WeeklySA_AdminDIVERSE: Book guaranteed to navigate followers of the sport through this season, and with statistics from F1’s past, is a valuable keepsake…
By Jacob Mawela
Ahead of Dutch triple Formula 1 world champion driver, Max Verstappen, resuming from where he left off following a dismally askew 2023 season in the motorsport’s ultimate zenith comes a guide to acquaint the most unversed of followers with the sport.
Titled, Formula One 2024, it is an authoritative 128-page paperback authored by Bruce Jones and illustrated with kaleidoscopic imagery so curatively diverse that they limn current archive with that drawn from past stock, in a basic educative format!
Jones’ offering introduces readers to the participating teams, the drivers, the circuits, records of current drivers up to those of the post-World War II Juan Manuel Fangio epoch (with the most starts, wins, most wins in one season, most pole positions, most fastest laps, most points, most championship titles) and constructors (with the most starts, wins, most wins in one season, most pole positions, most fastest laps, most points, most championship titles).
Additionally, the book includes a review of the 2023 season as well as an analysis of the 2024 season contained within compact information-filled pages! Nonetheless the young speedster occupies top position (on 77 points) in the driver standings after returning to winning ways at Japan’s Suzuki International Racing Course during Round 4 of a gruelling year-long 24-race extravaganza!
Moreover, Verstappen’s Red Bull Racing also happens to headline the constructor standings ahead of the Chinese GP to be decided at the Shanghai International Circuit on April 21 (around the time of the publication of this review)! Of a historically male-dominated sporting code, the guide also casts the spotlight upon the likelihood of Formula 1 producing another female driver since the Italian, Maria-Teresa de Filippis, became its first racer back in 1958.
But beyond another Italian, Lella Lombardi, contesting the whole season in 1975, women racers never got around to making significant inroads in the hallowed series – a status quo Susie Wolff, the wife of the current Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, Toto, seeks to disrupt through the establishment of the F1 Academy (which she runs) geared towards boosting the number of female racers by creating more opportunities for young women across motorsport.
Deemed the most high profile push yet for the gender’s participation, only time will tell whether Wolff’s initiative will produce a talent which can go all the way to F1!
To the uninitiated, the extravagant sport’s annual roadshow is contested by 10 teams (also known as constructors) with each represented by a duo of drivers. Of those, Red Bull Racing, Mercedes’ AMG, Ferrari and McLaren are considered the most prestigious of the roster – and it is no wonder that three, viz, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes have racked the most constructors’ championship titles, in addition to two of those teams’ drivers, Sir Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, sharing the most drivers’ championship triumphs on seven apiece!
For the 2024 season, the Milton Keynes-based Red Bull Racing is expected to claim the constructors’ championship and its star driver, Max Verstappen, the drivers’ championship. And, if the Dutchman’s double victories so far are any indicators for rivals to measure their prospects by – the octane-charged scene could well be set for a repeat of 2023’s outcome!
And as was the case with German racer, Sebastian Vettel’s uninterrupted four drivers’ championship title hauls (from 2010 – 2013), to all intents and purposes, Verstappen appears set to emulate and, bar any challenge to his hegemony from any of his competitors in the foreseeable future, ultimately surpass him!
The Verstappen show comes replete with the Orange Army – a globetrotting horde of fans who since his championship winning exploits are at the forefront of a rekindling of interest in the sport in
The Netherlands! What more, added to this tide (which make for spectacular visuals on race days with the flashing of orange flares in the grandstands – as limned in one of the guide’s accompanying images), the son of erstwhile F1 driver, Jos, also enjoys the gratification of annually participating in a home grand prix at Zandvoort, a coastal circuit which since its post-World War II inception in 1952 has been the epicentre of a strong national racing fervour. Holland and the Orange Army wouldn’t be prouder as the younger Verstappen has triumphed here no less than thrice in succession (2021, 2022 and 2023).
With efforts still being made to bring Africa its own grand prix since South Africa’s Kyalami hosted the continent’s last one in 1993, the guide also makes mention of its only ever world champion, Jody Scheckter, whose triumph was realized with Ferrari in 1979. (Indicative of disparities at play, whilst Africa has been omitted from the F1 calendar for the past 31 years, a country such as the US hosts no less than three grand prix, viz, Circuit of the Americas, Las Vegas and Miami.) Incidentally the person spearheading a race on the calendar, Sir Lewis Hamilton, is headed for Il Cavalino Rampante (Italian for ‘the prancing horse’ – Ferrari’s logo) as of 2025. Up until Schumacher’s triumph in 2000,
South African driver Scheckter had been the last racer, for 21 years, to had garnered the drivers’ championship title with Scuderia Ferrari.
Considered F1’s most glamorous team, despite its current drawn-out struggles, Ferrari boasts the most constructors’ victories (243) in the history of the series – per se, testament to the lifelong endeavours of its founder, Enzo Ferrari, who back in the 1920s reinvented himself from being a mechanic to a racing driver and then forming his own team motivated by his father’s maxim that ‘a company is perfect when the number of partners is uneven and less than three.’
Regarded as the World’s Bestselling Grand Prix Guide, Formula One 2024 is guaranteed to navigate followers of the sport through this season, and with statistics from F1’s past, is a valuable keepsake!
