ALAN BRINTON (1920-1996)

Alan Brinton (GPP photo)

ALAN BRINTON

In a former life Alan Brinton was a parliamentary correspondent for a London newspaper for seven years, experience that serves him well in covering the high speed politics of Formula 1. "It was in the days of Churchill, Macmillan, Bevin and Bevan, all the big guns. It was an exciting time. Some very dramatic things happen in Parliament and it really got the adrenaline going, particularly when you were near a deadline. Very often a big debate on a subject would end at ten o'clock. One went straight onto the phone and dictated the front page lead from notes, because the deadline was a quarter past ten. You learn how to cut corners, go for the throat."

Brinton's background makes him unique in another respect: he is one of the few who was a professional journalist before coming into motor sport. He began by teaching himself touch typing and shorthand and served as an apprentice in a news agency, a general reporter, then a Night News Editor, prior to the sojourn in the Halls of Westminster. When his newspaper, The News Chronicle, folded in 1960, Brinton embarked on a freelance career in motoring, a subject he had previously been "shanghaied" into covering. At first he worked on general motoring topics of a non-sporting nature, then his career veered towards racing. He was editor of Motor Racing News and Sports Car and soon formed a partnership with John Blunsden to provide a variety of writing and editorial services and: "We had a jolly good time."

Possessed with a highly developed work ethic, Brinton became a prolific wordsmith on motorsport matters, capable of changing his style to match the tastes of his audience. Until recently he was indeed two people at Formula 1 events: Brian Allen of The Daily Telegraph and Alan Brinton of The Sun. Brinton also mastered the spoken word on radio, where his authoritative voice was heard far and wide. At one Belgian Grand Prix he reported for three radio networks, ABC in America, BBC in the UK and CBC in Canada, hardly ever repeating himself.

Having travelled with the Grand Prix circus for over 30 years Brinton has a fund of anecdotes. While the spectacles he wears are not rose-tinted, the earlier times he recalls sound suspiciously like the good old days. "When I went to my first Belgian Grand Prix, at Spa in 1956, I was very much a Lone Ranger. Nobody knew me. I was talking to Stirling Moss beforehand and asked him the best way to get to Spa from Brussels. Moss said, 'Look, tell my secretary the time you plan to get there and I'll come and fetch you.' He was going to be in Switzerland. He set off early in the morning from Switzerland, bypassed Spa and went all the way up and met me at Brussels. It was quite a journey and there were no motorways in those days. He took me back in his car to Spa, then he took me around the circuit as well. You remember those things.

"When Jack Brabham, driving for Cooper, won the 1960 Portuguese Grand Prix in Oporto John Cooper said, right, we're all going out to dinner. And it lasted until two o'clock in the morning, a real old rave-up. When Brabham won the French Grand Prix at Reims, they held the prize giving in the Town Hall. There was a symphony orchestra and champagne flowing. And John Cooper insisted on conducting the orchestra.

"And I remember after Jim Clark had won the World Championship, I can't recall the year, but he won by whatever result it was at Monza. I was there with my wife and my two boys and we were staying at the Hotel de Ville. We were sitting in the hotel and this quiet little man came up to us, the new World Champion, having escaped everybody else. He said, 'Would you mind...it would give me a lot of pleasure if I bought you all a drink.'  So, the two boys had orange juices and we had something else. You don't get that nowadays.

"One time at Rouen, at the French Grand Prix of 1962, the motoring journalist Basil Cardew was with us on the opposite side of the fence from the start finish area. Basil said to Jim Clark and Graham Hill, 'Now look, when the race is over we want to know what's happened. We are on the wrong side. You come over and tell us what happened.' Neither of them won but Jim Clark came across -- left his car - came across the barrier and he told us what had happened.

"The journalists tend to be a different sort now. Those who write for the enthusiast publications in particular, these are the dedicated.  These are the chaps who, from the age of seven, start reading Motoring News and they know it all off by heart. On some of the daily newspapers, and in radio as well, there are still a few people who were journalists first and then they were recruited to cover motor racing.

"One of the reasons there are little cliques of journalists is that they tend to cover themselves. If one of the popular newspapers gets a scoop, the opposition demands it too. Back at the hotel they will get a phone call at eleven or twelve o'clock at night, saying why haven't you got this ? So they all try to get the same quote from Mansell, the result of which is that there are excusives to be had for the Lone Rangers.

"What has pleased me, now I'm being chauvinistic, is the interest the British newspapers have taken in motor racing which has built up in recent years, with Mansell coming to the fore. Quality papers like The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, they have a lot of space for Formula 1. A lot of this is due to television. People see the racing there and then they want more, particularly about the drivers.

"But the drivers are so distant now. There used to be prize givings on the Sunday evening and if you didn't go to the prize giving you didn't get your cup and you didn't get your money. Now it's into their choppers and off they go. I think it's sad when they become uncooperative. Because they owe their millions, really, to the things which we have done.  They will say, of course, we've got where we have because we are good. But we've packed their money bags for them and, generally speaking, I think we tend to build them up a bit too high. They are just too busy being involved in themselves and their money.

"There is a very strongly held opinion that in order to be a really fine racing driver you've got to be a bit of a bastard. I'm afraid this is so. But there have been some exceptions to that and Clark was one. Jackie Stewart was both things.  He was friendly, but he also applied himself to it. He very much realized the importance of the media. And Jack Brabham was a very decent man.

"In 1968, I was at Rouen at the French Grand Prix and Jack came to my room early on the Saturday morning to tell me that my wife had been killed in a car accident in England. He said, 'You will want to get back, won't you. I'll fly you in my plane. Meet you at the airport in half an hour.' This was the last day of practice and Jack Brabham flew me back to Beacon Hill. He didn't even put in a flight plan, just bowled his way through everything. Then he flew back to France and got there in time for practice. Would anyone do that nowadays? You remember these things."