If you are looking for a Christmas gift for an F1 fan (or for yourself, and you don’t have this book yet), then your search is over, because this is it!! This book should be on the shelf of every F1 fan. It is such a comprehensive guide of everything F1 that it can give a lot to new and old fans alike.
I had this mistaken belief that F1 wasn’t particularly exciting before 1985, so I didn’t know much about that period (and now, I’m kind of fascinated with the 70s, because wow!!). Honestly, I didn’t know much about the era between 1985 and 2000 either. But I’ve now realized how wrong I was. Of course, this book is just a very brief summary of everything, so many stories are only mentioned in a single sentence. That being said, I started marking the sections I want to research further with sticky notes—and needless to say, there are quite a lot of them now.
The main feature of the book is that it goes through all the World Champions, with each champion getting an illustration (the illustrations are wonderful, by the way—I love the style; the people are clearly recognizable, yet the art has a unique touch) and a page of text. Even just this much was enough for me to see how legendary these people were in the “heroic age.” My goodness! And of course, they were a bit crazy too, given the mortality rates back then—it was shocking to see how many champions lost their lives while racing.
One of my personal goals was to memorize all the World Champions from 1950 onwards, and I’m happy to report that I’ve succeeded. This feat was helped a lot by Will Buxton giving them a great summery that made it easier to remember them and find them interesting (though, I still wouldn’t be able to answer the question of “who your racing hero is”.)
So, everyone, go and grab this book, if you still have doubts, I made a flip-through of it:
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