New Book Review: The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg

There have been a few books written about the business of F1 which is often more ruthless than the on-track battles. A new book to explore this side of F1 is “The Formula” by Wall Street Journal sports journalists Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg.

Made up of 16 chapters covering seminal players and key commercial manoeuvres in F1 history, like Abu Dhabi 2021, Senna, Schumacher, Bernie Ecclestone, 2007 Ferrari-McLaren spygate this book’s main focus highlights the cut throat entrepreneurial and capitalist skills in F1 as much as driving and engineering talent.

Although a lot of the background material is from previously published F1 books (many which have been reviewed on the site) like “Monaco Inside F1’s Greatest Race“, “How to be an F1 Driver“, “The Life of Senna“, “How to Build a Car“, this book is able to weave all the disparate themes into a very compact retelling of behind the scenes commercial hustling and darker shenanigans throughout the history of F1.

This book is really for newer F1 fans that are not so familiar with many of the past dramas in the sport. In my case, I decided to jump to specific chapters which deal with more recent developments like 2021 Bahrain GP, the origin of Drive to Survive, 2023 Las Vegas GP and a few of the chapters looking at Bernie Ecclestone sharp negotiating tactics.

Even though there are no photos in the book (other than the beautiful side profile photo of the 2023 Ferrari on the front and back cover), it’s obvious the authors’ business journalist writing style keeps the pace and detail flowing enough to keep the reader engaged.

Wow Factor/Money shot: There’s no exclusive photos, but the wow factor is that the authors did get access to many F1 paddock heavy hitters for the book like Stefano Domenicalli, Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton, Christian Horner, Max Verstappen, Adrian Newey, David Coulthard, Zak Brown, Luca di Montezemolo, Bernie Ecclestone and Ferrari chairman John Elkan.

Suitable for: Business folk who are new or casual F1 fans

[Ed note: Due to the star rating algorithm, the overall star rating is based on an average of the other scores so being no photos (other than the cover) automatically drags down the score. Having read the book, its true rating is higher. That said, even the Wall Street Journal includes photos and F1 is a very visual sport (even from the business side)]