Formula One Features — August 2002

It has been about five years since I read a book all the way through. It's not that I don't enjoy reading, I just haven't had the time. A few weeks ago I decided that it was about time I started reading again and, with high expectations, took myself down to the local bookshop. After about an hour of searching I came to the unhappy conclusion that I hadn't been missing much. To be honest John Grisham just doesn't do it for me and no matter how much my deluded Mother insists I read Harry Potter, I can never seem to get past the second page. Then something caught my eye?

The summer recess in Formula 1 has led to a certain amount of boredom amongst Formula 1 fans, used to the daily comings-and goings of the Grand Prix circus. But today is nonetheless a significant one if one looks back in history because on Saturday, August 7, 1926 Grand Prix racing arrived in Britain for the very first time, a little over 20 years after the first Grand Prix was held at Le Mans in France.

Who was the best fighter pilot of all time? Was it Manfred von Richtofen with his 80 "kills" in World War I or was it the virtually-unknown Erich Hartmann, who shot down 352 planes in World War II? And how do these men compared to Colonel Yevgeny Peplyaev who shot down 23 planes in Korea, when aerial warfare had moved on to jet fighters?

"Formula 1 racing, once European, now worldwide, is less boring to watch that the rival American versions: its circuits do actually have corners to go round, not just an eternal oval," wrote The Economist recently. "But to non-addicts it is still - crashes apart - a non-event, like watching paint dry, and this year's procession of Ferrari victories has made it duller still. Why watch, when you already know the winner? Yet hundreds of millions of televiewers do."

In the pressroom in Brazil in 1991 a senior Formula 1 journalist looked up from his computer, peered at a television screen for a few moments as Mike Hakkinen's Lotus was passing through the picture and declared with a certain nonchalance that "That boy is going to be a World Champion one day".