Affiliate Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, Automoblog earns from qualifying purchases, including the books featured here. These commissions come to us at no additional cost to you. Our Book Garage series showcases what every enthusiast should add to their library.
A great, thick tome of a book weighed down my mailbox one day. Formula 1 All The Races – The First 1000 describes itself as a one-stop shop for F1 lovers. Veloce Publishing, who published the book, says it’s a reading book, a history book, and a reference book capturing the essence of Grand Prix racing. And while it could be that, it’s really more of a Formula 1 stats book for diehard fans.
Formula 1 All The Races – The First 1000
Honestly, I can’t see anyone sitting down with this thing, cracking it open to page one, and reading straight through to page 720. I’ve not missed a Formula 1 race in decades, but even I have a hard time with this one. It’s as engaging as a phone book since there’s actually precious little to read here. There are tons of stats, facts, and figures, but little prose is included within those 720 pages. Each race gets its own thumbnail sketch (e.g. “For a third time it was Hakkinen’s pole, Schumacher’s victory” and so on) with a list of highlights for the end of each season.
Formula 1 All The Races is not a “reading book” like the ones we traditionally cover in this Book Garage series. Instead, it’s page after page of statistics and outcomes. Imagine a bound copy of baseball box scores from the Sunday paper, and you’ll get the idea.
Loaded With Facts & Dates (And Photos Too)
There are indeed lots of pictures salted and peppered throughout. Most of them are brightly colored, but really, saying all this is just gilding the lily. This is a reference book straight up. If you have it handy and need to know who won the Dutch GP in 1974, heft it up onto your desk. It was Lauda, Regazzoni, Fittipaldi, Hailwood, Scheckter, and Depailler filling out the top six. What was the fastest lap for the 1985 South African race? Keke Rosberg (Nico’s dad) set it with a time of 1:08.149. See, it’s that kind of book.
Do you have some sort of racing trivia question to answer? This will get you the facts, but I do question why another book like this one is necessary.
Cut From a Similar Cloth
A few weeks ago, I received another F1 stats book from Veloce Publishing, very much like this one. That book, Formula 1 – The Knowledge 2nd Edition: Records and Trivia Since 1950, covers all the Grand Prix records since the formal codification of the sport in 1950. I thought it was nice, handy even, but I could still find all this stuff online through a quick Google search.
And now there’s a second book in my library that does the same function as the first. Again, I am asking the same thing: can’t I just get all this stuff on the internet?
Something For Collectors
This might not be a book for everyone. You will love it if you are a loyal and committed Formula 1 fan. As I said, near the beginning, I watch Formula 1 just as any committed fan would, which is why – even though it’s good to have facts and figures handy – I tend to gravitate towards books and documentaries that tell us who the drivers and teams are.
Looking at the layout, this book is aimed at collectors anyway. The book’s price would also back that up. Is there a collector’s market for racing stats books? If they were going for that market, they could have done better with the printing and binding. The pages are small (about the size of an iPad Mini), so the font is to the point where it’s hard to read. The pages are gloss stock, but the binding is already making creaking and snapping noises, and the spine is starting to separate on my copy. It does have one of those nifty, old-time red ribbons to use as a bookmark, so that’s nice.
Otherwise, I sum it up as simply another Formula 1 stats book. It’s there just in case you need it. If it’s something you want to dive into, copies of the book are available on Amazon for about $160, not counting any deals or promotions.
Longtime Automoblog writer Tony Borroz has worked on popular driving games as a content expert, in addition to working for aerospace companies, software giants, and as a movie stuntman. He lives in the northeast corner of the northwestern-most part of the Pacific Northwest.
