Met a Reject F1 driver today!

[leywso]

So today I had a tour of Silverstone- a Christmas present from my lovely wife. Visited the 'old' and 'new' paddocks including control rooms, podium, pits, commentary boxes, interview rooms, garages...

But the highlight was the fact that our tour guide turned out to be Ian Ashley, a contemporary of James Hunt and sometime F1 racer in the mid-1970s, albeit with only four starts and two finishes (14th and 17th) to his name. I did not know much about him at the time, but was captivated to hear him talk so wisely about this, that and everything. He spoke wistfully about the old configuration of Silverstone and the thrill of the full-speed Woodcote corner; his rapid and sometimes error-strewn rise to F1 (hence his and Hunt's nicknames of 'Crashley' and 'Shunt'; taking part in the Crystal Palace F3 Trophy race in 1970 where Hunt crashed into Dave Morgan on the last turn ("I drove past thinking James, what have you done...?"); the trials of the BRDC in maintaining the British GP; and most grippingly, he recounted the crash that ended his F1 career in Canada in 1977. A horrific sounding accident involving Ashley flipping his Hesketh and crashing into an unmanned TV camera tower- yet he spoke so elegantly and calmly about it, as it he'd clipped another car in a Tesco carpark.

I could have listened to him talk all day. A great experience.

[Bobby Doorknobs]

I can only imagine how great an experience it must have been to meet an F1 reject. This seems like a good starting point for an Ian Ashley profile