Innes
Ireland

Innes Ireland was born on 12 June 1930 in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, and grew up in Scotland. He trained as an engineer with Rolls-Royce and served as an officer in the British Army, spending 1953 and 1954 with the Parachute Regiment in the Suez Canal Zone. He started racing in 1954 in a Riley 9 and took part in national events from 1957. Success in sports car racing led to his Formula One debut with Team Lotus in 1959.

Between 1959 and 1966 he started 50 World Championship races from 53 entries. In 1960 he won three non-championship Formula One races and finished fourth in the World Championship. After a crash at the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix he returned to racing, won the Solitude Grand Prix and the Flugplatzrennen, and ended the season by winning the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. It was his only championship victory, and he took four podium finishes in total. He never took a pole position.

He drove for Lotus until 1962, used cars from BRP and Lotus in 1963 and 1964, and drove a Lotus in 1965. In 1966 he made his last two World Championship starts in a BRM. Away from the championship he won eight Formula One races. He also entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans eight times between 1958 and 1966 and was a race winner in the British Saloon Car Championship. In 1967 he took part in the Daytona 500, where his engine failed.

Ireland also worked as a writer and journalist. His autobiography, All Arms and Elbows, appeared in 1967, followed in 1970 by Marathon in the Dust, about the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon. In the late 1980s he covered Formula One races for ESPN and wrote for Road & Track and Autocar. From 1992 until his death in Reading on 22 October 1993 he was president of the British Racing Drivers' Club.

Source: Wikipedia, “Innes Ireland”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.