Heeere’s Johnny!
Grand prix and Le Mans winner Johnny Herbert talks to DAMIEN SMITH about his career, today’s drivers, being an F1 steward and that crash
The British Grand Prix, 1995, into the closing stages. For once, the cards have fallen in Johnny Herbert’s favour. Damon Hill has bungled a pass on Michael Schumacher, leaving both the Williams and Benetton in the Silverstone gravel. David Coulthard in the other Williams had been a pest and got past, but a pit-lane speeding penalty has now knocked him back. Herbert leads. After everything, the operations, the setbacks, the endless physio, the constant pain… It’s been seven years since he mangled both feet and nearly lost one in that damned accident. Now here he is, about to win his home grand prix. But as usual, he’s distracted by the sheer effort of simply driving.
“I was literally screaming in the car,” Herbert recalls today. The toe that “got chopped off and stitched back on” was causing agony from the constant shift from throttle to brake, brake to throttle. “I thought: I have to find a way to get around this. I cannot carry on. I could do left-foot braking, but braking is all in your ankles – and neither of mine move. In those laps at Silverstone I learned I could do one lap left-foot braking, two laps with the right foot, then another with the left. That relieved the pain.” Instead of feeling the pedal through the tips of his toes and moderating pressure through his ankle like racing drivers normally do, Herbert had to rely on sensations through his knees and hips… Unnatural, but when you don’t have a choice, needs must.
Herbert raced 160 grands prix between 1989 and 2000
F1 debut at the 1989 Brazilian GP ranks among the finest
The pain has never left him. He lives with it still today. At 60, “I’m lucky I’m not in a wheelchair,” he says. ‘Lucky’ is a word Herbert uses often. Given the state of his feet, that might seem strange. But from his perspective, it’s amazing he had a racing career at all.