Book Review: Flying High by Tony Fernandes

During a recent hunt for Caterham F1 merchandise, I stumbled across Tony Fernandes’ autobiography “Flying High”. Caterham F1 (formerly Team Lotus) was established by Asian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes, better known as the CEO of the airline AirAsia and was part of the grid for a brief 3 year period from 2012 to 2014. There aren’t any books on Caterham, so the team principal’s bio would usually be as good as any place to read about the team.

There’s only one chapter (out of 14) that’s 17 pages long which discusses Caterham F1 experience. For F1 fans, there’s not a lot of insider insights in that chapter either – it’s more about Tony’s childhood thrill of the inaugural Malaysian GP in 1999 and his admiration for Sir Frank Williams (who he then got to do a sponsorship deal with), the court tussle over the Lotus name and Flavio Briatore. There is only brief mention of the engineering team led by Mike Gascoyne and first season drivers Trulli and Kovalinen. I was hoping for some mention of Kamui Kobayashi or some garage stories during the racing seasons but nothing – other than winning a bet with Richard Branson on which team would finisher lower. You get the sense from this chapter that Tony was very hands off and scarred by Max Mosley’s promise of $40m budget caps after blowing more than $80m a season.

Photography wise there are no F1 or CaterhamF1 photos at all (other than Richard Branson dressing up as a hostess after Caterham beat Virgin Racing at the end of 2012).

To be fair, this book isn’t intended to be a F1 memoir, it’s actually more a management and personal journey book – Fernandes recounts his upbringing in Malaysia, schooling in England, dabbling in the music industry as a finance exec to setting up his own budget airline in South East Asia which becomes a major force and then has to deal with the repercussions of an accident with one of its planes. AirAsia sponsorship with the WilliamsF1 team though leads to setting up a new F1 race team under the resurrected Team Lotus banner. Then it’s all about owning QPR Premier League football team and being the host of The Apprentice Asia TV show.

Wow Factor/Money shot: Nothing really F1 related but lots of inside AirAsia stories.

Suitable for: Management Types