Book Review: F1 Images by Daniele Amaduzzi vs Autocourse 1986-87
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Positives
Negatives
With the new turbo engine regulations coming in next season, it was interesting to dig up an old book on the last big bang turbo season – 1986. Daniele Amaduzzi’s F1 Images captures the 1986 season with so many big name drivers – Prost, Mansell, Senna, Piquet, Rosberg, Lauda, Alboreto, De Angelis and the list […]
With the new turbo engine regulations coming in next season, it was interesting to dig up an old book on the last big bang turbo season – 1986. Daniele Amaduzzi’s F1 Images captures the 1986 season with so many big name drivers – Prost, Mansell, Senna, Piquet, Rosberg, Lauda, Alboreto, De Angelis and the list goes on.
There are 3 distinct sections to the book. The opening section on yellow matte paper is a summary of the teams in 1986 (McLaren, Ferrari, Lotus, Williams, Brabham, Alfa Romeo, Renault, Tyrrell, Ligier, Beatrice, Minardi, Toleman, Ram, Arrows, Osella and Zakspeed) with commentary from Andrea de Adamich on each team. The middle section is the largest and contains panels of color photos on black gloss paper. There are photos of the turbo engines, tyres, cockpit dashboards, track shots, around 10 pages of accidents and retirements, crowd and track personnel and excellent double page race photos. The final section contains 1 page summaries of each of the ’86 season tracks with some race stats (grid position, podium, post race weights, thumbnail circuit diagram and top 13 finishers) and a brief history of F1.
Due to the nationalities of the photographers there is a noticable Italian bias in the photo selections – you get to see much more photos of Alboreto, De Angelis, Capelli, Ferrari, Minardi, Olivetti liveried Brabham, Patrese, Pierluigi Martini, Minardi and Benetton in one book than most.
F1 Images is basically a yearbook of sorts so I thought it would also be interesting to compare it to the benchmark Autocourse Annual for 1986-87 (which may be a little unfair). The main point of difference are the photos and the review commentary/statistics. Although slightly quirkier, the photos in F1 Images are much better – they are all in full color compared to the limited color shots in the 1986-87 Autocourse Annual (very typical of the early Autocourse yearbooks) and the subject matter is much more diverse. The Autocourse Annual is definitively superior in terms of race stats and commentary with more pages.
Wow Factor or Money Shot: Niki Lauda munching on cereal trackside? The double page photo of Pierluigi Martini in the Minardi? Some of the driver cockpit photos are good.
Suitable for: early 80s F1 fans and fans of Italian based F1 teams.
