Taki Inoue

Press handouts from Formula 1 teams tell you little you really want to know about a driver. You know the sort of thing: residence, hobbies, favourite music, favourite singers, favourite food, etc. How about Monte Carlo, shopping, jazz and rock, Eric Clapton and Globe fish! Well, it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than Taki’s racing exploits, which date back to 1985 and the Fuji Freshman championship. He came to England to compete in FF1600 in 1987 before returning home to tackle Japanese F3 through until 1993, the sum total of his achievements being a few fourth places. A move into Japanese F3000 with a top team, Super Nova, still brought little by way of results, but that didn’t prevent him gaining a superlicence to race for Simtek in the Japanese GP. Result – spun into pit wall along the straight.

Far from that being the end of Inoue’s Grand Prix curriculum vitae, he found the necessary to buy a seat at Footwork for the whole 1995 season; Jack Oliver must have needed the dosh. ‘His learning curve has been steep, but his performance very flat,’ Oliver is quoted as saying in Autocourse. Indeed it was two bizarre incidents that he was involved in (happily without serious injury) which left the most impression, the first when his Footwork was overturned by the course car in Monaco while being towed back to the pits, the second in Hungary when he was knocked flying by a rescue vehicle sent to attend after his car had broken down. Back to the press handout. Learned profession: racing driver. Mmm . . .