» Book Review: ‘Grand Prix: Yesterday & Today’

Grand Prix: Yesterday & Today, by Bruce Jones
Hardcover, © 2010 Carlton Books, ISBN 9781847325921

A look around most bookstores should unearth a couple of coffee table books on Formula 1, and the quality can vary almost as widely as the titles.

As the title of Grand Prix: Yesterday & Today would suggest, this book’s theme takes a ‘then and now’ approach. Each entry puts two photographs from differing periods in the sport side-by-side to show how much – or sometimes, how little – the sport has changed over the years.

With the images sourced from the best archives of the LAT photography company, it is brilliant in its simplicity with a host of classic and famous pictures.

Author Bruce Jones serves up short explanations on each picture set to give them context. You feel like you’re viewing a series of museum exhibits, and the images themselves are great on their own for the more die-hard fans of the sport.

What was excellent about this book was how it went beyond the tried and trusted approach of profiling the famous drivers, teams and circuits, but it also looked as the less-acknowledged aspects of the sport: the mechanics, the fans, the evolution of safety.

Using our unique ‘Chequered Flags’ rating system, we award Grand Prix: Yesterday & Today…