Lunch with... Johnny Herbert

“F1 was in its turbo days then, of course, and it was quite a jump from 150bhp in the F3 to 950bhp with the F1. It was a full F1 test – Mansell was there in the Williams, Senna in the Lotus-Honda – and I was in Thierry Boutsen’s car. They didn’t have a seat for me, so we got some cushions from Stuart and Di Spires in the motorhome and stuck them behind my shoulders. I went out on my first lap with all that turbo lag, going baaaa, baaaa, round Paddock, down the hill, and then I floored it and it went baaaa, baaaa, ssssss, BAAAAAM! and I was at Druids. It was bloody amazing. It was very, very quick, but you had the brakes, you had the grip, and I had that feeling of contact again, just like I’d grown to love in a kart. I did about 40 laps. Even without a proper seat I was quicker than Boutsen, and [Benetton team boss] Peter Collins was pretty happy.

“He wanted me in the car for 1988, because Teo Fabi was leaving. It came down to a test at Imola between Sandro Nannini, Stefano Modena, who was F3000 champion that year, and me. It was damp in the morning and I’d never driven an F1 car in the wet. Trying to get the tyres warm was interesting: in an F3 car you could poodle around and generate some grip quite easily, but in an F1 car it can be hard to get the temperatures up. In the end Nannini [who’d done two F1 seasons with Minardi] was a bit quicker than I was, and I was quicker than Modena. The Benetton family wanted an Italian in the team anyway, so Sandro got the drive.

“But Benetton took an option on me for F1 in 1989, and Peter came up with a deal whereby Eddie’s new F3000 outfit was sort of the Benetton junior team. So for 1988 I did F3000 for EJR.”

His season started with a win from pole at Jerez, but in the second race at Vallelunga he was punted off by the controversial Swiss driver Gregor Foitek and sustained severe concussion, missing the next race. At Monza he came through from the back of the grid to third, setting a lap record which stood for several seasons. Then Team Lotus asked him to an F1 test at Monza.

“Benetton released me to do it. I did 135 laps over two days, and ended up 0.3sec faster than Nelson Piquet. Afterwards Peter Warr said that if Benetton didn’t take up their option for 1989, Lotus was interested. Then when I got to Brands for the August F3000 round Frank Williams was there, and he said he wanted to talk to me after the race. Everything was going so well for me, my confidence was growing and growing.”

At Brands, as expected, he took pole by a clear margin, and was leading the race when it was red-flagged after Foitek and Roberto Moreno collided at Paddock Bend. At the restart Johnny, fatefully, made a bad start, and was third into Paddock just ahead of Foitek. “He was on my outside and we banged wheels at Druids. We came down Graham Hill, through Surtees and onto the Grand Prix circuit, and he tried to pass me with two wheels on the grass. It was bloody tight, I suppose we were doing 150mph, and his right front wheel hit my left rear. That swung me left and, one of those unfortunate things, it was just where the Armco came out round the bottom of the bridge over the track. Anywhere else I would have hit the barrier a glancing blow, but at that point I hit it head on. Most of the front of the car, the nose and the front suspension, came off in that first impact. Then it shot across to the other side and again went in head on, this time with my feet hanging out the front. It was in the early days of carbon fibre – very strong, but it would shatter on impact, and it shattered all the way back to my knees.”

In the ensuing pile-up 10 cars were involved. Foitek’s car cartwheeled down the track, but he escaped with a broken wrist. But Johnny’s lower legs, ankles and feet suffered massive and complex injuries. He describes them in dispassionate, even-voiced detail.

“When it all stopped I opened my eyes and all I could see was a big hole in the front of my car. I thought my legs were gone. I just remember saying to the people who came to me, ‘Knock me out, knock me out.’ Then I was in the hospital in Sidcup and they were saying, he could lose the left one, he won’t walk again. I’d lost a lot of blood, so I was out of it most of the time. The left foot was the one that was hanging off, so they sewed it back on. The right one just got smashed, dislocated at the ankle, the big toe got sliced off, it all got very hammered. Apparently one of my racing boots got collected by one of the other cars, and made it back to the pits in its air intake. The left ankle joint got broken, too, so they put that back together, but I haven’t really got any movement in that one. Lucky it’s that way round, you see, because the left foot just does the clutch, the right does the throttle and brake. There were still a lot of bits and pieces inside, and for years after I’d get these infections, everything would swell up, and the odd thing would come out of my heel, some bits of rubber or a blade of grass.

“The hospital at Sidcup was brilliant. It was where they’d take the bikers who crashed at Brands, so they had experience of broken bones. I was there for about a month, and then I was moved to a private hospital, and then eventually I went to the Tony Mathis clinic in Austria to try to build up some strength.

“Through it all, there was never any question in my mind that I wasn’t going to get back to racing. The doctors told Becky I would never drive again, but they didn’t say it to me, and Becky supported me. I could have gone away for two years, got myself better, and then come back and said, ‘Da-da! Here I am,’ and no team would have touched me with a bargepole. So I knew I had to get back as soon as I could. There were bad days, of course, but I just believed I could do it. If you try your hardest at something and it works, it’s worth it. If you try and don’t succeed, at least you’ve tried. I worked and worked, and then I’d have a bad day, get depressed, then I’d start again, get myself motivated and just do it. It was hard and painful stuff. It wasn’t just my legs and feet, it was getting my head to heal.

“Through it all Peter Collins was so supportive. He kept phoning me up and asking how I was, and one day, when I was still in a wheelchair, my legs in plaster, he phoned me from Jerez. He was at the Spanish GP, so it was six weeks after the accident. He said Benetton were taking up their option on me. That gave me something to work towards. Peter had massive faith in me.

“So in December I got myself to Silverstone for a test. I was on crutches now, but I wasn’t allowed to put any pressure on my left foot. Got in the F1 car, did a few laps, I was just getting into the groove, and I came in and said to Peter: ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ His face went white. Then I said, ‘I’ll just give it one more go.’ Went out and did a really good quick lap. I came back in and said to him, ‘I had you going there, didn’t I?’ It was just a joke, one of my jokes.

“Then we went to Rio for the pre-season tyre testing. Flavio [Briatore] had come into Benetton now, and I wasn’t allowed crutches, he didn’t want to see one of his drivers like that. He said it didn’t present the right image for the team. So I hobbled around, which I thought looked worse. I was told I had to do a race-distance test. I didn’t know at the time, but Flavio said I had to do it, because he was sure I couldn’t get through it, and he had Emanuele Pirro standing by to fly out. The mechanics filled the car right up – race distance tanks in those days – but they didn’t think I’d last, either. So I went out, and kept going until the fuel ran out.

“Then the race, and I finished fourth. I was 10.5 seconds behind Mansell in the Ferrari, who won, and 2.7sec behind Prost, who was second in the McLaren. Everybody was in shock about that. And I’d outqualified Nannini in the other Benetton, too.

“Actually Rio was a less punishing circuit than most from a braking point of view. There was one hard braking point at the hairpin, and there was a big bump there, and every lap it hurt like hell because my left leg was swollen where it hadn’t healed properly. I found that if I let my leg go totally relaxed at that point my foot would go bang against the side of the cockpit, smack it so hard it sort of went over the pain threshold, which helped. I took 10 Nurofen before the race. I talked to Prof Watkins, and he told me what I could and couldn’t take. At the end of the race I got out of the car pretty slow because I was really hurting – but I still got out before ‘Noige’ did.” Laughter.

“Nothing after that was quite as good as Rio. At Imola I qualified 23rd, got up to eighth but then spun. But I finished. Monaco was a disaster because I couldn’t brake properly. I didn’t have the strength in the ball of my right foot: I could only apply about half the necessary pressure. The brakes weren’t even getting warm, and the only way I could do it was by braking with my heel. But I finished. Mexico I lost third and fourth gear, but I finished. Phoenix I finished fifth, from 25th on the grid. But in Montréal – a heavy braking circuit again – I didn’t qualify. That was it. Flavio fired me. Actually he didn’t have the balls to do it himself. He got his secretary to phone me and tell me I’d been dropped.

“It was a shame, because the tracks where I was always going to struggle were behind us then, and coming up were places I could adapt to better, like Silverstone and Hockenheim. So there were a few tears. But it was probably the right thing, actually. I think my feet were getting worse at that point, and obviously I was under a lot of pressure. Later that season I did Spa and Estoril for Tyrrell, because Jean Alesi was tied to F3000 races those weekends, but neither of those was much good. So I decided to go away to Japan for 1990 and race there in sports cars and F3000, get myself as close to 100 per cent fit as I could. That year in Japan was a great help: I did a lot of racing, with much less pressure. And I came back to race at Le Mans.”

Johnny did the 24 Hours three times in Mazda’s raucous rotary-powered machine, driving with Volker Weidler and old FF sparring partner Bertrand Gachot. In 1990 they retired; in ’92 they were fourth. But in ’91 they scored a memorable victory, the first for a Japanese car.

“I did Le Mans to show people in Europe I was on the mend. I never expected to win, so the victory in 1991 was a bonus. Not getting on the podium was something else. I did a triple stint at the end because we were in the lead, and the team decided it would be silly to put someone else in the car when I was in a groove and everything was OK. So each time I came in to refuel I stayed in the car. The fluid in my drink bottle got used up in the first stint, and it was a very hot afternoon, and really hot inside the car. At the end I got out, my head was spinning, and I collapsed over the bonnet. They took me to the medical centre and got some fluids into me, and I was fit for the party. But I missed the podium.

“Late in 1990 Lotus called me up to do the last two GPs, Japan and Australia, after Martin Donnelly had his accident in Jerez. By 1991 my old mentor Peter Collins was running Lotus. Things weren’t working out with Julian Bailey, so in June Peter was my saviour again. He gave me my second chance in F1, alongside Mika Häkkinen.”

Johnny was a Lotus fixture at Hethel for the next four seasons. The team was in its twilight years, and the car was at best a midfield runner. But there were high spots. At Interlagos in 1992 he qualified dead last and came through to seventh, before Boutsen took him out. At Montréal and Suzuka he qualified sixth, only for the car to fail each time. In ’93 he had a trio of fourth places at Interlagos, the wet Donington and Silverstone, and at Monza in ’94 he was fourth on the grid, only to be punted off at the first corner by Eddie Irvine’s Jordan. In his two years alongside Häkkinen, Johnny outqualified Mika 14 to 10.

“During ’91 and ’92 I felt more at home with the cars, because we had big wings, big fat tyres, lots of grip. You could be aggressive, and in a way it filtered out some of my problems. When the rules changed the cars got more sensitive, and I didn’t have the delicacy of touch in my feet.

“I tried to leave Lotus during 1993 to further my career, but understandably Peter held onto me. Then after Portugal in ’94 it all unravelled: the money had run out. The team was liquidated, and Tom Walkinshaw bought my contract as one of the assets. He and Flavio were controlling Ligier as well as Benetton, and I did Jerez for Ligier alongside Olivier Panis – finished eighth. From there I went to a test in Barcelona with my Ligier overalls, but when I got there Flavio said, ‘No, you’re testing for Benetton.’ Typical Flav, keeping me guessing. So for the last two GPs of the year I found myself in the Benetton team, replacing Jos Verstappen.

“And for 1995 that’s where I was, back with Flav, and alongside Michael Schumacher. In Brazil Michael qualified second, I qualified fourth, but in the race I had a clutch problem. Then in Argentina I was 0.012sec slower than Michael in first practice. As we were walking to the car park that evening he said, ‘There are things to do with my driving that I don’t want you to see, and I expect there are things about yours that you don’t want me to see.’ ‘Doesn’t worry me what you see,’ I said, ‘the quickest man is the quickest man.’ And he said, ‘Well, I don’t want you to see my data.’ Next morning Ross [Brawn, the Benetton technical chief] told me Michael had had a word with Flavio, and Flavio had agreed it. So I was banned from looking at his data – although he could still see mine. Michael’s way isn’t my way, I know he will try all sorts of things to have the team for himself, and I don’t blame him. But it was Flavio who allowed it. He’d said, ‘This is a team thing, we want to win the Constructors’ title together’ – well, we did win the Constructors’, helped by the two wins and the 45 points I got them. But Flav was always having little digs at me, and I’ve never understood why. Maybe I didn’t handle it well, and took it all too personally. Slowly it all deteriorated.