Johnny Herbert

It's been, ooh, 8 or 9 months now since Johnny Herbert's last Grand Prix. It says something for the man and his character when the build up to a GP seems more like a funeral witout his chirpy pre race interviews. Ironic, I suppose, when you consider that on numerous occasions Johnny nearly took part in a funeral of his own. Johnny was born on June 25 1964 somewhere in Essex (some think Brentwood, some don't). By the age of 9 he was already super-fast in a kart, and before long was dominating major karting events. Soon after, aged 13, his career really took off when he claimed victory in the South Leytonstone Scalextric Championships - a victory ...

Johnny Herbert is probably the most unlucky F1 driver ever. This season he has had the worst luck of all, and only finished one or two races (if that) and at Jaguar he didn't really perform to his best, although I imagine the car wasn't as good as he'd had hoped. And for the past few seasons Herbert hasn't really done anything, won anything, but, he did do extremely well for Beneton a few years back when I remember he won a couple of Grand Prix (convincingly) inxcluding our very own Silverstone GP. He also did very well for Stewart, but had an awful lot of bad luck there as well. At Jaguar (although it's practically the same team) he ...

Sadly the recent Malaysian Grand Prix was Johnny Herbert's last in Formula One. He has said that he will not be back on the Grand Prix circuit next year and for me that is a great loss to the Championship. In the mid 1980s Johnny appeared to be Britain's next great hope on the motor racing scene. He was doing extremely well in F3000, until a massive shunt at Brands Hatch left his legs with horrible injuries, ones which he still struggles with today. Regardless of the fact that he could hardly walk he made his F1 debut in Brazil in 1989, coming a remarkable fourth in his first race with Benetton. However internal politics interferred, and Johnny ...