{"id":4177,"date":"2014-12-01T15:00:26","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/demo.sportscardigest.com\/?p=4177"},"modified":"2024-01-04T22:32:50","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T22:32:50","slug":"paying-race-isnt-easy-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.supercars.net\/blog\/paying-race-isnt-easy-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying to Race Isn’t the Easy Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Inoue is shown here in the Hart-powered Footwork FA16 at Silverstone’s 1995 British Grand Prix
where he spun into retirement after 16 laps.
Photo: Peter Collins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I started racing in my home country, Japan, it was in a touring car\u2014a bit of a \u201cMickey Mouse\u201d car compared with the touring cars known in Europe, but it was a start. There were many experienced drivers in the series\u2014The Fuji Freshman Series\u2014I felt very inexperienced and a little out of my depth. After just a handful of races in 1985 and 1986, I decided I had to move to the UK.\u00a0 I needed good training and advice if I was going to take my ambition to become a racing driver seriously. So, I moved\u2014that would be around 1987\u2014and took a Jim Russell Racing Drivers Course at Snetterton. It sounds very easy, but what you have to remember, I was Japanese and couldn\u2019t speak very much English. Of course, not many English people speak Japanese. It\u2019s not just a question of language, it\u2019s living in a country quite different in many ways to my own. Although I struggled, I got through\u2014taking jobs here and there to pay for my racing.<\/p>\n

The following season I thought I was ready to race in the FF1600 Championship. David Sears, who was to play a bigger part in my future racing gave me a start and I raced in the 1988 FF1600 Championship in England. The racing, and I think this is especially so in the UK, at FF1600 level is very exciting. There are many young drivers all trying to be the best, all trying to win and get noticed, they all want to get to Formula One. It was a great experience\u2014especially the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch. I can\u2019t say I was the best driver, but I got great experience. I wanted to return the following year and compete in the British Formula Three Championship. I thought it was just a matter of returning to Japan, getting the sponsorship, returning to the UK and paying a team for a drive\u2014I was so wrong. I mention the word paying, as the English words that you first seem to understand are \u201cNo pay, no drive!\u201d If only I\u2019d been paid for the times I heard it.\u00a0 Paying doesn\u2019t buy you anything in a team, just the seat to drive for the race weekend, no testing\u2014it doesn\u2019t mean they like you, or they will take care of you either\u2014as I found out at Footwork.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n