HOBBS: Brief Memories of Fuji

Formula 1

HOBBS: Brief Memories of Fuji

SPEED's F1 analyst recalls an 8,000-mile trek across the Pacific....for five laps around Fuji Speedway.

David Hobbs | Posted October 11, 2008 Charlotte, N.C.

After the long flight to Japan, Hobbs barely got a chance to put his helmet on before it was time to fly back.

The most memorable thing about Fuji for me was in 1983, when I went there, only to come straight back home again!

I was driving for John Fitzpatrick in the Porsche 956 in the World Sportscar Championship that year, and we flew out of Los Angeles to get there. When we arrived in Tokyo they were in the midst of a typhoon (what we would call a hurricane).

As a consequence, we had to wait for a lot of the other guys to come in, and one of them was going to lead us to the hotel near the circuit, which was called the Gotemba Station. After hours of waiting and screwing around, during which we were completely knackered after flying across the Pacific, we decided to head off.

One of the guys said, “If you get lost, look for this sign,” and gave us a piece of paper which looked like a load of Christmas trees, little boxes, squares and squiggles, which was supposed to denote the Gotemba Station. We figured that couldn’t be too difficult to recognize, but unfortunately when we drove out of the airport we realized that every single sign looked just like the piece of paper we were given! We soon threw that out the window….

Fitzpatrick was driving, and we both ended up falling asleep in the tunnel going under the center of Tokyo. I remember waking up in the passenger seat and looking up the road to see no traffic in front of us. I thought it was rather odd because this was Tokyo, and the traffic is always horrendous. When I looked over at Fitzpatrick, his head was slumped down asleep on the steering wheel, and behind us was about a 20-mile traffic jam, because we were blocking the only lane in the tunnel!

We did finally got to the hotel, and of course it was typically Japanese, with the ceiling around shoulder-height, and a solid bed with one of those rock hard pillows, which was very amusing as you can imagine after a transpacific journey.

The next day we finally made it out to the circuit, and all the top guys were there. Derek Bell in the Rothmans Porsche, along with ourselves, Stefan Johansson, Thierry Boutsen…it was a good field. John went out and did a few laps to get a feel for things, before I did exactly the same. Then John went back out to do the first representative laps of the weekend, but at the long 100R right-hander he had the most enormous crash. Derek Bell actually drove right under him while he was flying through the air, and obviously the car was severely damaged.

When Fitzpatrick got back to the pits he simply said, “Right Dave….we might as well go home then!” So he turned around and shouted a few orders at the crew, telling them to put the remains of the car back in the truck, sell all the tires and the spares for cash and bring the money back to him, and to head for the airport!

So we got back to the hotel, and he’s standing there trying to explain to the Japanese guy behind the counter that we need an airplane. Of course the bloke at the desk doesn’t understand him, so Fitzy starts putting his arms out at his sides like a bird to try and describe an airplane to him, you can imagine how stupid this looked in the lobby of a hotel.

Standing next to him throughout all this was what looked like a geisha girl, all clog shoes and tight dress right down to her feet, she could not have looked more stereotypically Japanese. She then turned to Fitzpatrick, and said in the broadest possible London accent, “Are you trying to get a plane home, mate?”

John’s head just about swung off his shoulders doing a double-take, and it turned out that our geisha friend had attended a high school in the suburb of Battersea for many years, because her Dad had been the cultural attache in London. It made the whole scene absolutely hysterical, and it’s no wonder that’s my main memory of Mount Fuji, because I only did about five laps of the place!

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, SPEED, or Haymarket Worldwide

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Hobbs

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