Jailbird F1 drivers.

RasputinLives

No passing through my dirty air please
Contributor
Eddie Irvine has been sent to prison!! not because of his mouth or his dress sense though but for getting into a brawl!

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-25672557

I'm pretty sure he will just up anchor his boat and clear off to another country and not go to prison but it got me thinking about how many drivers or personnel from F1 have ever ended up doing Porridge.

I can think of Betrand Gachot and of course slasher Sutil just missed it.

Anyone got anymore?
 
:yesss: Yes yes yes best news I have heard for years. Lets hear your ludicrous bat shit crazy opinions now you stinky fingered leprechaun humping cockwomble.
 
Rene Arnoux spent a night in jail after failing to qualify for the 1981 Belgian GP at Zolder.
He was obviously in a bad mood. A traffic cop foolishly tried preventing Rene from jumping his place in the queue at the exit of the paddock gate by sitting on his car's bonnet.
Needless to say, the cop got a free and terrifying ride on Rene's car, all the way to Arnoux's hotel a few miles away...
The cop called his colleagues once he regained his composure and that was it.
The incident was narrated in that year's Autocourse.
 
I'm sttruggling to think of any others apart from those mentioned above.

Of course, had this thread been about "jailbird F1 team owners/backers" rather than just drivers, then we could find a catalogue of genuine criminals in the 70's/80's period! Especially amongs the backers of smaller teams and especially on anything to do with corruption/fraud matters...

EDIT Although on second thoughts and to avoid issues of anything to do with libel, it might be a good idea not to mention any name with regards to the latter part of my post.;) Younever know...
 
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Hardly jailbird stuff though, and frankly kiddies' stuff when compared to the sort of daft road stunts pretty much any other F1 drivers used to engage inbefore the days of omnipresent CCTV.

I finished reading C Hilton's Senna V Prost book (Excellent read by the way). Apparently Prost occasionally used to join Villeneuve and Pironi in some of the games of dare on the road they used to engage in. There was this corner in the Beausset (I think?...) region near the Paul-Ricard. Gilles and Didier had this game where they would deliberately crash rental cars on that corner. The winner would be the one whose car had travelled the farthest off the road into the field after crashing.
According to Alain's account that's when he decided to quit joining them, thinking "This is getting a bit too much now...".
Rental car companies subsequently instructed their staff to refuse providing all three with cars.
Funny that.
 
JJ Lehto was convicted of "drunk sailing and negligent homicide" when the power boat he (may) have been driving crashed, killing his friend and injuring himself. He was sentenced to 2 years and 4 months in prison. Lehto appealled the conviction and won (so I'm not sure if he spent any time in chokey.
 
Of course, one of the more famous convicted criminals in F1 was Flavio Briatore.... Prior to his involvement in Benetton, he was convicted to several years in Italian prisons for fraud.

He didn't serve a single day of his sentence.
 
Of course, one of the more famous convicted criminals in F1 was Flavio Briatore.... Prior to his involvement in Benetton, he was convicted to several years in Italian prisons for fraud.

He didn't serve a single day of his sentence.

Italian Fraud Prison:
italy-vacation.jpg
 
Colin Chapman would have almost certainly ended up spending some time at "Her Majesty's pleasure" for his involvement in the de Lorean affair but used the "falling down dead on the floor" ploy, as Inspector Clouseau would have put it.

Is that similar to Graham Hill? His family lost everything to cover the compensation payouts, I wonder what would have happened had he survived?
 
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