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HENTON, BRIAN
Born on 9/19/1946m Derby, England
19 starts
0 points
1 fastest lap
Judging a driver’s future F1 success from his lower category success is a real gamble. Many would predict Henton would have a stellar future in F1, based on his outstanding F3 season in 1974 and excellent F2 performances, culminating with the championship in 1980; the opposite would be said of James Hunt and Nigel Mansell. Granted that Henton never had top line rides, but a little more than 0 points from 19 starts spanning seven seasons was expected from the Brit. Henton’s debut took place with Lotus, in 1975. These were hard times for Lotus, and not even the super quick Peterson was any longer able to make the aging Lotus 72 go even reasonably fast. So Henton’s three drives with the team netted a single 16th place, a non classification and a DNS. Absent from F1 in 1976, Henton was back in 1977, He raced for the March works team in Long Beach, posting 10th place, and then tried to field his own car, an uncompetitive March 761. This mount netted three DNQs, before Henton was called by the HB Bewaking team to have a go in one of their Boros. He managed to qualify for the Dutch race, but was disqualified. In 1978 Brian tried Keegan’s car for Surtees in Austria, in the latter days of the soon to be defunct team. He DNS. After his victorious F2 championship year with Toleman, in 1980, Henton was hired by the team to race the Hart engined Toleman. This was pretty much a development year for the team, and the 4-cylinder turbo engine was down on power, meaning a whole bunch of DNQs for poor Henton. He salvaged a 10th place in Italy, 3 laps behind the winner. Henton left Toleman in 1982, and did three races for Arrows, before shifting to the Tyrrel team. His Arrows days were unsuccessful, but at least Tyrrel looked reasonably competitive. However, in this car, Henton was completely overshadowed by young team mate Alboreto, who scored many times during the course of the year, winning a race, and Henton’s best race result was 7th in Germany. He also finished 8th three times, so under the new scoring system he would have scored four times! The only major accomplishment that year was highly questioned by many: an unlikely fastest lap in the British GP was Henton’s sole F1 career prize. After this season, Henton faded away from F1 and racing in general.