Taki Inoue - The worst F1 driver ever?

#Blogpost

Taki Inoue was a Japanese racing driver who competed in 18 Formula One races across the 1994 and 1995 season. By many people he is considered to be the worst Formula One driver ever.

The beginning
Takachiho “Taki” Inoue was born on the 5th of September 1963 in Kobe, Japan.

In 1988 at the age of 25 he moved to the British Formula Ford Championship. After an unsuccessful season he moved back to Japan to compete in the All-Japan Formula Three Championship, after some more unsuccessful season he moved to the International Formula 3000 championship in 1994.

Formula One
Inoue made his F1 debut at the 1994 Japanese Grand Prix driving in the horribly uncompetitive Simtek-Ford S941. Inoue qualified in 26th place, 7.8 seconds of the pole time set by Michael Schumacher. He retired from the race on lap 3 out of 50 after he spun off the track and was unable to get his car out of the gravel. This was the only race he did in the 1994 season.

Inoue was probably best known for two bizzare incidents in which he was involved in.
The first one occurring at the 1995 Monaco GP after he managed to hit the course car, driven by Jean Ragnotti, this caused Inoue’s car to roll into the barriers. He didn’t have any mayor injuries so he was deemed fit enough to race.

The second one of his peculiar incidents happened at the 1995 Hungarian Grand Prix in which he managed to get run over by the safety car. Inoue’s car caught fire during the race, when he got out of the car he wasn’t paying attention and walked straight into the path of the safety car who was approaching to pick him up, the car couldn’t stop in time and ran him over.

Out of the 17 races he did in the 1995 season driving for Footwork he only managed to finish five times, he took his career best result at the Italian Grand Prix when he finished 8th. Back then only the top 6 scored points.
For 1996 he lobbied Tyrrell for a drive, but in the end they chose for Ukyo Katayama.
It was later announced that Inoue would be driving for Minardi in 1997, but his sponsors withdrew at the last moment which made an end to his Formula One career.
After a brief switch to racing sports cars he retired from Motorsport in 1999.

That’s all for now.

Have a nice day :D

Marijn M.