Grand Prix Heroes DVDs

The documentary Senna, which appeared in cinemas in 2010, has sold 700,000 copies in the UK since going on sale on DVD and Blu-ray.

Granted, Senna is probably the most famous racing driver of all time. But there must be a market for similar videos of other world champions and famous F1 figures.

As Formula One Management hold the right to practically all F1 race footage from the early 1980s, we can only blame the near-total absence of such products on them. Do FOM make so much money from flogging television rights they don’t feel the need to supplement them with productions beyond the annual F1 season review videos?

It’s another example of how FOM fall short in promoting Formula 1. Happily, Duke Video have stepped up to fill the gap, at least for a dozen drivers whose careers pre-date Bernie Ecclestone locking down Formula 1 television coverage.

A new series of DVDs named Grand Prix Heroes profiles 11 major characters from F1 history. Most are drivers from the seventies, but there’s also videos on Frank Williams and Mika Hakkinen.

The series uses material from the Brunswick archive – the same crew who shot the footage for Duke’s 1970 to 1980 F1 season reviews. The 11 new discs, narrated by Stirling Moss, feature a substantial amount of new footage, and some of it is very interesting indeed.

For example, highlights from the Niki Lauda profile include a young Luca di Montezemolo in 1974 and footage of Lauda testing at Fiorano in 1976. At Monaco in 1975, six of his mechanics appear to be engaged in setting a record for ‘most people perched on an F1 car’ as they perform a slow victory lap of the track.

The Jackie Stewart video has some excellent behind-the-scenes footage of him conducting the safety briefing for Formula Ford drivers at the Austrian Grand Prix. At the Nurburgring one onlooker asks him “have you prayed?” before he ventures out onto the notorious track.

As you’d expect the James Hunt feature contains some amusing and candid interviews. Most of the discs benefit from the inclusion of contemporary interviews with their subjects.

According to the publishers the Ronnie Peterson documentary has been the most popular one with buyers so far. An interesting feature of this disc is the inclusion of some apparently contemporary commentary by Moss on Peterson’s win in the 1976 Italian Grand Prix.

However it also exhibits some of the problems with the original material – footage of a conversation between him and Colin Chapman at one race is completely drowned out by a loudspeaker.

The producers’ ambitions have been constrained somewhat by the limitations of the footage, most of which was shot between 1970 and 1980. Drivers whose careers extended past 1980 tend to have their final years narrated in a hasty voiceover at the end.

Lauda’s return to F1 in the 1980s is shown through his pre-comeback test for McLaren at Donington Park. This is a great piece of material, but it doesn’t make up for the absence of footage from his last four years of competition, all of which is locked away in the FOM archive at Biggin Hill.

In other cases the videos come to a hasty conclusion after the subject has reached the peak of their career. The Emerson Fittipaldi feature ends at 1974 and therefore overlooks more than half of his F1 career and his successful move to IndyCar racing.

The uniform length of 52 minutes – imposed with one eye on potential television releases in markets where the DVDs are not being sold – leaves some of the features ending rather abruptly, particularly those drivers who enjoyed fairly long careers.

Mario Andretti’s career is shown up to the 1978 Dutch Grand Prix – shortly before he clinched the title at Monza in a race that claimed the life of his team mate, which is a very odd omission. His subsequent seasons with Lotus and Alfa Romeo are not shown.

Although Moss’s presence adds gravitas to the production, he stumbles over the script in places and makes some repeated mispronunciations – notably ‘Montezemula’. In places the script could do with being more tightly focused on the action, and trimmed of irrelevant details about what was happening to other drivers.

The concept behind the videos is stretched too far with the addition of one showing Hakkinen’s “Road to Formula 1″. This does have some interesting sequences of his testing for McLaren alongside Ayrton Senna and Michael Andretti. But the shortage of race action makes it rather dull in places. The notorious collision between him and Michael Schumacher in the 1990 Macau Grand Prix does not feature.

But I can forgive the productions niggles, the lack of chapters on the discs and the misspelling of Jody Scheckter. It does little to detract from some truly fabulous footage, much of it never released before. I especially enjoyed the chance to watch features on drivers other than world champions such as Clay Regazzoni and Peter Revson.

They’re not perfect, but until FOM finally get around to re-releasing the earlier season reviews in digital format (don’t hold your breath), they’re certainly worth a look.

The discs are priced at £19.99 each or you can gorge on ten of them (minus the Hakkinen DVD) in a £149.99 box set.

F1 Fanatic ratings

Disc	Rating	Buy
Grand Prix Heroes: Niki Lauda		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Niki Lauda
Grand Prix Heroes: James Hunt		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: James Hunt
Grand Prix Heroes: Jody Scheckter		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Jody Scheckter
Grand Prix Heroes: Ronnie Peterson		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Ronnie Peterson
Grand Prix Heroes: Clay Regazzoni		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Clay Regazzoni
Grand Prix Heroes: Peter Revson		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Peter Revson
Grand Prix Heroes: Mario Andretti		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Mario Andretti
Grand Prix Heroes: Jackie Stewart		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Jackie Stewart
Grand Prix Heroes: Emerson Fittipaldi		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Emerson Fittipaldi
Grand Prix Heroes: Frank Williams		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Frank Williams
Grand Prix Heroes: Mika Hakkinen – The Road to F1		Buy Grand Prix Heroes: Mika Hakkinen

Buy the Grand Prix Heroes 10 DVD box set

Grand Prix Heroes
Published by Duke Video
£19.99 each / £149.99 for ten-disc set

F1 Fanatic earns a commission on products sold via the links to our affiliate partners above, however you are not charged any extra. See here for more information.

Reviews

• "Grand Prix Heroes" DVDs reviewed
• "Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall" by Peter Warr - review
• "The Limit: Life and death in Formula 1's most dangerous era" - review
• "He's done it again" - official 2011 F1 season DVD reviewed
• F1 2011: The F1 Fanatic review
• F1 2011: Checklist
• Red Bull Racing RB6 F1 car Haynes Manual reviewed
• The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
• The Making of Senna part 8: The Death of Ayrton Senna
• The Making of Senna part 7: Imola 1994

Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall by Peter Warr

“Nigel Mansell will never win a Grand Prix as long as I have a hole in my arse.”

The memorable words of Peter Warr, former Lotus team principal and Colin Chapman’s right-hand man, as Mansell left the team at the end of 1984. Warr was never short of an opinion or two, particularly on the subject of Mansell.

Not that Mansell didn’t give as good as he got, claiming “most of what he achieved had been on Colin’s coat tails” in his 1995 autobiography.

The passage of time – and Mansell’s eventual tally of 31 career wins, the fourth-highest of any driver – did not cause Warr to revise his view of his former driver.

He spends over a dozen pages on Mansell in this new volume of memoirs, calling him a “seriously flawed driver” who “threw away two championships” and even claiming he got an extended contract at Lotus due to “a completely uncharacteristic moment of weakness” on Chapman’s part.

Clearly, Warr’s memoirs do not suffer from the rose-tinted spectacles effect which can make dreary reading of such works. His trenchant views come across in every page, though few are as negative as those on Mansell.

The books is split into five main sections: on Colin Chapman, Bernie Ecclestone, mechanics, engineers and – by far the longest chapter – drivers.

The latter includes many great names from the golden age of Lotus. Warr critiques them from his unrivalled vantage point having watched so many of them at close quarters. It includes a passage on Jochen Rindt, where Warr gives a considered opinion on the factors leading to his fatal accident at Monza in 1970.

Warr has interesting things to say of Emerson Fittipaldi who excelled for the team but left under a cloud in 1973 after being joined by Ronnie Peterson – who Warr heaps praise on.

The same goes for Ayrton Senna. Warr gives an especially absorbing account of not just Senna’s well-documented genius at the wheel and technical savvy, but also his hard-nosed contract negotiations and how he spurred the team on accelerate development of their cars.

The section on mechanics is also worthy of special mention. It gives credit to the team’s unsung heroes and contains some of the book’s best anecdotes.

Warr’s plain and unvarnished recollections make for a compelling read, one you you wish went on twice as long.

Had Warr not succumbed to a heart attack in October 2010, this might have been so. According to son Andrew, when they unearthed the file on his computer it included a contents list twice the length of the completed material.

Veteran motorsport journalist Simon Taylor finished the book and had the wisdom to use a light touch and leave Warr’s prose virtually untouched, save for a few useful additions to provide necessary context.

The rest of Warr’s memoirs may be lost to us forever, but what remains is an unmissable read.

F1 Fanatic rating

Buy Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall (UK)

Buy Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall (USA)

“Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall” by Peter Warr
Published by Haynes
ISBN: 9780857331236
£19.99

F1 Fanatic earns a commission on products sold via the links to our affiliate partners above, however you are not charged any extra. See here for more information.

Reviews

• "Grand Prix Heroes" DVDs reviewed
• "Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall" by Peter Warr - review
• "The Limit: Life and death in Formula 1's most dangerous era" - review
• "He's done it again" - official 2011 F1 season DVD reviewed
• F1 2011: The F1 Fanatic review
• F1 2011: Checklist
• Red Bull Racing RB6 F1 car Haynes Manual reviewed
• The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
• The Making of Senna part 8: The Death of Ayrton Senna
• The Making of Senna part 7: Imola 1994

"The Limit" - Michael Cannell

The tragedy of the 1961 Italian Grand Prix, in which Wolfgang von Trips and 15 spectators lost their lives, is the subject of this new book by American author Michael Cannell.

Unfortunately, I didn’t receive a copy early enough to include it in F1 Fanatic’s season gift guide.

Cannell calls himself “an unlikely person to write a book about car racing” but adds, “I believe that dedicated reporters can write on any topic if willing to do the legwork”. He has done the legwork with this book, and it shows.

“The Limit” serves as twin biographies of Phil Hill and von Trips, the two Ferrari drivers who contested the 1961 world championship.

These were contrasting characters. Hill, restrained and thoughtful, mechanically sympathetic and occasionally gripped by fear at the prospect of racing. Von Trips, with his aristocratic background, was more of a playboy figure and somewhat accident-prone, though often very quick.

Of the two, Hill receives a fuller and slightly more sympathetic treatment. Cannell says after the fateful race: “The newspapers buried Hill, if they mentioned him at all. The insinuation was that von Trips was the rightful winner.”

We tend to see team patriarch Enzo Ferrari through Hill’s eyes – especially Hill’s disdainful view of Ferrari’s ostentatious mourning for several of his predecessors and, later, von Trips. “La Scala might have lost a star when Ferrari went into tears,” observes Hill.

Cannell paints a vivid picture of the times, relying on a mixture of contemporary accounts, recent memoirs and some new interviews.

The author has an eye for the kind of curious detail that conveys a point: after winning the 1961 championship Hill appeared on a television gameshow the following December which was “predicated on the obscurity of the guest’s achievement”. Whether F1′s profile has improved in America in the intervening 50 years will surely be a point of interest when the United States Grand Prix returns to the calendar this year.

That the intervening five decades has seen a revolution in attitudes towards safety in motor racing can hardly be overstated. After von Trips’ car cut its deadly swathe through the Monza crowd and hurled the lifeless body of its driver on the floor, the race continued.

Cannell’s book seems to draw particular inspiration from Robert Daley’s contemporary works The Cruel Sport and Cars at Speed, both of which have been republished in recent years and should be your first port of call if you’re looking for information on this time. If you enjoyed those, you’ll lap up “The Limit”.

F1 Fanatic rating

Buy The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most Dangerous Era (UK)

Buy The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most Dangerous Era (UK, Kindle edition)

Buy The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most Dangerous Era (USA)

Buy The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most Dangerous Era (USA, Kindle edition)

The Limit: Life and death in Formula 1′s most dangerous era
Published by Atlantic Books
2011
ISBN: 9781848872226

F1 Fanatic earns a commission on products sold via the links to our affiliate partners above, however you are not charged any extra. See here for more information.

Reviews

• "Grand Prix Heroes" DVDs reviewed
• "Team Lotus: My view from the pit wall" by Peter Warr - review
• "The Limit: Life and death in Formula 1's most dangerous era" - review
• "He's done it again" - official 2011 F1 season DVD reviewed
• F1 2011: The F1 Fanatic review
• F1 2011: Checklist
• Red Bull Racing RB6 F1 car Haynes Manual reviewed
• The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
• The Making of Senna part 8: The Death of Ayrton Senna
• The Making of Senna part 7: Imola 1994

2011 F1 season review - He's done it again

The official F1 season review is available in high definition for the first time.

But is it good enough to persuade you to part with your hard-earned pennies?

The review itself gets off to a rather plodding start with a few dreary interviews. But with 19 races to pack in it speeds along.

So much so that the a proper introduction to the season – recapping driver moves and major technical changes – is entirely absent, which feels like a strange omission.

However there is some testing footage, including a brief glimpse of Robert Kubica in the car he sadly never got to race this year.

Race highlights

The real meat of the review is the race highlights and these are up to the usual high standard. Ben Edwards – BBC’s commentator for next season – does a first-rate job. Will Buxton supplies further background between the races.

There is no shortage of great material and a generous sprinkling of footage and team radio that hasn’t been shown before.

Monaco stands out as one of the best examples. It comes to life with plenty of interesting snippets from the drivers and the teams – particularly when the race is red-flagged, prompting some of them to wonder if the Grand Prix is over.

There is also a revealing interview with the McLaren drivers following the Spanish Grand Prix where they talk quite candidly about their debriefings and being stuck with insufficiently long gear ratios.

New footage

Among the other interesting moments revealed in more detail is the radio exchange between Mark Webber and the Red Bull pit wall in the closing stages at Silverstone – where the team told him not to race team mate Sebastian Vettel.

It begins with Vettel noticing the arrival of Webber on his tail and warning his race engineer to “be wise”. He is told, “we understand what you mean, we’re controlling the situation.”

Webber is warned first by his race engineer and then repeatedly by team principal Christian Horner to stay three seconds behind his team mate. “Maintain the gap, yeah,” acknowledges Webber, while clambering over Vettel’s rear wing.

Webber stays silent after the race while Adrian Newey tells him: “Sorry about that. We compromised Seb’s first stop to allow you the optimum stop from intermediates to slicks. I think it’s only fair that we held at the end.”

Among the previously unseen moments from the season is Felipe Massa’s collision with Jarno Trulli at Monza, for which the Ferrari driver can consider himself lucky not to have been given a penalty. A furious Trulli demanded he be handed one.

We also get more material from Suzuka, including Sergio Perez’s joke at his team’s expense and Vettel’s celebratory doughnuts after sealing his second title.

The qualifying incident between Webber, Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton at Suzuka is revealingly played from the Red Bull driver’s point of view, along with his radio messages.

At Korea, a furious Helmut Marko remonstrates with Jaime Alguersuari after the Toro Rosso driver held Vettel up in practice. A clue as to why he’s lost his place at the team?

Memorable moments

Much of the most memorable footage from the season is present and correct, from Webber’s staggering pass on Alonso in Spa to Rowan Atkinson’s facial contortions as Hamilton and Massa collide yet again in India.

I’d have liked to seen more on the teams further down the grid as they tend to get overlooked in the race broadcasts to begin with.

There is a rather high level of assumed knowledge about the 2011 rules – though that’s not likely to be a problem for F1 Fanatics!

And at times it feels there is too little context to the action. The dropping of the Bahrain round, for example, is entirely ignored.

On the other hand the exhaust-blown diffuser row is covered in great detail – almost excessively so, particularly the drawn-out press conference discussion between Martin Whitmarsh and Christian Horner.

Team radio feature

The Blu-Ray edition offers an hour of extra features. Of those, one is particularly worthy of your attention.

It shows the highlights from the Chinese Grand Prix – undoubtedly one of this year’s best races – relying entirely on team radio messages to tell the story.

This is an excellent feature and should be repeated next year for all the races as an additional audio track.

You get a lot of footage and some great new material for your money. It may lack a little in sparkle, but then the season itself was not a classic contest.

Despite that it remains an essential end-of-year purchase – it’s just a pity it won’t be out in time for Christmas.

F1 Fanatic rating

“He’s Done it Again” – official 2011 F1 season review
Released: 26th December 2011
Price: £24.99 (Blu-Ray), £19.99 (DVD)
Publisher: Universal Pictures UK

Buy / pre-order the 2011 F1 season review on Blu-ray

Buy / pre-order the 2011 F1 season review on DVD

For more gift ideas see the 2011 F1 Fanatic Gift Guide.

F1 Fanatic earns a commission on products sold via the links to our affiliate partners above, however you are not charged any extra. See here for more information.

• Official F1 season review videos

F1 2011 is Codemasters’ second official Formula 1 game for major formats.

The original was generally well-received, but wasn’t without its flaws and some embarrassing bugs.

With the new title Codemasters say they’re offering more than just an updated roster of 19 tracks and tweaked rules.

Safety car

The attention-grabbing addition for 2011 is the safety car. This is part of a revised race environment in which Grands Prix can also be red-flagged if the track is sufficiently blocked.

As in real life, when the safety car comes out you have to queue up behind it and not overtake until it returns to the pits. A rather heavy-handed automatic control system keeps you within the rules while the car is out.

This continues to govern until the Mercedes SLS AMG is back in the pits. When the field is released your opportunities to get a jump on the car in front are rather limited.

Queueing up behind the safety car

Still, it’s good to see Copdemasters have responded to the huge numbers of fans who were crying out for this feature.

Those who are not so keen on the idea may be disappointed to learn the safety car period cannot be skipped. However the safety car is only ever out briefly – not as long as in real life – so you’re quickly on your way again.

KERS, DRS and more 2011 tweaks

Among the other new inclusions are the Drag Reduction System and Kinetic Energy Recovery System. Now more than ever it’s worth making sure you’re totally happy with you control system before you dive into a race, because you’re going to be jabbing a lot of buttons.

In practice and qualifying DRS is one of the most entertaining new additions to the game, as you dare yourself to open it earlier and close it later, risking disaster if you do.

Obeying its implementation to the letter, it even slams shut as you head towards the Monaco tunnel or Eau Rouge in Spa.

The same attention to detail has been paid to the implementation of KERS, which is not available if you drive for Lotus, HRT or Virgin.

Given that, it’s surprising to see another of the new rules for 2011 is absent: the 107% cut-off time in qualifying is not enforced.

Last year Codemasters admitted exaggerating the qualities of the Bridgestone tyres to make them more of a feature in the game. But this year the Pirelli tyres appear to have been toned down – I was easily able to do half a race distance on super-softs at Montreal without the lap times dropping off.

The Indian Grand Prix is the new addition to the calendar

The new Indian Grand Prix circuit is present and I hope the real Buddh International Circuit looks as good as the virtual one does. The only other major update among the circuits, aside from the disappearance of Bahrain, is the new pits at Silverstone.

The cars and tracks are rendered in crisper, more detailed graphics which create a more convincing environment than before. The team-specific steering wheels are especially good, complete with functioning LED KERS meters.

But by far my favourite new feature in the game is the menu option for ‘engineer verbosity’. This allows you to tune out the yammering voice in your ear, who waits until you’re trying to judge a breaking point in streaming rain to tell you your engine temperature is fine.

I also like the choice of driver nicknames which include ‘legends’ – the first names of all the F1 world champions.

See here for a summary of the major features in F1 2011:

• F1 2011: Checklist

At the wheel

F1 2011 ticks a lot of boxes for its appearance and faithfulness to the current rules. But just as important is how it handles.

The new generation cars are decidedly less twitchy and punishing than in the previous version.

The cars feel softer, with noticeably more pitch and dive in cornering and braking. Without the real-world sensations of movement, these act as a substitute for the player’s senses and help you judge when the car is on the point of snapping out of control.

In the two easiest modes, which have a decidedly ‘arcade’ feel, even the most ham-fisted player will find it nigh on impossible to get the car sideways in the first place.

Playing in the tougher difficult settings you’ll find the car tricky though not unpredictable in its movements. You at least stand a chance of keeping the car under control when it starts to break traction.

Weaknesses

Two rivals merge to create Vitaly Vettel

For all the progress Codemasters have made with the game, some niggling drawbacks from the previous version.

Top of the list is your inability to see what else is going on during a race. The new Race Director feature makes a small improvement in this respect by allowing you to keep tabs on the running order.

But, at the end of a two-hour race, you want to be able to go back and see the collision which took your closest rival out, how Lewis Hamilton ended up out of the points, and if anyone hit your front wing when it came off.

This limitation is also evident in new video walls positioned around the track, which only ever show what’s happening from your point of view.

The video walls repeat your perspective

I expect this drawback will, for many players, undermine their belief in the authenticity of the racing in F1 2011.

It’s partly because much of the F1 2011 world is so believable that bubble-bursting moments like this are so disappointing.

The performance of the cars and drivers, for example, is much more even than in real life. In half-a-dozen races I only saw a Red Bull on pole position once, with such unlikely figures as Felipe Massa and Nico Rosberg heading the field.

The damage model still leaves a lot to be desired. This may be partly because Formula One Management forbid Codemasters from allowing the car’s survival cells to be damaged.

The cars seem unrealistically sturdy and react unrealistically to contact with barriers and other cars. The way they shed parts like wheels, wings and suspension elements on impact is rather unconvincing.

Cars 'vanish' to avoid contact

At other times the game goes out of its way to keep you from crashing – ‘vanishing’ your car if you drive into the path of a competitor.

Of the criticism that was levelled at the previous game, the most deserved was that concerning the bugs that affected it. Many of these were fixed in a subsequent patch and I observed none of the previous pit lane problems when playing F1 2011.

However I did see more than one instance of two cars occupying the same space on the track and merging into each other, suggesting Codemasters haven’t quite nailed it yet.

The drivers’ artificial intelligence is occasionally very impressive, making opportunistic passes and defending its position. But it does go wrong sometimes – on two occasions I saw drivers stopping after minor collisions.

And while I’m having a whinge, why are Renault called ‘Lotus-Renault’, when none of the other teams’ title sponsors are mentioned?

Improvements

Heidfeld falls prey to a DRS attack

The penalties system has been improved and interferes with the racing far less in the easier modes.

You will find it places much greater demands on your self-control as you crank up the dificulty levels, which is exactly as it should be. However it does tend to dish out needless penalties for ‘blocking’ when the car in question has crashes.

Codemasters have also expanded and improved the multiplayer offering. You can now race against a rival on the same machine using split-screen more. Online races can now feature 16 human players plus eight computer-controlled cars giving a full grid.

Codemasters haven’t tampered with one of the strongest features of the previous game – the weather. The rain effects and clouds still look great, and the frequency with which they appear suggest Codemasters are keen to show them off.

What has been changed in this respect is how dry-weather tyres perform on a wet track. Put on a set of slicks and join a wet track and you’ll find your car spinning its wheels on the exit of corners, unable to stop in braking zones and unwilling to change direction at all.

And many will be glad to learn the in-game timing now shows your split times during qualifying and the gaps to the other cars around you during the race, which is more more intuitive.

Verdict

A Monza pile-up triggers the safety car

The latest iteration of Codemasters’ F1 franchise offers a lot to tempt back players who bought last year’s title, particularly those who enjoy online gaming.

But it seems many of its shortcomings seem to stem from the restrictions and complexities of the F1 game licence. That’s why there’s no support series or other cars to race in, no tracks beyond the 19 on the F1 calendar, and no classic cars from seasons past.

You can’t even connect it up to last year’s game and carry on your career from the end of 2010 into 2011.

Codemasters have produced an entertaining title and continue to refine and expand their simulation of F1 racing. But for several reasons, some not of their making, there’s still a way to go to transform this very good game into a truly great one.

F1 2011 goes on sale in the UK on Friday and is already available in some other regions.

F1 Fanatic rating

Have you played F1 2011? Share your opinions on the game in the comments.

Buy F1 2011 for Sony PlayStation 3
Buy F1 2011 for Microsoft Xbox 360
Buy F1 2011 for PC

F1 2011 by Codemasters

• F1 2011: Checklist
• Codemasters show off F1 2011 gameplay
• F1 2011 – Codemasters’ F1 sequel played
• F1 2011 by Codemasters – first pictures

F1 Fanatic earns a commission on products sold via the links to our affiliate partners above, however you are not charged any extra. See here for more information.

Read the review here:

• F1 2011: The F1 Fanatic review

Buy F1 2011 for Sony PlayStation 3
Buy F1 2011 for Microsoft Xbox 360
Buy F1 2011 for PC

F1 2011 by Codemasters

• F1 2011: The F1 Fanatic review
• Codemasters show off F1 2011 gameplay
• F1 2011 – Codemasters’ F1 sequel played
• F1 2011 by Codemasters – first pictures

F1 Fanatic earns a commission on products sold via the links to our affiliate partners above, however you are not charged any extra. See here for more information.

Haynes manuals are the standard reference material for anyone looking to repair their cars. I have dog-eared examples for the various cars I’ve owned over the years.

Of late Haynes has applied its distinctive branding beyond car repair, covering subjects as diverse as child rearing and playing the electric guitar.

Now, in collaboration with Red Bull, it’s produced its first manual for an F1 car, with “Owners’ Workshop Manual” emblazoned on the front in large, red letters.

This creates a level of expectation that the book is never realistically going to be able to match. No F1 team, least of all the reigning world champions, would publish the inner workings of its car in a £20 hardback.

Author Steve Rendle acknowledges this problem in the introduction, saying it has been “occasionally” necessary to use pictures of earlier cars.

As you’d expect, this particularly applies to the rear of the car. Where pictures of the gearbox and suspension were required the RB4 and in some cases the five-year-old RB2 have been used.

Nonetheless there is some interesting material in here. The major developments and controversies of 2010 are covered – double diffusers, front wing and floor flexing, F-ducts and so on.

But a lot of the information is general and could apply to any F1 car, and won’t be of great insight to anyone familiar with the F1 rule book. The shortage of quotes from Red Bull’s technical team is particularly disappointing and could have added a lot to the narrative.

If you expect this to be a true Haynes manual guide to owning and servicing an RB6 then you’ll be disappointed.

Think of it instead as a guide to modern F1 car design with some close-up photographs of last year’s world championship-winning car. And a particularly comical picture of Christian Horner pointing at the fan in his wind tunnel.

The idea of producing Haynes manuals on F1 cars is a great concept. But it would probably work better if it was applied to older cars where the need to maintain secrecy no longer applies.

Who wouldn’t want to see such greats as the Williams FW15C, McLaren MP4-4 or Ferrari F2004 given the Haynes manual treatment?

F1 Fanatic rating

Buy the Red Bull Racing 2010 RB6 F1 car Haynes Manual

Similar books

• “Competition car aerodynamics” (Simon McBeath, 2nd edition 2011, not reviewed)
• “The Science of Formula 1 Design” (by David Tremayne,2010)
• “The Chariot Makers” (Steve Matchett, 2005)

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Ayrton Senna, Williams, Interlagos, 1994

One scene in Senna which is received with laughter by most audiences gets a very different reaction when shown in Brazil.

Why does one scene get two contrasting reactions?

The film’s writer Manish Pandey explained some of the surprising responses to the film in Senna’s home country.

“I should have kissed him for ’94″

One of the more amusing moments in Senna sees him on stage in a Brazilian children’s television show. He is smothered with kisses – and bright red lipstick – by the host Xuxa Meneghel.

But while this scene is viewed as comedy by many – including the filmmakers – in Brazil it carries more sombre undertones, as Pandey explains:

“Watching that in Sao Paulo, it was one of the darkest moments of the film.

“It just shows you, [what happens] when you’re a bunch of foreigners and you make a film about somebody you never really knew.

“We turn up and Asif [Kapadia, director] and James [Gay-Rees, executive producer] and I watched the film at the premiere in a cinema full of Brazilians for the first time.

“Normally, when you watch it, you know where the funny moments are – like Alain Prost asking if they can be tied on points.

“When the Xuxa thing happens, everyone in England laughs: you’ve got this big world champion dancing badly with lipstick all over his face.

“What we didn’t realise is that in Brazil there’s a big myth about the number of times she kisses him. When she stops, she stops at 1993.

“It never occurred to me, it never occurred to Asif, it never occurred to James, it never occurred to anybody. We were laughing at it. She shook our hands at the end of the film and she was crying.

“And the next day in the Brazilian press she said ‘I should have kissed him for ’94′”.

The Piquet rivalry

Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Jacarepagua, 1986

The critical reaction to the film in Brazil was also quite different: “They really wanted more of the Senna-[Nelson] Piquet rivalry, because our film is centred around Senna and Prost”.

Pandey contrasts Senna’s view of being Brazilian, given in an interview on a programme called Roda Viva, with Piquet’s:

“He clearly felt that he was Brazilian, whereas Piquet wasn’t. He clearly felt that he’d made this absolutely conscious decision to get on a plane after every race [to return home].

“Ron Dennis told us much the same thing that, at McLaren, even if they were travelling two days to be in Brazil for one, he just needed to do that.

“Whereas Piquet, as he says, lived in Italy, his friends are Italian and he’s got very few Brazilians around him. Nelson Piquet’s name was Piquet Souto Maior and he hid the Souto Maior part because he didn’t want his mother to know he was motor racing.

“He’s a great guy, a funny guy, but he was in some ways an extremely different human being to [Ayrton] Senna. I think the Brazilians loved that playboy image in the beginning but then they found something a bit more earnest. The thing about Senna is, if you’re going to market the two, he’s probably the easier one to, he’s a bit more wholesome.

Ayrton Senna’s F1 career
in pictures

“But we couldn’t get that into it, and it’s a criticism in Brazil – they just feel, how can you talk about Senna without talking about Piquet. And that’s absolutely fair”.

But Pandey was less interested in another aspect of the story there was much appetite for in Brazil:

“I think the Brazilians also – because they’ve got quite an active tabloid press – they wanted to know why we hadn’t gone into all his girlfriends. And our reaction to that was, well, how would you do it? Do you cut away from a race to a headline in a newspaper?

“Weirdly, I think we were desperately faithful. Because he does come across as a guy for whom, really, motor racing was it. Those girls were interchangeable and that’s the truth of it.

“In the context of a guy who gave his all to become a motor racing driver, I think women, not matter how important they were to him in real life, could only ever have been incidental to him in the film”.

This is the concluding part of “The Making of Senna”. You can find all nine parts of the series here.

See the official website for more information on the film and the official Facebook page for a list of cinemas that are showing it.

Senna movie

• The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
• The Making of Senna part 8: The Death of Ayrton Senna
• The Making of Senna part 7: Imola 1994
• The Making of Senna part 6: The perfect bad guy?
• The Making of Senna part 5: The lost scenes
• The Making of Senna part 4: 'You've never heard F1 sound like this'
• The Making of Senna part 3: Inside the F1 archive
• The Making of Senna part 2: Meeting the Sennas
• The Making of Senna part 1: Life and death
• "Senna" - the Ayrton Senna movie reviewed

Images © Williams/LAT

1994: San Marino Grand Prix

When it came to composing the scenes of Ayrton Senna’s death, the filmmakers had a clear idea what they were trying to do – and what they were keen to avoid.

The film’s writer Manish Pandey explained: “We had certain rules. We were not going to move anything from one date to another. It’s like that all the way through the film but at Imola we were really rigorous about it”.

He stresses their first priority was to “tell the truth” and “leave as many opinions as you can out of it until you’re out of Imola”.

Blame

“We always got this slight sense from Williams of ‘are you trying to do this investigative thing on what killed Ayrton Senna?’”

He makes it clear were “absolutely not interested” in doing an investigative piece:

“He died because of bad luck, a combination of circumstances which were terrible.

“We were very clear on [this] fact. I’m not an engineer, nobody’s apportioning blame, but what we needed to do was at the same time give the audience a range of options as to what might have gone wrong.

“The only thing that we felt adamant about – and it was good because Richard Williams felt the same way, Ron Dennis felt the same way – was that it wasn’t a driver error. That was the only thing we wanted to make completely clear. He did not go into, basically, a left-handed kink and make some kind of mistake.

“I remember after he died some of the rubbish rumours going around: ‘he was holding his breath’, ‘he passed out’”.

A “cursed weekend”

Pandey described the events of Imola in 1994 as a “cursed weekend”.

“That’s the only explanation I have for it. I’ve missed four races since I was 13 years old and I’ve never seen, and I hope I never will see, anything like that.

“I’ve been watching some old footage of the fifties recently and the closest thing to Imola, for me, is Mike Hawthorn’s massive accident at Le Mans in ’55. I find that impossible to watch”.

The team were also quick to rebuff any questions about how much detail Senna’s death would be shown in:

“The other thing – which I could look Bernie and the family in the eye about and say was we are not going to do anything graphic around the death. No way.

“First of all the footage doesn’t exist. Second, if you tried to give it to me I’d shove it back in your face, or down your throat.

“That’s not what this was about either: here, come and have a gawp. No way.

“This was the death of somebody that we, in the last 80 minutes, came to understand and came to love. And it’s sad enough that he’s going to die and you’re going to see the aftermath of that: what his death meant to Brazilians, his family, to people who weren’t his family.

“We were absolutely adamant that we were not going to make it graphic.

“It’s one of the few mercies, I think, that no-one had a camera on the inside of the corner. Tamburello is a long shot, so you don’t have to see anything”.

“He knew these things could happen”

At the same time, they were aware that presenting F1 as being anything other than a potentially dangerous sport would be misleading.

Pandey said: “Formula 1 is dangerous. Things happen. Senna knew that when he went into a car for the first time, and he knew that when he went into a car for the last time.

“He had some big accidents: he had the Mexico ’91 accident which we show in the film, he had one a week later at Hockenheim which was worse: the car was thrown five metres into the air because of a tyre failure at the first chicane.

“So he knew these things could happen”.

“I felt his soul had departed”

Part of the voiceover is supplied by Professor Sid Watkins, the neurosurgeon who spent over two-and-a-half decades as the FIA safety and medical delegate. A close friend of Senna’s, it was Watkins who tended to Senna immediately after the crash.

Pandey said that without his input the death scene would have been handled differently:

“If we hadn’t had Sid Watkins’ words, we wouldn’t have shown [the resuscitation]. But Prof makes that human. When he saw that for the first time he cried.

“He’s 80 years old, and he’s seen some stuff – he’s a neurosurgeon, he’s seen head injuries. But just hearing the emotion in his voice and understanding that it’s such a deep loss but he had to be a doctor in that situation”.

“We used to have the official announcement – the guy who tells you: ‘I’ve just received an announcement from Maggiore hospital: Roland Ratzenberger has succumbed’ – we had him, and we felt it was just too much.

“Once Prof has said: ‘I’m not religious, but I felt his spirit had departed’, you didn’t need to know any more”.

Pandey concludes:

“We knew we’d have footage, we knew we could have gone a graphic way with this, we knew we could have gone a ‘pointing fingers’ way with this, but all of that would have been to the absolute detriment of Senna, and all the great people who helped us.

“Because the truth was, it was just bad, bad luck. And that’s the story we tell”.

The concluding part of “The Making of Senna” will be published tomorrow.

See the official website for more information on the film and the official Facebook page for a list of cinemas that are showing it.

Senna movie

• The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
• The Making of Senna part 8: The Death of Ayrton Senna
• The Making of Senna part 7: Imola 1994
• The Making of Senna part 6: The perfect bad guy?
• The Making of Senna part 5: The lost scenes
• The Making of Senna part 4: 'You've never heard F1 sound like this'
• The Making of Senna part 3: Inside the F1 archive
• The Making of Senna part 2: Meeting the Sennas
• The Making of Senna part 1: Life and death
• "Senna" - the Ayrton Senna movie reviewed

Image © Williams/LAT

Ayrton Senna, Williams, Imola, 1994

The infamous events of the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix means the majority of people who watch Senna will do so knowing how it ends.

So how were the film’s producers to handle the unavoidably tragic outcome of the film?

There were differing views on how best to do it, as writer Manish Pandey explained:

“It was the hardest, hardest part of the film to make. Everyone knows the end of this film.

“One of the things that I felt very strongly about – and James [Gay-Rees, executive producer] did, too – was that no matter who came on this journey we wanted you to forget that he died.

“I remember arguing with a few people who said, ‘well, that’s bollocks – everyone knows he died so we should start the film with it’.

“But I think you’re immediately on the back foot then. You’re going to go see this film and through every single thing that you see you’re thinking ‘he’s going to die’.

“It won’t leave you – certainly not for 100 minutes”.

He described the events of the weekend as “powerful and tragic”, adding: “I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen such a culmination of events before or since in Formula 1.

“I remember watching Gilles Villeneuve die, looking through a Rediffusion shop window at a TV while Grandstand was on, standing there feeling completely shocked.

“But Imola was always just going to be dynamite because everything that happened was just so awful”.

Setting the scene

Ayrton Senna’s F1 career
in pictures

The film runs chronologically, with Imola and Senna’s funeral as its conclusion. After the Senna-Prost years the film moves on quite briskly to the events of 1994.

Pandey describes how they set the scene for the film’s denouement:

“We saw the original footage of him arriving on Thursday and he’s preoccupied, he has a funny exchange with Galvao Bueno walking up the pit lane. You see he’s frustrated.

“The Italian journalists want to know if Senna suspects something’s going on at Benetton and he enigmatically says ‘one cannot speak of things which one cannot prove’.

“So the idea is on Thursday he’s already really troubled by what’s going on in Formula 1. He’s lost for two years in a row and it wasn’t his fault.

“Now everybody thinks he’s got the best car. Everybody knows he’s got the best engine, he should be walking it, instead he hasn’t finished the first two races and he’s never had a season like that.

“You’re telling a sad tale now and I think the biggest challenge there is to continue the theme of the previous two years. He hasn’t suddenly become a rubbish driver, he hasn’t suddenly been trounced by a guy who he beat 5-1 with the same engine the year before”.

Editing Imola 1994

But inevitably the need to manage the length of film and amount of FOM footage used meant the sequence had to be carefully edited. Pandey described some of the footage that was left on the cutting room floor:

“The original Imola [sequence] was more than double the length that you see now.

“I remember one shot I felt so sad to lose. On Saturday Senna is standing in the Williams garage and the camera just happened to catch him behind, and he’s watching JJ Lehto, a point-of-view shot, and Lehto’s going through Tamburello.

“So you’re Senna, looking at Tamburello, from a driver’s point of view shot on a monitor. Even talking about that now just gives me goosebumps: you’re looking at Senna looking at where he’s going to die in 24 hours.

“That’s the kind of decision that had to be made that gave us the minutes that we could then invest.”

A second editor was brought in to help make the tough decisions about what to cut, “just fillet everything out”, as Pandey says, “because every frame you’re seeing now is ten times more powerful than all the frames you’ve seen”.

One shot that was left in shows Senna reporting back to the team on the changes they made to the FW16 that weekend in an attempt to cure its chronic handling problems:

“When we went to FOM and we looked at the archive for the first time. We saw this footage of a conversation with Adrian Newey and David Brown.

“[Senna says] ‘the car is…’ and he bites his tongue, looks away, and then he has to make eye contact and says ‘…worse’.

“Paddy Lowe, from McLaren, saw the film and said “believe me we’ve all been there. The driver comes back, and you ask what’s going on and he says ‘well it’s oversteering and understeering’.”

“I have to be honest with you, it was very painful watching all of that and deciding just how little, in a way, we could get away with”.

That still left the problem of dealing with the most harrowing moment of all – Senna’s death. The next instalment of “The Making of Senna” looks at how that was done.

“The Making of Senna” continues tomorrow.

See the official website for more information on the film and the official Facebook page for a list of cinemas that are showing it.

Senna movie

• The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
• The Making of Senna part 8: The Death of Ayrton Senna
• The Making of Senna part 7: Imola 1994
• The Making of Senna part 6: The perfect bad guy?
• The Making of Senna part 5: The lost scenes
• The Making of Senna part 4: 'You've never heard F1 sound like this'
• The Making of Senna part 3: Inside the F1 archive
• The Making of Senna part 2: Meeting the Sennas
• The Making of Senna part 1: Life and death
• "Senna" - the Ayrton Senna movie reviewed

Image © Williams/LAT