Comments on: Race Without End (Maurice Hamilton, 1994) http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2008/02/17/race-without-end-maurice-hamilton-1994/ F1 Fanatic - The Formula 1 Blog with F1 news, pictures, video, comment and analysis Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:27:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Alianora La Canta http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2008/02/17/race-without-end-maurice-hamilton-1994/comment-page-1/#comment-144767 Alianora La Canta Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:23:03 +0000 http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2008/02/17/race-without-end-maurice-hamilton-1994/#comment-144767 I read this book about eight years ago and still remember how enjoyable (and at times funny) I found it. Yes, the team Maurice ended up writing about was part of the attraction, but there was a definite sense of depth and breadth that I hadn't seen in an F1 book before and, apart from Jackie Stewart's Winning Is Not Enough, haven't seen since. My favourite anecdote from Race Without End was the Canada boat race, where the engineers had to cross a lake in teams of three using a boat made of the packing cases and other stuff used for flying the equipment over there. Jordan had two entries. One of them was a serious entry, while the other was effectively a team of two because the third member of the crew spent his time shouting out boasts and insults, to gales of laughter from the other teams. The Jordan entry with the wannabe Viking lasted all of 10 yards before sinking... ...while the serious Jordan entry won the race. A really neat summation of the Jordan approach to F1. Maurice Hamilton did a follow-up fly-on-the-wall book behind the scenes at Jordan in 1998 (Against All Odds - I haven't read it yet, but it sounds good), but unfortunately, I've not heard of any other team doing anything really similar to display their true selves. Some books claim to be "behind the scenes", but they generally turn out to be limited in what they can reveal because there are things teams don't want revealing. It says a lot about the insecurities of teams nowadays that this book could not be written in 2008. I read this book about eight years ago and still remember how enjoyable (and at times funny) I found it. Yes, the team Maurice ended up writing about was part of the attraction, but there was a definite sense of depth and breadth that I hadn’t seen in an F1 book before and, apart from Jackie Stewart’s Winning Is Not Enough, haven’t seen since.

My favourite anecdote from Race Without End was the Canada boat race, where the engineers had to cross a lake in teams of three using a boat made of the packing cases and other stuff used for flying the equipment over there. Jordan had two entries. One of them was a serious entry, while the other was effectively a team of two because the third member of the crew spent his time shouting out boasts and insults, to gales of laughter from the other teams. The Jordan entry with the wannabe Viking lasted all of 10 yards before sinking… …while the serious Jordan entry won the race. A really neat summation of the Jordan approach to F1.

Maurice Hamilton did a follow-up fly-on-the-wall book behind the scenes at Jordan in 1998 (Against All Odds – I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds good), but unfortunately, I’ve not heard of any other team doing anything really similar to display their true selves. Some books claim to be “behind the scenes”, but they generally turn out to be limited in what they can reveal because there are things teams don’t want revealing. It says a lot about the insecurities of teams nowadays that this book could not be written in 2008.

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