5 Books to Peruse During the F1 Summer Break

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Summer reading: From Mario to motorcycles, you'll enjoy all these!

The dog days of summer are here so, like our canine friends, it's time to lie under the shade of a tree and relax a little. There's nothing better for relaxing than a good book. Here are five of them.

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Is there a better expert on all things BMW than Jackie Jouret? She was editor of Bimmer magazine for 17 years and has authored 11 books on BMW cars and even executives over the years, including discovering, documenting, and writing a book about Elvis’ 507, a car restored and displayed at Pebble Beach by BMW North America.

In addition to that she has always been a motorcycle rider. She once dropped out of grad school at Berkeley “to ride around Ireland with a friend.” Out of school she started writing for San Francisco’s famous City Bike newspaper before going on to Bimmer and freelancing.

The book takes us through BMW Motorrad’s founding as an engine maker, pre- and post-war survival, and technological innovation that leads us to the sterling line of bikes we now enjoy.

“Cataloging every innovative feature introduced over 100 years of BMW motorcycle history would be next to impossible, but I’ve tried to capture as many as I could on these pages,” she says. “It’s been a fun adventure.”

You’ll have just as much fun reading it. It’s all presented in bite-sized, two-page chapters that each contain a photo, a headline and a few hundred words about an important aspect in BMW Motorrad history. You can skip ahead to find your favorite bike or start at the beginning and get the whole story, warts, world wars, and all.

Dave Friedman has published many books from his time as Shelby team photographer in the golden age of both Shelby American and of sports car racing in America. Friedman was there for seemingly the whole scene, at a time when the greatest names in racing competed against one another in the greatest sports cars ever made.

This book concentrates on the L.A. Times and L.A. Examiner Grands Prix as well as the USRRC championships in Laguna Seca, from 1958 to 1965. It was a time when the best Grand Prix drivers in the world drove in races like these because it was the off-season and they just loved to race.

Seemingly every great driver of the era is here: Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Lance Reventlow, Roger Penske, Ken Miles, Carroll Shelby, Lloyd Ruby, Parnelli Jones, Bob Bondurant, Jim Hall, A.J. Foyt, and on and on. You’ll see great racers who don’t get mentioned as much as some of the above but should, too.

I guarantee you have not seen these photos before. I had never seen them and I thought I’d seen everything. You will love paging through this book, especially if you were there. You will even see a very young George Lucas working the pits, clipboard in hand, doing who knows what?

If you ever started thinking auto shows were getting boring, step into the fertile mind of automotive journalist Sam Mitani. Mitani was International Editor at Road & Track magazine for 22 years and was on the gravy train the whole time: private jets, fancy hotels, and PR people paid to laugh at his jokes. We’ve all been there.

And in that time he attended probably hundreds of auto shows all over the world. So when he writes a spy novel set in the pampered world of car writers, he knows whereof he speaks.

But the premise of his latest novel, Red Mist, goes well beyond simply lampooning what we do in this weird sliver of reality that is automotive journalism. Mitani takes former Navy Seal Max Koga, forced to retire because of psychological trauma, who is pursuing a web of bad guys ranging from terrorists to drug cartels.

Yes, Mitani has bitten off a big piece of press-program dinner salad here. Does he carry it off? Yes!

Full disclosure, I am a character in this book. Just as in Mitani’s last book, The Prototype, one of his trusted friends in the auto journo world is flimsily disguised as “Mark Tyler, Editor-in-Chief of Car News Weekly.” So maybe I’m in this too deep. But it’s fun, and you will have fun reading the whole adventure, too.

There have been many books written about Mario Andretti, and rightly so, since he’s perhaps the greatest driver ever to climb into a race car.

French photographer Bernard Asset offers up another one. Asset’s take is to combine his own photographs with the observations of those who raced against and worked with Mario to create a new take on the man and the myth.

The result? Surprise! Everyone likes Mario Andretti! There is zero controversy here, and maybe there’s zero reason for it. Andretti has never been a controversial driver, always affable with both teammates and press.

The book is not comprehensive, however; it starts with Formula 1, covers a bit of Le Mans, and ends with Indy car.

When you think about the early years of motorsports, even about the middle years, it’s a wonder anyone survived. Some of the first helmets, the ones you see Fangio wearing, were made for playing polo. The fact that it took many, many years to convince everyone to wear a full-, instead of open-face, helmet may tell you all you need to know about driver attitudes toward safety.

Bruno Bayol’s book is one of the most thorough examinations of the evolution of this particular safety device yet written. Bayol includes views of some of the greatest F1 drivers of any era, starting with safety advocate Jackie Stewart and including helmets worn by Mario Andretti, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and many others.

The book is mostly concerned with the introduction and rise of the full-faced helmet in F1 in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but continues up to helmets of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

“The objective of this book was to focus on a certain era of F1 that I consider ‘Noble,” said Bayol. “I always loved the simple and pure designs of that period.”Read it and be glad for the work and sacrifice of all those who raced before you.

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