• Review

The Autocourse Annual

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By now you may have already read several Dostoyevsky-novels worth of text about the 2009 season and come to the conclusion that there is no point in buying a monstrous 336-page Autocourse annual. But you'd be missing the point.

Autocourse is not about instant gratification, it's an investment. There's nothing quite like finding an old edition in the back of a wardrobe and letting its contents whisk you down memory lane. A whole Sunday afternoon can blissfully disappear, just picking through the race reports and random driver profiles found within. Of course there's the quick-fix, must-know top ten drivers (picked by the editor and based on their performance irrespective of their equipment), but I bet you won't even read that chapter in its entirety when you first purchase it.

It's also about peace of mind. About knowing you have the best F1 journalist's views and opinions on the season, sat on your bookshelf just in case you need it. Editor, Alan Henry takes on the lion's share of the writing and draws upon over 550 grand prix worth of experience to write in an authoritative and entertaining style. One of the best technical writers in the sport, Mark Hughes, has written the team's section, and it's these chapters that set the book apart. He offers comprehensive analysis of each team's year, picking out nuggets of information that even the most avid reader of Racecar Engineering might have missed. If you want to know why the Red Bull was so devastatingly fast at some circuits or how McLaren turned a sow's ear into a silk purse, you need look no further.

However, there's also information that, put simply, no one ever needs to know. Four pages are dedicated to a 'chassis logbook' that lists the exact chassis numbers of each car, driven by each driver, at each circuit. But, despite this being slightly useless, it's this kind of depth of information everywhere else in the book that makes Autocourse such a worthwhile investment.

It's not just about F1 either. Autocourse offers a brief summary of touring cars, NASCAR and sports cars - all by experts in their field. Add to that, reviews of all the main junior formula down to karting and you have the ultimate reference for future years. When British karter Alex Albon finally works his way into a Red Bull-backed F1 team in 2016, you can quickly look him up in your 2009 copy of Autocourse and say with authority, "I remember him dominating the FKS KF3 class several years ago." No one will ever be the wiser.

So it covers all bases for all things 2009. It's the Chateaux Margaux of motorsport annuals and will only improve with age. My suggestion is to buy it, flick through it and then stash it away for a rainy off-season Sunday some time in 2020.

You can order Autocourse direct from the publishers and benefit form a 15% discount on the cover price at www.autocourse.com

Title: Autocourse 2009-2010
Editor: Alan Henry
Published by: Icon Publishing
Price: £40

Laurence Edmondson is an assistant editor on ESPNF1

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