CAPTURING A RICH HISTORY
Written by eminent motorsport journalist Maurice Hamilton, Formula 1: The Official History acts as a gateway into 70 years of the world championship, tracking from Giuseppe Farina’s victory at Silverstone in 1950 through to the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix won by Lewis Hamilton for Mercedes.
Each chapter of this book is broken down by decade, with the author picking up on major themes from the eras – the rise and fall of teams and drivers, the changing face of the championship, and the wider context of other seminal motorsport moments, such as the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hours disaster and its ramifications on racing across the globe.
It’s not just what happens on track that gets attention – game-changing technical innovations are given column inches, spanning the switch from front to rear-engined cars to the 2018 introduction of the halo head-protection device.
Hamilton also includes amusing anecdotes and backstories along with the factual accounts, such as former FIA president Jean-marie Balestre having “huffed and puffed” his way across the Silverstone track after the start of the British GP one year only to find Nicola Larini, who had started late, charging through Woodcote. As Hamilton writes, “the Osella driver lost favour with many by taking urgent avoiding action to miss the blustering president”.
The book is awash with fantastic photographs courtesy of Motorsport Images. There are just short of 300 pictures, ranging from small insets to two-page spreads.
Some of the better known images have been seen countless times, such as Juan Manuel Fangio crossing the finish line to claim his most famous of wins in the 1957 German Grand Prix, or Ayrton Senna returning to the Suzuka pitlane minus the front wing of his Mclaren MP4/5 as team-mate
Alain Prost watches on, having collided with the Brazilian in the 1989 title-decider.
But there are some shots that are far rarer.
One in particular shows Michael Schumacher standing alongside wife Corinna and manager
Willi Weber, watching a replay of his 1994 titlewinning collision with Damon Hill at Adelaide. Likewise, an image of a car being dragged through the mud at the 2000 British Grand Prix by a tractor is certainly not what you expect to see when flicking through the pages of an F1 book, but it all helps to embellish the championship’s rich history.
The book doesn’t hide from F1’s darker side either: images of fatal accidents are here too, such as those suffered by Piers Courage and Roger Williamson. More recently, there is a photograph of Jules Bianchi’s crash in the 2016 Japanese Grand Prix. While these images leave plenty to the reader’s imagination by not including anything too graphic, it’s surprising to see they’ve been included in a championship-sanctioned book. It would have been all too easy for an official F1 release to gloss over the horrific deaths and lives lost, but instead the book embraces the past – both good and bad.
At 272 pages, it’s certainly not an in-depth analysis of each pivotal moment in F1, but nor is it trying to be – it would have been a near-impossible task to adequately describe every relevant moment.
Instead, Hamilton offers a concise yet detailed description of various moments and snapshots throughout F1’s history that act as a timely reminder of just what has been achieved.
Lewis Hamilton scored a record-equalling 91st win, his team-mate Valtteri Bottas retired and Nico Hulkenberg was recalled to the Racing Point fold yet again. The Autosport team analyses the major talking points from last weekend’s Nurburgring race in this podcast.