New Book Review – F1 Racing Confidential by Giles Richards
Positives
Negatives
Wow, Lando Norris must be feeling a bit flat after his tangles with Max during the weekend’s Austrian GP. Lando is one of several F1 paddock personnel that give their personal story of how they got into the sport and their mindset while in their job in Giles Richards’ new book “F1 Racing Confidential”.
Although Lewis Hamilton is on the cover, unfortunately he isn’t one of the interviewees. In putting together this book, Giles Richards has managed to assemble interviews from a diverse range of team personnel, many who are publicly well-known and others that are less well-known but play important support roles:
- Christian Horner – Team Principal, Red Bull Racing
- Toto Wolff – CEO, Mercedes AMG F1
- Ruth Buscombe – Head of Strategy, Alfa Romeo Stake F1
- Lando Norris, Driver, McLaren F1
- James Allison – Technical Director, Mercedes AMG F1
- Paul Monaghan – Chief Engineer, Red Bull Racing
- Tom Stallard, Senior Race Engineer, McLaren F1 (Oscar’s race engineer – having been engineer for Danny Ric, Carlos and Jenson)
- Peter Mabon – Pirelli Trackside Engineer
- Rupert Manwaring – Performance Coach, Scuderia Ferrari (formerly Carlos Sainz’ coach but now Max Verstappen’s new coach in 2024)
- Marianne Hinson, Former aero dept manager, McLaren F1
- Neil Ambrose – Machinist, Red Bull Racing
- Matt Bishop – Communications Director (ex-McLaren)
- Frazer Burchell – No.2 Mechanic, McLaren F1
- Russell Braithwaite – CFO, Mercedes AMG F1
- Sarah Lacy-Smith – Trackside Logistics Coordinator, McLaren F1
- Jack Partridge – Garage Technician, Aston Martin F1
- Guillaume Rocquelin – Head of Driver Academy, Red Bull Racing (Seb Vettel’s former race engineer)
- Kari Lammenranta – Chief Mechanic, McLaren F1
- Victoria Johnson – Marketing Operations Director, Mercedes AMG F1
- Lucas Blakeley – esports world champion, McLaren F1
Each of the interviewees get their own chapter where the trace their family background, how they got into F1, career progression and the scope of their current job. It’s good that many of senior women team personnel have been featured too. Every interviewee offers some interesting insights into past events or how things work in real life. It wasn’t until I read the Victoria Johnson chapter that I realised that the Mercedes drivers are involved almost from day 1 in the team’s branding and livery designs.
Despite being 300 pages, the book is extremely easy & quick to read – it has a conversational interview style that feels similar to modern podcast interviews.
The common thread between all these people is that they weren’t born into F1 and through some combination of perseverance, networking and lucky timing, managed to land a role in F1 and have over the years grown and been promoted to higher duties. The book’s almost more of a personal development book as there’s more emphasis in the chapters on how each of these people have personally adapted to their job challenges.
That this book has turned out to be one of the better F1 books I’ve read for some time, has been a nice surprise.
Wow Factor/Money shot: Big name roster
Suitable for: All boys and girls thinking about getting into F1. Any fan interested in non-driver side of a F1 team
