Team Lotus in Formula 1
By Ranier Schlegelmilch and Hartmut Lehbrink
This is a nice enough book recounting the story of the Lotus marque in Formula One, but given the highly charged game of today’s F1 World Championship, it comes across as little more than a presentation of the case of the holders of the rights to use the Team Lotus name. To summarize briefly, somehow two different entities have been granted permission to brand their cars with the Lotus label, so that race fans must decide for themselves whether Lotus Racing’s green and yellow cars, or the black and gold machines of Group Lotus (which is really the Renault team), are the true standard bearers—a question even the British courts couldn’t resolve.
So, in that context, this case brief for Lotus Racing looks back on the storied history of the team founded by Colin Chapman more than 50 years ago, breaking the tale into its various familiar eras, and recapping the marque’s greatest successes. Happily, most of the story is told by the excellent imagery of Ranier Schlegelmilch, whose photographs are easily the book’s finest aspect. While text is sparse and mainly in the form of story captions, one error we found was Mario Andretti noted as hailing from Nazareth, Texas! Also included are a couple of audio CDs.
Available for £49.95 from publisher earbooks at www.earbooks.net
