NIGEL ROEBUCK’S HEROES
The gentlemanly Innes Ireland
yet essentially a gentleman, and as humane an individual as I have known in racing. A character is what he was, and among the fastest drivers of his generation. Take the Oulton Park Gold Cup in 1960, where his Lotus 18 simply left the rest behind – ‘the rest’ including Rob Walker’s similar car, driven by one Stirling Moss. When the mood took him, Ireland could hack it with anyone, but invariably his luck was poor, and that day was typical in that the car eventually broke.
There was always a strong element of fatalism in Ireland, and indubitably his career was signposted by a number of sizeable accidents. Innes was under no illusions about Lotuses of the time, reluctantly accepting that if Colin Chapman’s radical cars were mighty quick, they were also mighty fragile: “Setting off on a lap of Spa, lad, it was best to put your imagination on a very low light. Something would break, and you’d come in, and they’d Sellotape it together, or whatever, and send you out again...”
In the mid-nineties one of my occasional auction visits involved items from Ireland’s career, and one lot – a pair of overalls – was a stark reminder of those perilous days. In the catalogue, they were described thus: ‘The blue cotton two-piece racing suit worn by Innes Ireland during practice for the Monaco Grand Prix of 1961, both trousers and top with accident damage and cuts made by first-aiders’.
Innes told it this way: “We had this new wrong-way-round gearbox on the Lotus, and in the heat of the moment I got second instead of fourth, locked the back wheels solid, and that was that. Came out of the tunnel without the car...”
Among those who stopped at the scene was Moss, a close friend. “Innes had been thrown down the road, and was pretty knocked about,” Stirling remembered, “but although he was in a lot of pain, his priorities were clear. ‘Wedding tackle OK?’ he asked, and I reassured him that all seemed well. “Goodo,” he said. “Now, give me a cigarette…”
Compounding the problems of a man who shunted many times was his inability to tolerate analgesics. His identity bracelet, another item in the auction, bore the legend, ‘Innes Ireland –
A Rh Pos – Allergic to morphine’. To whisky, though, Innes had no such aversion, and he always maintained that ‘Scottish wine’ was a painkiller beyond compare.
To see his overalls in the auction room that day, was a reminder of a different time, for nearby were other driving suits from the modern era, all festooned with patches. The light blue cotton suits of 60 years ago were supplied to the drivers by Dunlop, and carried the company’s logo, but the only other badge displayed by Ireland was that of the BRDC.
After making his name with Lotus sportscars, Innes came into F1 with the factory team in 1959, hitting the headlines early the following year when the 18, Colin Chapman’s first rear-engined car, made its debut. At Goodwood and Silverstone – against such as Moss and Jack Brabham – Innes was untouchable, and the following year, at Watkins Glen, scored the first grand prix victory for Team Lotus.
By this time, though, the devoutly unsentimental Chapman had concluded – not unreasonably – that the team’s future lay with
INNES IRELAND WAS FEISTY AND TOUGH,
Jim Clark, and within weeks of victory at the Glen, Ireland was brusquely dropped. He was a trusting man, and part of him, I think, never got over what he saw as a betrayal of his loyalty.
Even in the late sixties Innes had come to hate increasing commercialisation in a sport he always considered a romantic vocation. “The decision to give up racing,” he wrote in his autobiography, “has been the most difficult thing I have ever done. Perhaps, if I had not lived with the belief that motor racing was the ‘Sport of Gentlemen’, the decision would have been easier. I have never been able to equate money to motor racing.” The times, they were indeed different. All Arms and Elbows contains all manner of anecdote from an immensely colourful career, but Ireland told me that it was very much a pasteurised version of his original manuscript. “Would have ruffled too many feathers, I suppose,” he said. “Well, that’s what the bloody libel lawyers thought, anyway…”
In this era, when minor drivers have managers who have deputies who have assistants, it is hard to take in that once there were folk – at vastly greater risk than now – who raced F1 cars for shekels, and thought themselves lucky to be paid at all for doing something they loved. “Even so,” Innes would murmur, “I must be one of few drivers who left the sport with less money than when I arrived.”
He had absolute contempt for the avariciousness of Formula 1 in later years. In 1992, immediately after the Italian Grand Prix, I was invited to the 30th anniversary celebrations of the Club
International des Anciens Pilotes de Grand Prix in Venice. Around 40 retired drivers were present, and most had been at Monza, where the story of the weekend was Nigel Mansell’s emotional announcement that he would not be staying with Williams for 1993.
“To say I’ve been badly treated is a gross understatement,” Mansell had said of Frank’s refusal to go the extra millions, at which Ireland was first apoplectic, then sad. “How the hell,” he muttered, “can anyone walk out on the best team for the sake of money? How much can one man spend, for Christ’s sake?”
Innes was on fine form throughout that trip. A few of us knew that he was being treated for the prostate cancer which would eventually claim him, but he never complained about it. For all he got himself into endless scrapes in the course of a highly spirited life, his innate dignity was never threatened.
After retiring from driving in 1967, Ireland took up journalism. An unusually well-read man, he could write beautifully: few words on motor racing ever moved me like his piece for Autocar on the death of Clark.
The last time I saw Innes, in the autumn of 1993, was at the memorial service for James Hunt, another charmingly anarchic character of the kind for which F1 cries out in this depressingly ‘woke’ age. It was of course a moving occasion, but most poignant of all was that the lesson was read by Ireland, whose own time was near. A month or so later he was gone, aged only 63.
Innes was a good friend of mine, someone I miss to this day, and whenever I’m asked about him, one particular memory always springs to mind. I was sitting with him on the flight back from Hockenheim one year, and Heathrow approached before Innes was quite ready for it. As the tyres chirruped on the tarmac, his seat belt was undone, his table down, his seat back. In one hand was a cigarette, in the other a scotch. There was not, I pointed out, a single rule he had left unbroken. “Right, lad!” he beamed. I could have said nothing to please him more.
THE DECISION TO GIVE UP RACING HAS BEEN THE MOST DIFFICULT THING I HAVE EVER DONE INNES ” IRELAND