Product Description

Formula One racing commands one of the largest global audiences in the world, and is the most popular motoracing sport on the globe. The Complete Book of Formula One is a book bound to appeal to these millions of dedicated fans: every car, racer, driver, race detail in the sport s fifty-plus year history is listed here, along with an exhaustive library of over 4,000 photographs, both historic black-and-white and colour. Covering the sport form start to finish, this includes racers from the first winner Farina, details of Ferrai , Maseratti, Jimmy Stewart, James Hunt, Lauda, to today s champions. Each year of competition lists the appropriate racers, the cars they drove, winners, and a history of the race itself. The ultimate pictoral history of F1 championships, this deserves a place on the shelf of any and every racing fan who follows Formula One!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68062 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 492 pages

Review
A must have for every Formula one fan ( Bolton Evening News) A memorable journey thorugh the camera lens ( North west Evening Mail) --Yorkshire Evening post Quite simply, this is the best motoring book that I have ever read - --Vintage Roadscene;For an overview of F1, the bible is the recently update Complete Book of Formula One This is the definative guide to the most popular form of motor racing in the world. Updated and revised, The Complete Book of Formula One is the Ultimate guide to the world of Formula One. Every car and its driver since 1950 are documented in this stunning book, including the career of racing legends such as Juan Manuel Fangio, Jackie Stewart, Ayrton Senna, and Michael Schumaker. In this second edition, the records of renowned teams such as Ferrai, McLaren, and Lotus are also detailed. With the exculsive co-peration of the Haymarket LAT Archive and a collection of nine million outstanding motorsport images, dating back to 1896, full-colour images, as well as historic balck-and-white photos, providing a true picture of all the cars, drivers and racers of Formula One. From 1950 to the present day, this fascinating and comprehensive encyclopedia will be a must-have for every F1 fan. (Bolton News); Many publications have tried to encompass the contantly expanding wolrd of F1, but with 4,000 photos and lashings of witty one-liners, this book does the job beter than most. On the cover of Aaron and Huges book is Lewis Hamilton's Mclaren, which is coloured in silver, partly in defferenc to the national racing colours of the team's engine suppliers Mercedes.(Motorsport News) For an overview of F1 from 1950 untill the end of the 2007 season, the bible is the recently updated The Complete Book of Formula One. it lists all the cars, all the drivers in more than 4,000 photographs. it is a terrific book for researching or browsing or to settle debates in the Camshaft Arms. Who was the lst driver to win a world championship in a front-engined car? Mike Hawthorn --Motorsport News; --;The claim of being the complete book of F1 is true --Daily Echo (Bournmeouth), November 2008--Every once in a while something special turns up in the MN office, and the newly-released updated version of the Complete Book of Formula One by Simon Aaron and Mark Hughes is just such a gem. Aaron is, of course, MN's editor-at-large and resident Ralf Schumaker fan, but we're not saying this is good just to keep him happy: it really is. The book contains information and photographs of every car and every driver to ever grace the sport, from the age of Lewis Hamilton going right back to the days when they thought an upturned pudding bowl to be adequate cranial protection. The concise page layout makes the book ideal reference material, breaking every season down into bite-sized chunks and enabeling you to flick throguh an entire decade in one sitting without breaking a sweat. It's all good stuff, well written as well. Some may think the price a bit steep, but well worth it for such a wealth of information. Possibly the most enjoyable feature is the car-by-car breakdown following each brief season review, where you can settle those late-night pub arguments over how many World Championship points eugenio Castellotti scored with his Lancia-Ferrari in 1956. --Motorsport News;worth a look...and a gift-wrapping --Road and Track; Quite simply, this is the best motoring book I have ever read! it has 490-pages and over 4,000 photographs showing almost every car and driver that has taken part in Formula One racing form 1950 up to the present time. It's title The Complete Book of Formula one, is competely true and you can buy this with confidence. --Daily Express;Formual One nover fails to divide motoring enthusiasts - and this book is an essential reference for any F1 fan --Vintage Roadscene

This large format book, printed on high-quality glossy paper, sets out to provide a phootgraphic record of every car/driver cmbination that has taken part in an F1 World Championship Grand Prix from 1950 to 2008. Clearly the result of an intensive amount of research and tracking down of elusive photos, the book draws heavily on the well known lAT archive. The format couldn't be simpler. there is a chapter for each year, which begins with a few pages summarizing the season accompanied by several relevant large photos of the world cahmpon and any other significant subjects. This is followed by a number of pages full of thumbnail phoots of each car/driver combination that appeared during the year along with details of the events attended. One thing you ntoice quite quickly, flicking throught the pages is the sheer variety of cars and drivers that appeared in Grand Prix; ofetn with local drivers turning out for their national event or enterprising engineers chnacing their luck with some unusual machinery. Untill about the mid 90s that is whe it was deemed necassery that only a limited number of accredited teams should be permitted in F1 and that driver changes should be strictly constrained. Probably the only disappointment of this book is that the thumbnails are quite small and one often wishes to see a full size image. however, this is a large and heavy book alreadt and to make the photos larger would have resulted in a far more expensive multi-volume production. So, all in all an excellent addition to any F1 enthusiast's collection. --Speedscene, July, 2009

simply, this is the best motoring book i have ever read! it has 490-pages and over 4,000 phootgraphs showing almost every car and driver that has taken part in Formula One racing form 1950 uo to the present time. It's title The Complete Book of Formula one, is competely true and you can buy this with cinfidence. If you are not a big fan of motor racing, or if you are baffeled over the complexities of titles to choose from, this is the one book to have. -- --Vintage Roadscene

About the Author
Simon Arron has been infatuated with cars since before he could walk, and has written about them for over 20 years. A former editor of Motor Sport, he is now a freelance writer for The Daily telegraph and Motorsport News amongst others. Mark Hughes is one of the most respected and authoritative writers in contemporary motor sport. He writes regularly for motoring magazines, including Autosport. Both authors are British, and attend every round of the FIA Formula One World Championship.

Customer Reviews

Superb photographic reference
Now this is a weird one. Respected journos Simon Arron (at Motorsport News and Autosport for many years) and Mark "brother of Warren and the bloke who should have Nigel Roebuck's job" Hughes (also of the Beano) have teamed up to produce the ultimate photographic reference book on F1.

They attempt to show a picture of every car/driver combination that's ever competed in the World Championship, and a portrait of every driver - and apart from a few very obscure ones in the 50s, they succeed pretty well. (About 30 missing out of something like 3500 driver/car combinations, many of these F2 tail-enders who only ran in one GP and none later than the early sixties).

The book's organised year by year, with a nice photographic survey of the year's championship, and then pics of the driver/car combinations in championship order. If Fred Bloggs drove three different models of car in 1966, then they show you Fred in each of the three. You can't accuse them of being less than comprehensive. Now, there's not much new you can show about most of the famous ones, but this book really comes into its own the further down you get - it's all here, private owners of customer or ex-works cars, extra works entries, one-offs, no-hopers, chancers, special-builders... there's pics of everything from AFM to Zakspeed in here. Most of the pics are very good, but some of them, probably out of the need to use substandard material to cover everything, have been fairly crudely digitally enlarged.

Possibly not of interest to pure Bernie-era F1 fans, but anyone interested particularly in the 60s and 70s when there were all sorts of weird and wonderful characters popping up in bizarrely-coloured cars (check out the chocolate brown and orange Brabham John Watson used to drive!) for odd races in strange privateer cars this is the book. It's also a great photo-essay on how the F1 car has evolved over the past 50-odd years.

Somewhere between coffee-table and anorak, with appeal to both ends of the spectrum.

I've spotted two errors. Pete Lovely's 1971 Lotus 69/49 hybrid is described as having a 4-cylinder Cosworth engine; in fact it used a DFV V8. On the same page (!) obscure one-off March rent-a-driver Max Jean is mis-listed as Jean Max, although this mistake is very common!

Good in theory, bad in practice
This book features pictures of most of the 750+ F1 drivers, during races or practice sessions, and the various different cars they drove throughout the years. What this book does not feature is pictures of the F1 drivers who did not qualify for a race. Plus it does not feature drivers who started the race, as they were too obscure to have pictures of them, readily available. Another negative comment is that each of the pictures are exactly 4.75cm by 3.4cm in size each! Really, really tiny and of little use, although, if you decide to count how many pictures there actually are, you could understand that it's cheaper for everyone if they were made small. Quite a few of the pictures are also extremely pixellated. The book must have been rushed to have ended up looking like this. Slightly disappointed, but there are some real gems in there.

An aficiando's dream
It is a very thorough piece of work. It allows you to see complete Formula One grids have looked like over the years at a glance. Each driver/car combiation picture comes with an accurate note of the races competed in. It is great to be reminded of combinations like John Watson in a JPS Lotus. The reviews of the seasons offer some sensational pictures including an emotive one of Jackie Stewart whispering in Gilles Villeneuve's ear on the Imola podium in 1982. The reviews are brief and the lack of teams from some years due to non qulaification is frustrating but overall it is an impressive referance book.