The 50s of the Formula 1: Race to Race by Eddie Bennett
Published independently in 2021
116 pp., paperback
Purchased new from Amazon
I did it again. Amazon’s little trick of offering free shipping once your order gets over a certain dollar amount had me adding a cheap book to my cart. Influenced by recent reading (NASCAR, Jaguar, Ferrari), The 50s of the Formula One: Race to Race was my choice, at a mere $11.18 Canadian. I wasn’t expecting a lot, I mean at that price I figured I’d get a look at the beginnings of arguably the most famous race series in the world. I wish I could say I ended up happily surprised, but, no.
Now, this book is self-published. Let me say here that I applaud anyone who has an idea, does the work to create a manuscript, and then finds a way to get a physical book out into the marketplace. Kinda goes without saying that I like books and believe in publishing paper books. And I’ve said before that even at the best of times errors do occur and slip through in the final product. It’s happened to everyone. That said, I think going to the effort of self-publishing is wasted when the result is as poor as this book.
Let’s get the basics out of the way. A brief introduction describes the start of Formula 1 in 1950 as major auto racing returned to post-war Europe. Author Eddie Bennett then summarizes each season race by race. Each year ends with a summary of the final drivers’ points standings (and in 1958 and 1959, the Constructors’ Championship points standings). So to some extent, there’s some real information contained on these pages. For me though, that’s where the good news ends.
Overall, I’d say the writing isn’t very good. Yes, there’s a sort of overview of each race, usually the writing deals with the drivers competing near the top of the championship ladder. But there’s no depth in the writing. There are some brief explanations regarding some events – a team withdraws over safety concerns, a driver switches teams – but it’s cursory, a sentence or so stating the fact with little information to really explain what happened.
Then there’s the awkward writing. Almost as if the text were translated poorly from another language. Let’s take these passages from the book…
In this passage, the writing is very awkward. Ascari’s goal was to participate with Lancia, but it’s written as though it was “the erratic year whose goal was to participate with Lancia”. “Ascari had to retire” is past tense, but “now he is doing so” is present tense (though we are still talking about the 1950s). And the last race is not a place ‘where’ he wouldn’t be able to finish, but a contest ‘that’ or ‘which’ he wouldn’t finish.
Again, awkward prose and incorrect word usage. I am not sure exactly what “a very fought” is supposed to mean, except perhaps a very hard battle to be fought? And the phrasing “that got pole through Alberto Ascari” isn’t correct English, though we understand it means Ascari was able to win pole position.
“For his part” is incorrect. While both Cooper and Ferrari were people, the book refers to their teams and the chase for the Constructors’ Championship, not specifically to John Cooper or Enzo Ferrari.
Again, very awkward phrasing to say that Jack Brabham led the whole race, not allowing Stirling Moss any chance to gain in the championship. Such examples are found throughout this book, as well as other minor things such as typos and punctuation errors (again as above, there should be a comma between options and leading). Some things are straight confusing, such as in the first chapter…
“… only the best 5 drivers scored, distributing 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points, plus an additional point for the fastest lap.”
The 50s of the Formula 1: Race to race
That’s 6 point values (not including fastest lap) – so, was it 6 drivers who scored points? Or is the table incorrect? Hard to say, but all in all, it makes the book difficult to read.
On the subject of making it a little more difficult to read, there are no page numbers in this book. Now, that could be a stylistic choice but I think convention says that most books have their pages numbered. There is also no table of contents. Again, it’s a short book, but with 10 chapters, a table of contents is generally accepted convention.
There are black and white photos throughout. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know what they are photos of as there are no captions on them (save for the final few pages which are labelled portraits of the many drivers who competed in F1 during the decade). Some of them are pretty decent shots – cars, drivers, action pictures from the various races. But with no captions, one can only assume the picture refers to a nearby paragraph. Also, the photos are not properly credited. In the first photo I added above, one can see a small ’36’ beside the right bottom of the photo, and a footnote at bottom saying ’36 Es.wikipedia.org’. So, the credit for this photo is given to Wikipedia’s page for Spain. Most (but not all) photos are credited the same way, from various websites. I am fairly certain this is insufficient. Wikipedia and the other websites may have the rights to use the photos, but those rights are usually not immediately transferable to anyone wishing to publish the images. Nor is the website the true rights-holder, as that would be the photographer or agency the photo originates from. Further, simply saying ‘es.wikipedia.org’ is extremely broad, so it would be something of a task to hop on the web and try to search for these specific photos on these various sites.
Now, I did discover something I didn’t know. It seems that in the early years of F1, the Indianapolis 500 was part of the championship then. Though points were awarded to the competitors, the fact is none of the European teams travelled to America to race. In the final tables, drivers who scored points at Indy were shown, but they’d have gained no other points. Conversely, everyone else’s points were gained in races other than Indy. In the book, the author gives brief mention to Indianapolis, and always mentions that really Indy has little bearing on the championship.
So, at the end of the day, I found little redeeming about this little book. I suppose as a quick reference it would suffice, if I wanted a short summary on various races. I know for certain there are much better books out there on the subject of F1’s beginnings, and on the drivers and constructors involved. I also know there are much better self-published books available (in fact I have one queued up for the coming months). As much as I enjoy books and having a small library of them, I have to say in this case, I’d prefer to have my 11 bucks back.
Pros: gives a brief overview of Formula 1 at the beginning
Cons: poorly written; a variety of errors; photos without captions to explain what the photos are
Where to get it: Amazon
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