F1 UPGRADES

Enhance the F1 experience with the latest must-have products

F1 MANAGER

Price Free (in-app purchases) hutchgames.com

While the 2020 Formula 1 season is yet to start for real, the acclaimed F1 Manager mobile game has been refreshed with the current team identities and driver line-ups. So Alphatauri appears on the grid, Nicholas Latifi slots in at Williams, and Hanoi and Zandvoort join the virtual calendar.

While progress has been reset to give new players a chance, a new Constructors’ Championship store function gives seasoned players a reward for past performances.

The play mechanic is intuitive: as team manager you call the strategy as your drivers do the business. Races are short but frenetic and, initially, your options revolve around optimising tyres, pitstop timing and driver pace to suit the (finite) fuel load and tyre wear. Progress unlocks car and driver upgrades as well as various performance boosts.

This being a tablet/mobile game, it is free to play but various upgrades can be expedited by watching adverts or bought via in-app transactions.

NIKI LAUDA: THE BIOGRAPHY Author Maurice Hamilton

Price £20 (hardback) simonandschuster.co.uk

Hot on the heels of Niki Lauda’s autobiography being reissued (GP Racing, April), comes this scrupulously researched biography from longtime GP Racing contributor Maurice Hamilton, a five-decade veteran of Formula 1 reporting. Covering Lauda’s background and racing career, as well as his many activities after hanging up his helmet at the end of 1985, the book features a host of other voices beyond the author’s own recollections of speaking to Lauda. Maurice has interviewed many of the triple world champion’s friends, colleagues and contemporaries, giving a fresh perspective on what is already a well-documented life.

As well as being a fine companion to Lauda’s own autobiography, this book goes beyond events chronicled in those pages, covering Lauda’s time in management and consultancy roles at Ferrari and Jaguar, and his part in shaping Mercedes into the winning machine it is today.

DAN GURNEY ROUEN 1962 PRINT Author Alex Pieussergues

Price €39-€99) last-corner.com

Renowned French artist Alex Pieussergues has produced a new work paying tribute to Dan Gurney’s 1962 French Grand Prix victory for Porsche – the marque’s only F1 win at world championship level.

Powered by an air-cooled flat-8 engine, the stubby 804 lagged behind cars from manufacturers beginning to embrace monocoque chassis designs and (crucially in the lower-powered 1.5-litre era) placing the driver in a reclined, more aerodynamically advantageous position. But in 1962 the stars aligned in France: the

GP was held at Rouen rather than flat-out Reims, Ferrari had to scratch its entry owing to a strike in Italy, and mechanical woes eliminated pacesetters Graham Hill and Jim Clark.

The print features a painstakingly detailed render of the winning car below a map of the (sadly no longer extant) Rouen circuit’s layout. Prices vary depending on your choice of paper grade.

FORMULA 1 CAR BY CAR 1950-59 Author Peter Higham

Price £50 (hardback) evropublishing.com

Arriving just in time for the

70th anniversary of the world championship, this latest of Peter Higham’s decade-by-decade series covers every car and team from the 1950s. And what an eventful decade that was, with the Indy 500 counting towards the world championship (not that this enticed many competitors from either side to cross the Atlantic), Formula 2 cars filling the grids for two seasons in the absence of sufficient F1 machinery, and rearengined cars changing the tapestry of the competition forever.

The price tag marks this large-format book as one for the completist, and it is indeed incredibly complete. Most of the pictures are sourced from Motorsport Images, whose archivists have clearly enjoyed their task. Chronicling each season in turn, the author describes each team in order of importance – and one of the greatest joys in this series has been the ability to dip into the less well-known end of the grid. Among the fabulous obscurata in this one is the Kurtis-kraft midget in which Indy 500 winner Rodger Ward contested the 1959 US GP at Sebring. With a rigid front axle, leveroperated brakes and 12-inch wheels, this dirt-track racer is one of the unlikeliest GP entrants of all time.

There’s also a photo of what’s arguably the first rear-engined car to contest a world championship race – the HECK-BMW in which Ernst Klodwig “circulated at a leisurely pace” on his way to last place in the 1952 German GP at the Nürburgring. Pleasingly, the data pages also list results for the many high-profile non-championship races which were popular at the time.