.
There is a tendency for some journalists to go around in a group and
compare notes. And I find it very difficult to understand how, bearing in mind
they might be writing for competitive newspapers, how they are able to score
points off each other, friends though they may be. And I wonder at times whether in fact, deep
down, they may be scared stiff of their sports editors, or their chief sub or
something. I think they're sharing notes to be damned sure that they get the
same story.
"Many
of the Formula 1 stories seem to emanate from Italy and probably seventy five
percent of them are completely false. As
a country they devote acres of space to Formula 1, probably because of the
Ferrari factor. The Ferrari factor has a
lot to answer for. Acres of space has
got to be filled, and if it can't be filled with fact they'll fill it with
fiction. The French style of writing is something else again. In some French
race reports you'd think that the script had been orchestrated in Hollywood.
And the
facts are contained somewhere hidden amongst all the shrubbery of the flowery
language. I have a certain affinity with a lot of German people, I can
appreciate their seriousness and their dedication. Some of the most serious motor racing
reporters, I think, are Germans.
"The
tendency to focus on the personalities is one of the paradoxes of Formula
1. It is a very, very high tech sport
and achievement is based a hell of a lot on success in high tech areas. But it
is financed in a way which almost demands that it appeal to a mass audience in
order for the sponsors and other financiers to get their return on their
investment. Therefore in order to
attract the wide audience, there has to be emphasis on the people rather than
on the machinery. And it is rather sad that when you come down to the drivers,
about the only group of people that the wider audience tend to relate to, by
and large they're a pretty boring bunch.
"I
think the personalities in the sport are so volatile because of the huge amount
of money involved. For the team principals, for every extra million dollars you
manage to attract to your team, you've inherited another million dollars of
responsibility to deliver the goods. And there are certain prices to be paid. I
think the successful team operator has got to be far-sighted, he has got to be
dedicated to perfection, and utterly intolerant of any fall off in standards by
anybody in the organization. Now that
almost defines him as being a right bastard.
But I think if he is there to win, and if he is a heavily sponsored
team, that's his only function, then he must do whatever it takes to win.
"There
are other functions of a Grand Prix team, such as providing a vehicle for a
sponsoring organization which for some reason chose to use Formula 1 racing as
a useful medium for attracting their corporate clients into an environment
where they can screw them for a few million dollars, in comfortable
surroundings. And some of them do that, providing a weekend for customers that
they're out to do monumental deals with.
"Amongst
the Grand Prix regulars I think there is a great sense of community in the
paddock. You'll certainly find that amongst the mechanics, the catering staff
and so on, the people who actually make the paddock function. I think the
mechanics are a very special breed. They
have a level of skill which you don't normally see in everyday life. You certainly don't see it in the motor
trade. The mechanics really are almost engineers in their own right. And because they are dealing with perfection
all the time, I think they all are imbued with a great sense of responsibility
that's long disappeared in normal life.
"Grand
Prix people are all tremendously self-disciplined. I don't think they stand the pace if they're
not. They are expected to achieve on an almost hourly basis. And in a sense
perhaps that's part of the sport's magnetism. Formula 1 also provides a kind of
freedom, which I think a lot of people enjoy. OK, the cost of that freedom is
those five days at each race circuit, but the freedom to be on the move is
important. Even the frustrations of air travel are probably acceptable because
they would far rather be sitting in an airport lounge than they would be stuck
at a desk with somebody peering through the glass window and seeing what
they're up to."
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