I was not good enough to drive in F1…

But TopGear hearts Taki Inoue. Not only for his heroically disastrous career, but also for his raucous, occasionally X-rated Twitter account, which proves that if you’re going to be the butt of a thousand F1 jokes, you might as well make most of them yourself. @takiinoue mixes weapons-grade self-deprecation with deliciously mangled English and a tendency to let rip on anything F1-related. In a world of drivers and commentators who won’t tweet anything more controversial than their favourite ice-cream flavour for fear of upsetting sponsors or Bernie, Taki is a breath of fresh air. Slightly boozy fresh air, admittedly.

Nowadays Taki lives in Monaco (“not the rich bit”), dividing his time between managing young Japanese F1 drivers (“I am sort of a family babysitter”), running a race outfit in Italy and drinking a lot of alcohol. In person, Taki is as magnificently scatty as his Twitter persona, with a healthy appetite for cold beer and cigars. He’s also delighted to dispense scurrilous tales of F1’s finances. “When Pastor Maldonado brings 35 million [dollars] in sponsors every year, it ****s everything up. 35 million!”

Taki should know. Though inept behind the wheel of a race car, he was mighty adept at convincing minted Japanese sponsors to hand over their cash. Many regard Inoue as the first of F1’s pay drivers - those who obtain a race seat through chequebook rather than pace - but it’s a title he denies. “No! Every single driver is a sort of pay driver. Schumacher, Alonso. Yes, Alonso gets a driving fee, but how much does [Spanish sponsor] Santander pay to Ferrari? What I did was the same. The only difference is that I was not good enough to drive in F1…”I landed on my feet, perfect landing. Nine-point-nine-nine
But in the YouTube bloopers stakes, Inoue’s F1 highlights reel is unsurpassed. At the Hungarian GP a couple of months after the Monaco debacle, Taki’s engine caught fire midway through the race. He stopped at the side of the track, gesturing at the fire marshalls to dash over and extinguish his car. But the dawdling marshalls struggled to grasp the urgency of the situation, so Inoue jumped from his car and legged it to the barriers, seizing an extinguisher.

As he turned back to his Footwork, Taki failed to spot the safety car careering over the grass at him. It clattered into the back of his legs. Taki was thrown over the bonnet before tottering back to his feet, still gamely clinging to the extinguisher. “Bang! Someone hits me very hard,” Inoue remembers. “But I landed on my feet, very good, perfect landing, I think nine-point-nine-nine.”

A few seconds later, Taki collapsed on the deck. It remains one of the most wincingly hilarious F1 moments ever captured on camera, but the slapstick didn’t end there. “I expect the helicopter to take me to hospital, but Charlie [Whiting, F1’s race director] comes in and says, ‘Sorry, Taki, we can’t use the helicopter, otherwise we stop the GP. You wait until the finish, another hour.”

So Taki lies writhing in agony for an hour, before eventually being choppered to the local hospital. “I expect immediately they are checking out my bone, that everything is OK,” remembers Taki ruefully. “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 pay 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.”I say, ‘Is any F1 driver Japanese?’ And they say, ‘Impossible for Japanese’
Faced with luck as limited as his talent, maybe it’s odd Taki didn’t call it a day in F1 then. But, he says, F1 was a teenage obsession that bit hard and refused to let go. “When I was 15, I never seen an F1 car. But when I buy the sweets, there is a trading card, 1978, James Hunt. I say, ‘What is this?’ They say, ‘Taki, this is Formula One.’ I say, ‘Very nice, is any Formula One driver Japanese?’ And they say, ‘Impossible for Japanese.’”

Taki, never one to heed words like ‘impossible’ (nor ‘braking zone’ nor ‘watch out!’, for that matter) took this as a challenge. Even after a few unsuccessful years in Japanese touring cars, Inoue’s F1 dreams were undiminished. “I ask my friend, ‘How do I race in Formula One?’ He says, ‘Taki, you should go to the UK, Formula Ford, 1600, this is the entrance to Formula One.’ So I decide, ‘OK,’ and I go to the UK.”

Another drag of the cigarette, another sip of beer. “This is my first airplane, my first trip outside Japan. I don’t even know how to get into the plane. When they are serving the food, I ask them how much is it; they say, ‘No, you don’t have to pay.’”

When he reached London, his lack of preparation became apparent. “When I arrived at Heathrow, I ask at the information desk, ‘I want to be racing driver, where can I go?’ It’s true. They say, ‘You should go Newmarket - race course there.’ I got a ticket, took the national coach.”

So on a dark and miserable October evening, Inoue rattles out of London and into deepest Norfolk. “The driver says, ‘Newmarket,’ so I get off. Then I ask a man, ‘Is this race course?’ He says, ‘Yes, this is horse-racing course.’ Horse racing! Not car. Very disaster.”I was very scared. The car is very fast!