Book Review: Michael Schumacher Ferrari Racing 1998 by Peter Braun and Rainer Schlegelmilch

Its amazing what you can sometimes find in the bargain bins of a bookstore. Buried in a stack of old motor magazines, I recently found a copy of “Michael Schumacher Ferrari Racing 1998” by Peter Braun and Rainer Schlegelmilch for $2. Its got to be a bargain, right? Ok…even though its almost 15 years old plus the fact that I’m not a huge Schumacher fan…but being a fan of Schlegelmich photography is enough justification for the buy.

This soft cover book is more like a magazine style publication – there is no in-depth narration of the 1998 season, rather its simply a collection of Schlegelmilch photos with short one-two sentence German and English text captions written by Peter Braun.

The book opens with some photos from the last race of the ’97 season marred by the infamous collision between Schumi and Jacques Villeneuve in the Williams FW19 to decide the championship. It then covers each race of the ’98 season with various Schlegelmilch race action and podium celebration photography with the last page providing a summary of the final podium placings of each race. While Schumi and the Ferrari F300 dominate most of the photos, Rainer has also included shots of teammate Eddie Irvine, Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and even eventual ’98 champ Mika Hakkinen. For a Schlegelmilch book, this one contains more people focused photos more than the usual detailed car photographs. There are also quite a few photos with grainy reproduction, so the print publication quality is a little inconsistent.

Although there is a contents index, there are no obvious chapter headings so the book is one continuous photo album, which can make finding photos for a specific race a little more difficult than it could be.

So how does this book compare with Schlegelmilch’s F1errari you ask? Many of the photos for the 1998 season that appear in F1errari  are also published in Michael Schumacher Ferrari Racing 1998 – so there is duplication. They are two completely different books though. Michael Schumacher Ferrari Racing 1998 is geared more for the magazine reader rather than the serious book collector.

P.S. I have to admit after doing this review, I will miss Schumi this year. I think he will unfortunately miss out on some Mercedes GP wins this year that Lewis or maybe Nico will pick up.

Money Shot or Wow Factor: The photo panels of the creation of Schumi’s chrome Bell helmet for the Japanese GP.

Suitable for: Strictly for Schumi fans and tifosi.