01/12/2007
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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Every so often, somebody publishes a book with 'Driver By Driver' in the title. This is an easy sort of book to write since all the information is on the Internet, you do not have to shift your butt that much to write a book like this. I thought that I would like 'Grand Prix Driver By Driver,' (no comma) until I looked up Alberto Rodriguez Larreta, who bought a drive with Team Lotus in the 1960 Argentine GP.
Readers in South America have filled me in on Larreta, thank you. From his one Grand Prix, I thought he sounded more than averagely useful, it turned out that he was a star in saloon car racing. Sorry, but you cannot publish a book called 'Grand Prix Driver By Driver' (no comma) and miss someone who drove for Team Lotus.
I thought that it was impossible to cock-up a book like this so, when I was contacted, I arranged a deal whereby readers of Pitpass could buy it at a cut rate. The recommended retail price is £16.99 and my deal brought in the book at £12.99 including post and packaging in the UK.
I know how the book trade works, a single copy sold through Pitpass, at this discount, generates more profit than ten books sold in shops.
This sounds crazy, but the wholesaler takes a minimum of 50% of the cover price, and then there are the retailers. On a £10 book, the publisher receives £3.65 and then has to pay the author, the printer, the copyright on photographs, and the storage facility.
The discount deal was offered and agreed, I had not then noticed the absence of Larreta.
The author of 'Grand Prix Driver By Driver, Omitting Alberto Larreta', is Philip Raby, who is not someone with whom I am familiar, but I have discovered that he is well-known within Porsche circles. He offers an assessment service if you want to buy a used Porsche and should I ever overcome my lack of interest in Beetle Specials I might employ him. Someone who knows what to look for on a 911 is not necessarily qualified to be an author. The reverse is also true, you do not want my opinion about a car: my technical knowledge begins, and ends, with WD40.
A former MD of Porsche (UK) once forbade me to have anything to do with Porsche. He got stuffy because I pointed out the errors in a press release. He had a Porsche winning the 1962 German GP, not so. Then there was also the abuse of the noble apostrophe. I was banned from anything to do with Porsche. His name was Kevin.
At first glance, I warmed to 'Grand Prix Driver By Driver, Omitting Alberto Larreta'. I opened it at random and saw three names on a double spread that I did not recognise, which is a hard feat to pull. Max de Terra was a Swiss privateer in the early 1950s, who twice lined up for the Swiss GP, at the tail end. Giovanni de Rei and Frank J Dochnal both tried to qualify for a World Championship race, and failed.
I liked the fact that Philip Raby gave these people respect. Most of us are never going to get close to failing to qualify for a Grand Prix, you have to be pretty special to be given a chance to fail to qualify. We are not talking about a low-level event like the Olympic Games, where thousands of competitors are eliminated in the preliminary stages.
Raby, like everyone who writes such a book, had to face an uncomfortable fact. Between 1950 and 1960, the Indianapolis 500 was a World Championship event.
This is not as odd as it may seem because, 1950-51, there was an overlap of formulae, cars of 4500cc were permitted in both series. Raby has done what I would have done, he has included them all in an Appendix.
There are silly mistakes in this book. We all make mistakes when writing a book, but there are mistakes and there are silly mistakes. I believe that Sir Stirling's tally of GP wins was better than zero. Oops! I cannot recall Alain Prost receiving an OBE, he being of the Froggie persuasion.
It is my belief that Juan-Manuel Fangio won five World Championships, not someone called Sangio. You need to know nothing about motor racing to know that if there was ever a driver called 'Sangio', he will not come under 'F'. It's an alphabet thing.
There has never been a manufacturer called 'Eigenbau', it translates from the German as 'Special'. You do not write, 'Eigenbau-BMW', you write 'BMW Special'.
Tony Brooks won six Grands Prix, not five. If you wish to eliminate the shared drive with Moss at Aintree in 1957, you need to explain why. Raby credits Luigi Fagioli with his win in the 1951 French GP, which was also a shared drive.
Excuse me if I get pissed off with writers who do not know what they are doing. I get equally irked with the publishers who commission them.
The title of one forthcoming book has had to be changed. Two publishers lit on the same title for an unauthorised biography of the Swiss driver, Lewis Hamilton, and one had to change the title.
Hitting the shops is the official Lewis Hamilton autobiography along with eight, count 'em, eight unofficial biographies. One, which will be promoted heavily, is by James Allen, the monotone of ITV and the ghostwriter of Nigel Mansell's dire autobiography.
I own a copy of the Mansell whinge. There was a stack reduced to £2.99 and I thought that £2.99 was a fair price for a door stop. I have tried to read James Allen's prose; I nearly made it to the end of a paragraph. Mine was one of the rare, unsigned, copies. I know someone (no names but he edits Pitpass), who owned a (Mansell) signed copy he bought for £5. He gave it to an enemy.
James Allen is one of the eight unofficial authors. Someone, somewhere, is so stupid as to believe that the name of James Allen can shift a book. Worse, this person is allowed to vote and is permitted to reproduce. Someone, who has to be even more daft, pays this person a salary.
To contributors to Pitpass's fora, I suggest, 'Nine biographies of Lewis Hamilton, one by James Allen. Discuss.'
Maybe the authorised work, by Tim Collings, will give us new insights, a vain hope since it is by Tim Collings. What I need from the biography of a 22-year old are the headline chapters: 'My Potty And Me' and 'Acne, My Struggle.' Maybe we could also have 'Stevenage, My Kind Of Town.'
There are three drivers on the cover of Raby's book: Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton. Schumacher and Senna earned their places, Hamilton has competed in 17 F1 races. I am tired of this cynicism.
There was an opportunity for someone to come in with fresh insight, some of Raby's writing is quite good, a lot is rubbish. Take this on Alain Prost: "there was constant pressure on him to be the first French World Champion driving a French car, so he returned to McLaren in 1984." McLaren is French?
Philip Raby cannot write, but he has persuaded someone that he can and that person probably receives a good salary for being utterly useless.
I arranged a deal for readers, and the Sales Director of Green Umbrella Publishing claimed to have sent me an image of the dust jacket, but what I got was an image of the cover for 'Just A Step' by Leanne Grose together with the claim that it is "the most inspirational book of 2008". We are still in 2007, how on earth does anyone know what will be the most inspirational book of next year?
By the way, since I have negotiated the deal, the phone number is 0870 444 4151. I am told that that you will get through to a 'fulfillment (sic) agency'. Do not feel left out, I have no idea no idea what a 'fulfillment (sic) agency' is either.
American English is different, but this was a UK-only deal, so Yankees and Johnnie Rebs can relax.
In the movie, 'Network', Peter Finch's character said, 'I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take this any more.' That is how I feel. I do not want any more crap books, they give proper authors a bad name.
There is good news, most of the Hamilton biographies are still stacked in warehouses. Few booksellers want to know them.
Come the New Year, most Hamilton biogs will going for next to nothing. I will buy the ninth-best. Doug Nye and I have our differences, but we agree on one thing, we would not be without a copy of 'Niki Lauda And The Grand Prix Gladiators' by Ronnie Mutch. It is the worst book on motor racing ever written.
It is like Ed Wood's movies, which are so bad that you end up liking them. I have a copy of 'Plan 9 From Outer Space'. Often nominated as the worst movie ever made. It is glorious in its failure.
Lurking in Ed Wood country is the ninth-best biography of Lewis Hamilton, followed by the eigthth-best and I am sure that the seventh-best will be useless as well. Then there is the sixth-best. I do not even want to think of the fifth-best which is sure to dreadful.
For me, the ninth-best, the dross, will be the only option. It will emerge, opinion will take care of that, I wonder who has written it. Someone has, and it has been printed. I bet his Mum has boasted to the neighbours that her kid has written a book. Someone has commissioned the book from someone who cannot write. Someone has ordered the presses to run, money has been invested, but the real dimbo is the person who employs the person who can tell the presses to run so we have the opportunity to buy crap.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
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