Pay drivers often get more than they bargain for when they shell out for a place on the Formula 1 grid and Taki Inoue was no different, playing the leading role in one of the more bizarre accidents in the sport’s history
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Taki Inoue, right, raced for Footwork Arrows in the 1995 F1 season(Image: LAT Images via Getty Images)
If the enduring memory of your Formula 1 career is of ironically being run over by the safety car, then it’s safe to say there wasn’t much else to shout about on track. To Taki Inoue’s credit, he readily admits that he is probably the worst driver ever to enjoy a spell racing in the sport.
The Japanese racer appeared 18 times in F1 over two years and, of course, failed to score a single championship in that time. He only actually finished five of those races. Having made his debut with a single appearance for Simtek in 1994, his one and only full season followed a year later, racing for the British Footwork Arrows team. The only reason he got that seat was because the team was short of cash and Inoue, a self-confessed pay driver, could provide a sackful of it.
“Every single driver is a sort of pay driver,” he said in one Top Gear interview. “[Michael] Schumacher, [Fernando] Alonso. Yes, Alonso gets a driving fee, but how much [did] Santander pay to Ferrari? What I did was the same. The only difference is that I was not good enough to drive in F1.”
Inoue lives in Monaco – the scene of one of the two incidents from that 1995 season by which the 59-year-old’s F1 career is remembered. He was sat in his car being taken back to the pits during qualifying, after suffering a mechanical issue, when he was hit by the safety car, causing his own car to flip over.
His helmet was crushed, so it was a good job he had remembered to put it back on shortly before. Fortunately, Inoue was himself undamaged and was fit to race the following day. More than half the field failed to finish the Grand Prix, including the Japanese who suffered a gearbox issue.
He didn’t escape completely unscathed a couple of months later, when the second and even more infamous incident involving him took place. His engine caught fire part way through the Hungarian Grand Prix, so he pulled over to the side of the track and gestured for help from the marshals. So far, so normal.
But what happened next remains a regular staple in most compilations of F1’s strangest incidents on YouTube. Seemingly not content with the quick spray of foam on his car, Inoue clambered out of the cockpit of his car and ran to grab an extinguisher for himself, before turning back to his car.
The mistake he made was not looking. In his haste, he walked directly in front of the safety car which had been driven over the grass to come to help. It hit his legs hard and he was sent up onto the bonnet, in slapstick fashion. At first he landed on his feet, but after a few moments he fell to the floor in pain.
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Taki Inoue was infamously run over by the safety car during the 1995 Hungarian Grand Prix(Image: Czarek Sokolowski/AP/REX/Shutterstock)
“Bang! Someone hits me very hard,” said Inoue, recalling the incident. “But I landed on my feet, very good, perfect landing – I think nine-point-nine-nine.” After cracking that joke, he then explained why there was a delay in taking him for a medical check-up despite the intense pain in his leg.
“I expect the helicopter to take me to hospital, but Charlie [Whiting, F1 race director at the time] comes in and says, ‘Sorry Taki, we can’t use the helicopter, otherwise we stop the GP. You wait until the finish, another hour.” Once he was finally taken to hospital, he remembers being hounded for payment before he had even been treated.
Inoue continued: “I expect immediately they are checking out my bone, that everything is okay. But they say, ‘Taki, we want your credit card.’ I say, ‘What? Credit card? I don’t have it!’ I am still in my race suit! But they want to be paid first, otherwise they won’t help me. I say, ‘Come on, I’m very painful.’ Another half an hour, big negotiation. I didn’t pay. For two years, they keep sending invoice to me in Monaco.”