Thoughts: A drought of books on the current F1 world champions?
There have been times when I will flip a coin to decide which book in my collection to review or maybe a current news item might make me search for a book on a specific driver or team. With much of the media speculation about two time world champion Sebastian Vettel possibly racing alongside two world champion Fernando Alonso at Ferrari in 2014, I realized that of the current crop of drivers this season I only had a few books in my collection – these were on Schumacher, Button, Hamilton and Webber. What about books for the other world champions and drivers? I had to dig around a bit more…
Considering Sebastian and Fernando are both 2 time world champions, I find it strange that there are hardly any books written on them. To confirm this, I checked Amazon, ebay and AbeBooks online. A few German texts and one English book for Vettel and one French paperback for Alonso. The same goes for the 2007 champion, Kimi Raikkonen. Michael Schumacher, as the formerly retired 7 times world champ naturally has had many books written on him. The other world champions in the field, Lewis and Jenson being British drivers not surprisingly can lay claim to several books each. Even Mark Webber who is not a world champion yet has 2 books.
Not sure if its a general market sign of the commercial difficulties in the specialist motor sport book market, whether F1 book publishing is easier for the English market or whether F1 book authors are from a dwindling pool of writers. Be interesting come Christmas time to see whether any new books are published.
As for my next book review – it will either be Ferrari Formula 1 by Rainier Schlegelmilch or Crashed and Byrned by Tommy Byrne with Mark Hughes. I’ve been meaning to do Ferrari Formula 1 for a while and I read the slightly quirky less mainstream Crashed and Byrned while travelling recently. So, heads or tails?…
