One of the world’s most dangerous sporting expeditions involves maneuvering an approximately 798-kilogram car primarily manufactured using carbon fibre and similar ultra-lightweight materials, hurtling it at mad speeds of 200 mph down long straight lines, while at the same time avoiding perilous and possibly fatal contacts with the barricades and walls fencing the automobile circuit, all the while crazy braking to navigate some tough chicanes. Every driver who gets into the cockpit of this screaming automobile loses between 2 – 8 pounds in weight after every race.
Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg in what undoubtedly must be one of the most definitive books of its genre, unravel the trajectory of the sport at a pace that would do more than ample justice to a Grand Prix race itself. Painstakingly informing their readers that there is more to the esoteric world of Formula 1 than just raw speed, the authors proceed to illustrate an eclectic agglomeration of factors, both extrinsic and intrinsic that makes Formula 1 one of the most complex of sports. An inextricably linked chain where the future of the sport is convolutedly meshed in with the personal proclivities and propensities of a few frighteningly eccentric bunch of dilettantes, and bon vivants,
The ensemble comprising the subtitle to the book covers an entire phalanx of characters ranging from the sublime to the selfish. A madcap British engineer Colin Chapman, whose singularly manic obsession with speed and mania for innovation resulted in Lotus cars careening through post-war British airfields. Driver’s safety during the Chapman days were a mere figment of the human imagination as F1 racked up a steady stream of driver fatalities.
A pretentious Italian, Enzo Ferrari, whose steadfast refusal to look beyond the conventional facets attached to the troika of engines, chassis and motor almost took the world’s most revered brand of automobile to the brink. A wheelchair bound genius whose penchant for technology ensured that a car equipped with the most sophisticated electronics could be driver agnostic. Frank Williams proved this point in exquisite detail when a 39-year-old driver called Nigel Mansell put an entire cast of universally acknowledged wizards behind a driving wheel to utter disdain by winning a Championship for Williams, courtesy a computer embedded within the car.
If there is one distinctive feature attached to the exercise of making monotonous high-speed laps over a period of a couple of hours, it is the opportunity to exploit technical, legal, commercial, and technological loopholes. Teams have thrived, albeit for temporary durations by taking advantage of loopholes, both glaring and barely perceptible. Whether it be taking advantage of highly technical concepts such as downforce, or craftily installing performance enhancing devices such as double diffusers, F1 has always been a playground of and for the intrepid. A blank canvas for genius manufacturers such as Adrian Newey of the Red bull Motor Racing fame to paint their own history.
Robinson and Clegg cover controversies and incidents which to a contemporaneous F1 fan, might seem straight out of the pages of a fictional realism piece by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Classic examples being two jaw dropping events simply named “Spy gate” and “Crash gate.” “Spygate” had a disgruntled Ferrari engineer handing over on a platter, realms of delicate and sensitive information about the Prancing Horse car to a McLaren Engineer. Close to five hundred pages of engineering design and data changed hands! “Crashgate” went a step further even! Nelson Piquet Jr a driver, peddling his OnTrack wares for Renault was instructed by his team to deliberately crash his car during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix so that his teammate could benefit from the incident!
Liberty Media, the current owners of F1, are leaving no stone unturned to broaden an already burgeoning outreach of the sport. A step in the right direction is the immensely popular Netflix series Drive to Survive. Expletive laden, adrenaline-fueled episodes of 40 – 45 minutes each that provide its audience with a ringside view of the sport, Drive to Survive has ensured that one need not view even a single race in person to qualify as an F1 fanatic!
The Miami Grand Prix in 2023 had the drivers introduced by LL Cool J against a pulsating rap background. This garish display that denigrated the sport to a cringeworthy spectacle was frowned upon by none other than the current world Champion, Max Verstappen. Bemoaning the reduction of the sport to a circus, Verstappen was not one bit amused by the glitz and glamour surrounding the event. Neither did she shy away from lashing into a diatribe.
Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg have penned a work that would keep engaged hard core fans and intrigued entrants alike when it comes to understanding the world of Formula 1.
