F1 RACING CONFIDENTIAL

An intriguing look behind the drivers of Formula One.

As former champion Damon Hill puts it in his foreword to Guardian sportswriter Richards’ book, race car drivers are “the last people to arrive and the first people to leave.” In their shadow stands an astonishingly large army of support personnel. In the case of Red Bull Racing, more than 450 people are involved in one way or another. Richards goes ringside to examine these working parts—and on that note, one of his interviewees, McLaren F1 logistics coordinator Sarah Lacy-Smith, observes that a modern F1 vehicle contains about 14,500 parts, each with the potential need to be changed out at any moment, meaning that she and her crew need to know exactly where each of those parts is at any given moment. “You have to be quite good at memorizing stuff,” she notes, with typical British understatement. Most of the author’s interviewees are Brits on his home turf, though there are some other internationals, including the McLaren team’s chief mechanic, a Finn who grew up on a farm and got his start tinkering with tractors and other agricultural equipment. It’s refreshing that so many of the narrative’s principals are women, including Ruth Buscombe, the head of “race strategy” for the Alfa Romeo team who went to Cambridge to study engineering because, already set on a career in racing, that’s what some of her F1 idols studied. Who knew that there was someone who planned strategy for people whose apparent task is simply to zoom around as fast as possible? And who knew that there’s an alternate team that wins races not on the track or course but inside a simulator? Richards’ book is full of such surprises, and it’s quite the revelation.

A treat for racing fans, especially those who prefer Le Mans to Talladega.