I see that Carlos Reutemann, the Argentinian racing driver, died this week. Boots off, happily for him. And I also see that his old boss, Patrick Head, remarked:
I wouldn’t say sophisticated, but quite an educated person for a racing driver.
Sir Patrick Head, son of Brigadier-General Michael Head, on the other hand was particularly well educated, at Wellington and then University College London. He has had a highly successful career as Technical Director at the Williams team (which he had co-founded) when Williams was winning world championships. Recently, he has returned from retirement to give a bit of help to Williams, who were languishing at the back of the grid, and I am pleased to say that he has significantly revived their fortunes. Good for him.
I spent one of the better evenings of my life chatting with him over dinner a while ago. He was excellent company, with interesting stuff to say and an easy manner. As I recall, he had only fairly recently married his Brazilian wife, and he told me that whilst she spoke English, he did not have a word of Portuguese. I suggested that he might invest a week of his life doing a total immersion language course, at the end of which he would probably be able to get by passably well in Portuguese, which would come in handy when meeting his wife’s family and friends in Brazil. I knew about these total immersion courses, because I had qualified as a teacher at the Berlitz School shortly after leaving university, and then in France had been part of the faculty on these total immersion courses, and seen the results that they achieved.
Did he ever take me up on the suggestion, I wonder?
Is he right about his implication that racing drivers tend to be badly educated? I guess he probably is. Not that they are necessarily stupid (although they might be): it is probably more that at the relevant time in their lives they are more focused on driving karts than reading books
phenell 
Lady Head has tweeted to say no, he never did do the language course.