The Formula One Record Book 2024

For an aficionado of Formula One it’s really important to be accurate and mark milestones yet Bruce Jones failed on two occasions in terms of accuracy and/or milestones.Max Verstappen 10 wins surplanted Albert Ascari’s and Sebastian Vettel’s 9 consecutive winning streaks.With 2023, it was an exceptional season with Max Verstappen destroying the record books the author failed to remove from one of the 1953 dialog boxes “THE FIRST WINNING STREAK : With Ascari taking win after win in 1952, it looked as though only an act of god would end his run. Winning the first three grands prix in 1953 took that run to nine in a row before team-mate Mike Hawthorn won the French GP.Ascari's record was finally equalled by Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel in2013, but has yet to be beaten.”Which is all the more problematic when the author wrote in the introduction “And as the 2024 season starts, this book records the huge achievements of Red Bull Racing during its year of years in 2023: the record number of wins for a constructor (21), the record number of wins for a driver (Max Verstappen, 19), the record number of consecutive wins for a driver (Verstappen, 10)”.And this is just casually reading. Everyone should expect excellence in such a tome.Furthermore, the author wrote in the introduction “The history of F1 has one constant - Ferrari - which has been involved every season. Its record-topping tally includes the most starts, titles, wins, pole positions, fastest laps and points, but the story of F1 charted in this book shows how the rise of specialist racing teams, largely based in Britain, have taken the battle to them.In turn, Cooper, BRM, Lotus, McLaren, Brabham, Williams, Red Bull Racing, BAR and Mercedes have all had spells at the top.”Anybody with just a modest knowledge of F1 history will know that BAR never won a single F1 race although they had a plethora of podiums with Jenson Button in 2004 and it took until Honda takeover that they had its first victory in 2006.Accuracy is important and the author should have done better by marking such a remarkable season that was 2023.Nevertheless I would still buy this book again. Hopefully the author updates for the 2024 season when the 2025 edition is released.Update 7 July 2024The book is clearly hardback.