Book Review: Ayrton Senna – The Hard Edge of Genius by Christopher Hilton
:
Positives
Negatives
While making some long overdue updates to the Best Ayrton Senna books page on the site, it dawned that there are still a number of older Senna books I’ve forgotten to post reviews of. The obvious one is the rare Monumental Senna (coming soon) but there are also a few other books that should be included. One of Chris Hilton’s earliest Senna books was “Ayrton Senna – The Hard Edge of Genius” published in 1990 which he would later merge along with 3 of his other Senna books into a 2004 book titled “Ayrton Senna – the whole story“.
As a standalone book, “The Hard Edge of Genius” focuses on Senna’s rapid climb through the junior formula to his first 1988 world title with McLaren and the ensuing escalation of the battle with Prost during the 1989 season. A large chunk of the book traces Senna’s junior formula career in the UK with various interview quotes from fellow racers and team bosses like Alex Hawkridge and his time with Lotus.
Photography-wise, there are 2 sections of photos from Keith Sutton – a gallery of 16 pages of colour shots and a 2nd 16 page collection of B&W photo thumbnails.
Being one of his earliest Senna books, the writing style is typical of Chris Hilton – there are a lot of Autosport re-quoted extracts, diary race notes and a very assertive and defensive synopsis of the Brazilian driver. It might not be the style that Prost fans would appreciate but in 1990, this book was one of the popular Senna titles.
The content of this book has now been probably better covered in later Senna books – like Tony Dodgins “Ayrton Senna – All his races“.
For newer readers if you can pickup a cheap copy online, it’s still worthy of read, but there are certainly more comprehensive Senna books now (including later ones by Chris Hilton himself – see the list).
Wow factor/money shot: Suzuka 1989
Suitable for: hard core Senna fans
