Archive for Author 'John Aston', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Prodrive: 40 Years of Success

by Ian Wagstaff

When this UK motorsport and engineering group turned forty it was high time for a look back—and forward. On both counts there’s surely a lot more to be mined, but here’s a start.

How Did I Get Here? 

Memories of Six Decades in Motorsport, and Musings on the Future of Formula 1 and the Planet

by Peter Wright

To say that Peter Wright is the guru of ground effect is like saying that Sir Ian McKellen is just the Gandalf guy. And that’s only one of the arrows in his quiver.

Three Million Miles in a Volvo and Other Curious Car Stories

by Giles Chapman

The author calls himself nosy—and proud of it. If he wasn’t (one or the other or both) there’d be no book, a selection of interviews he collected over a lifetime of talking to people.

Both Sides of the Barrier: Images and Memories from a Motor Racing Odyssey; the A-Side (1957–79) 

by Stuart Dent

Follow an amateur motorsports enthusiast in Britain around as he snaps photos and records his impressions. Got your own photos, race programs, ticket stubs? Maybe there’s a book in it.

BRAWN BGP 001/02

by David Tremayne

Each element—car, driver/s, team, the racing season, the legal challenges etc.—would make its own wild story but they’re all part of one story of one underdog team that in its one and only year of existence pocketed the championship.

Wild About Racing: My Lotus Years with Clark and Chapman

by Derek Wild

Having cobbled together his own derelict Lotus 7 while still an apprentice, Wild took his first mechanic job with Lotus to get cheap spare parts. Right place, right time—Lotus was on a roll, and he forged a life-long career in motorsports. 

Derek Warwick: Never Look Back

The Racing Life of Britain’s Double Champion 

by Derek Warwick with David Tremayne

Those two world championships were 20 years apart, which right there tells you something about keeping your eyes on the ball—also essential for navigating business (check) and health (check) challenges.

Texas Legend: Jim Hall and his Chaparrals

by George Levy

Look at a modern F1 car and you find tech Hall dreamt up decades ago. One of the great racing drivers of his generation, he is even better known as a constructor whose cars won in every series they contested. Finally here’s a proper book about him.

Formula 1 Car By Car 2000–09

by Peter Higham

There isn’t a boring year, and certainly not a decade, in F1. Sure, there are seemingly endless years of one marque or driver dominating the sport but even then there’s plenty happening around that.

The Likely Lads: From Trimmer to Piquet and from Walker to Warwick

by Chris Ellard

Just about all the big names in racing got their start in this junior-level feeder series. Begun in 1951 it folded in 2014. This book remembers drivers and personalities from the heady days of the swinging sixties.

Happy Lucky Days – My Life in Racing 

by Bob Evans

Racing in the the glory days of F5000, Evans showed plenty of talent but as his entertaining and candid autobiography shows, scoring points and wins has a lot to do with factors outside a driver’s control.

The Race to the Future: The Adventure That Accelerated the Twentieth Century

by Kassia St. Clair

Automobiles, electric lights, wireless telegraphy, the first synthetic plastic—everything is changing all at once. Ironic: The 8000-mile drive in 1907 from Peking to Paris happened at the same time newspapers touted “the triumph of the horse.”