Non-English-speaking drivers

[Paul Hayes]

Those of us who live in the English-speaking world are incredibly fortunate that English has pretty much become the language of Formula One - everyone seems to speak it, from the team owners and managers to the drivers to many of the mechanics and other team members.

This got me wondering the other day, for no particular reason than mere curiosity - when was the last time there was a non-English-speaking driver in F1?

I seem to recall that Tora Takagi, at least initially, hadn't learned English when he was at Tyrrell. I also remember Martin Brundle mentioning once in commentary that he felt that Olivier Panis's F1 career had been held back in its early days by the fact that he didn't speak English, although he certainly spoke it later on of course.

Has there been a more recent example? Who was the last non-English-speaking driver - and, indeed, is it even possible or practical to be a non-English-speaking F1 driver these days?

(I hasten to add that I'm not trying to suggest they *should* all speak English, or that it's somehow better that they do - it just seems to have been the way things have worked out in F1)

[Rob Dylan]

I know it's not entirely that he didn't speak English, but when Petrov got his podium back 5 years ago, when they interviewed him in the press conference he seemed to me to be genuinely struggling, as he was probably very unused to having to do major interviews in English. They interviewed him a few races later and it's obvious that he'd improved significantly even by that point, so his manager probably put him on some intensive English course to help him improve. That's the only recent example I can think of.

[sw3ishida]

Wasn't Gaston Mazzacane notoriously lacking in English-speaking, too? Or he was at least a weak speaker of English

[Peteroli34]

Yuji Ide couldn't speak English and Aguri Suzuki had to translate for him

[Paul Hayes]

Yuji Ide couldn't speak English and Aguri Suzuki had to translate for him

Ah yes - I'd forgotten about Ide.

[tommykl]

Yuji Ide couldn't speak English and Aguri Suzuki had to translate for him

Ah yes - I'd forgotten about Ide.

Not only that, Yuji even had some trouble with Japanese. Aguri claimed that even he didn't always understand what Yuji was telling him.

[RonDenisDeletraz]

Julian Bailey

[DemocalypseNow]

I imagine it's most difficult for the Japanese drivers. Those from the rest of the world tend to gravitate towards Britain even in the earliest days of their career, given that is the heart of the motorsport industry, and so much of the relevant racing that represents the important formative years of their career take place here. Japan is one of the few countries that seems to focus on working up the ladder within their home country and not head to the UK or Europe - understandable given they're on the other side of the planet from us.

Another factor to consider would be demographics. Racing drivers tend to come from well-off families of varying degrees. This usually goes hand in hand with receiving a good education, thus increasing the probability of learning a second language. With English being the most popular second language in the world, it's little surprise much of the motorsport fraternity is at the very least semi-literate in English.

I remember Sakon Yamamoto (understandably) struggling as well. If the average reaction of a monolingual English speaker to seeing/hearing Japanese is one of utter perplexity, imagine how they must feel trying to make sense of ours.

[Barbazza]

Wasn't Tuero another who struggled as well?

[mario]

I know it's not entirely that he didn't speak English, but when Petrov got his podium back 5 years ago, when they interviewed him in the press conference he seemed to me to be genuinely struggling, as he was probably very unused to having to do major interviews in English. They interviewed him a few races later and it's obvious that he'd improved significantly even by that point, so his manager probably put him on some intensive English course to help him improve. That's the only recent example I can think of.

Petrov was certainly one of the weaker English speakers in recent years, and whilst he did make efforts to improve his language skills, it nevertheless did hold him back to some extent. I recall that McNish mentioned that Petrov had some difficulty in setting his car up because, with his engineers and mechanics using English as a common language, he struggled to provide them with feedback and to explain how he wanted them to adjust the set up.

[girry]

Another factor to consider would be demographics. Racing drivers tend to come from well-off families of varying degrees. This usually goes hand in hand with receiving a good education, thus increasing the probability of learning a second language.

This is what Finland (and Sweden, to a degree) does different!

Whilst there really isn't a clear British-esque social structure present in the society, motor racing in general has a "lower class"/low education reputation here (albeit late 90's/early 00's the Mika bandwagon was popular amongst everybody). That's because our racing tradition mostly derives from rallying which (still) is an inexpensive sport compared to karting - here, motorsport wasn't a sport for the rich, even in the very beginning. (Think NASCAR in America.) Then, from the 60's on, more and more kids had an access to a car and the space to practise in the ever-emptying countryside; and most importantly, there really wasn't much else to do for the rural kids but fishing, ******* and rallying..

As international rallying success began coming through doors and windows, some big companies started getting interested in motorsport as well - and around the same time on the circuit racing side of things, Keke hit the jackpot. Bam: this newly-generated sponsorship and Keke's management helped many of the new kids (Mika/Mika, JJ, Tero Palmroth..) without other means to climb up the circuit ladder, they used their chance, and thanks to them, any talent there is in Finland, rich or poor, who has the means to kart has way better chances of getting "picked up" than an aspiring karter from, say, Portugal or Norway - effectively ensuring that there's as little waste of talent as possible.

It also ensures that motorsport retains its "working class" status: all of our seven WRC champions were the sons of more-or-less poor farmers - and whilst Keke was relatively well-off (his parents were veterinars), and JJ & Bottas would both do "okay", each of Häkkinen, Kovalainen and especially Salo & Räikkönen was from a poor-ish family and they'd all have some menial job in a factory if not for their sports abilities. Except maybe from Kimi because he managed to graduate and got the credentials of a car mechanic before going karting abroad..

That is also the reason why many Finnish drivers speak quite idiosyncratic English in interviews (and often accidentaly break the interview norms, which usually is funny) - they're not well educated. The pre-70's racing heroes barely spoke English or not at all (there are some stories about Leo Kinnunen refusing to sign a sportscar contract because he didn't understand it in English), and none of the Kankkunens, Häkkinens, Mäkinens, Räikkönens really speak well - whereas the Rosbergs and the Lehtos spoke just fine. Actually, only Kovalainen breaks the chain by being better at English than his background suggests. We all want his head for breaking the tradition.
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Such is our racing drivers' label of being "working class", that the term "rallienglanti" ("rally-english") has become the term to describe any mis-use of English language by a Finn. Not to forget about the amount of Finnish teachers who have a beef with Häkkinen, because his, um, limited understanding of linguistics saw him enrich our grammatics by bringing in the "you-passive" - a feature previously unknown in Finnish language, but introduced by Häkkinen mid 90's, and now (mis-)used by everybody!

[Paul Hayes]

Very interesting stuff, thank you!

It's always interesting with Hakkinen, as when you see him speaking to the team quite casually in the 1993 BBC documentary "The Team: A Year with McLaren", he seems much more fluent in English than he ever does in any interviews!

[DemocalypseNow]

I had thought as much, but didn't want to make assumptions that turned out to be wrong! I recall Jani Paasonen struggling greatly at English interviews during his time in the WRC.