Unraced…Formula One’s lost cars
By Sam Collins
While countless forests have been decimated chronicling the championship winning cars of the past 50 years of Formula One, surprisingly little has been written about the multitude of cars that were either uncompetitive, or worse, never even made the starting grid.
When we saw the title Unraced… Formula One’s Lost Cars by Sam Collins, we thought, finally someone was going to document the long ignoble history of Formula One’s dreamers and also-rans. Sadly, this book didn’t quite live up to its name.
What Unraced… does do is to chronicle all the stillborn Grand Prix projects from 1993 to 2005. Such lesser-known names as Premier1, DAMS, and Dome are included as well as failed projects by Lola, Toyota, Honda, and even McLaren-Mercedes. Each of the seven chapters is devoted to one of these cars and examines its genesis, development, and eventual early demise. While each car receives a number of supporting action and technical photos, the quality of a number of these is pretty poor.
If you’ve been looking for a book on any one of these obscure ’90s racers, you’ll likely find this work interesting. However, if you were hoping to learn the story of Chevron’s unfinished Grand Prix project or what became of the “Godiva”-engined Kieft Formula One car, you’ll sadly have to continue to wait for a more comprehensive work.
Available for US$49.95 (£25.00) directly from the publisher at www.veloce.co.uk
