INNES IRELAND (1930-1993)

Innes Ireland & Rob Walker (GPP photo)

INNES IRELAND

One of those drivers who provided lots of copy for Alan Brinton and his colleagues in times gone by was Innes Ireland. As a Grand Prix driver, from 1959 to 1966, Ireland was noted as a colourful free spirit who enjoyed himself in and out of the Lotus, Cooper and BRM cars he raced. Now, covering the sport as a journalist for Road & Track magazine (sharing the duties with Rob Walker), Ireland finds the current atmosphere quite different from his driving days and the Grand Prix people rather a different breed.

"Today most of them are in it for the money they can get out of it, rather than for a pure love of seeing motor cars being raced around a circuit.  Now there is so much money involved in motor racing and there is an enormous number of people who see it as a very convenient and pleasant way to make a lot of money themselves. There is very very little sport left, very little. 

"And I see very little evidence of any camaraderie among the drivers. The drivers of my era, we all knew each other.  We would laugh and joke about things and fool around and have fun in an evening and so forth.  I don't see any of that.  Nowadays, if his car breaks down before the end of the race, the driver is in his jet aeroplane or helicopter, or whatever it is, and he is gone.

"From the point of view of the financial aspect, I'd very much like to have been paid even fractions of what they get paid today.  I say that very light-heartedly.  But I'm glad I drove in the era I did.  If one was given a decade, I would have liked to have driven from '50 to '60.  I started in '59 and I saw all this sponsorship business coming in in '65-'66.  Knives flashing in the dark, and all that sort of thing.  And I didn't like what I could see coming.

"Nowadays, I enjoy being able to write what I see and what I feel, but there is no point being negative. My own personal feelings, like the ones I've just outlined about lack of camaraderie and so forth, I don't have to bring that out.  It is not necessary for my story.  So I confine myself to what I see on the track and what I see in the workshops, and the technical aspect of the things.

"But I find it quite difficult talking to many people here.  I always get the feeling that they know, or most of them know, that I'm a writer.  Some of them know that I used to be a racing driver myself.  But I always get the feeling that they would rather not talk to any journalists.  They'd rather do their own thing and not talk to anybody, other than the chief engineer or the mechanics.  So I never like to feel that I am intruding.  I very often get that feeling even talking to team managers. 

"Obviously there are times when I know to keep well away because they are in trouble with the car or whatever.  And certainly during official practice times and so forth, they don't really want to talk to you. In my day there were far fewer journalists around.  So one wasn't being constantly harranged by people.  But certainly when people would come up, of course you'd talk to them, because they were often friends.

"We weren't under the same pressure.  I never had any financial pressure on my shoulders - thinking I bloody well had to do so and so because of my sponsors - I didn't have any sponsors.  So one wasn't under the same sort of pressure that the people are under today.  That is obviously part of the reason that they are always too bloody busy to talk to you.

"So now, having lunch is a highlight of the weekend! But, really, the start of the race still has a tremendous impact.  I can feel it inside - not in the same way as when I was actually taking a start myself - but I certainly feel very excited by it, and I think it is an incredible thing to watch and to listen to.  It is far more impressive and meaningful if you are actually at the circuit.  Television can never convey the feeling that one gets, if you are actually standing there watching it.

"But I don't like flying anymore.  Flying is a pain in the ass, now.  You have got miles to bloody well walk to get to the aeroplane.  You have got all that hassle with x-raying your luggage and this that and the other.  I used to be able to turn up at London airport a quarter of an hour before the plane was going to take off and I knew I'd get straight on. But now you have got to be there a minimum of an hour before, and preferably an hour and a half.  So there is so much hanging about and waiting - then everything is late.  And the service on aeroplanes is pathetic unless you are in first class.  And even then, in the middle of the night, if you press the old button nothing happens.

"People talk about the glamour and the mystique of Formula 1.  I know what they are talking about and I know what they mean.  But I've been around it, I suppose, so long that that has all worn off.  I can see that people, having watched it on television and so forth, sense this mystique and the glamour of it, but from where I sit there is no glamour at all."

- from Grand Prix People (1990)