Strictly Off the Record

Louis Stanley was a major player in the golden age of auto racing, and has intriguing things to say about people and events that I haven't read anywhere else. I'm glad I bought it, and recommend it. However, the book reads as if it was written quickly and carelessly. Sentences are incomplete, or have very odd grammar. Short sections about particular drivers end so abruptly that you find yourself checking to be sure you didn't accidentally skip a page -- as if he intended to go back and complete a paragraph, but forgot to. With the aid of an editor to catch these things, and make him go back and finish up, this book could have been five stars. Still, it's a worthy addition to any F1 fan's collection.

Back in the 50s and 60s, Louis Stanley annually produced a book-length review of the Grand Prix season. These books were frank, gossipy, opinionated, well-written, and nicely illustrated with Stanley's black-and-white photographs. This new book is very much in that tradition.Now well into his 90s, Stanley has produced perhaps his final book, a comparative look at the Grand Prix scene then and now. Although Stanley is grateful for the safety innovations that have prevented the wholesale carnage of yesteryear, his sympathies lie clearly with the drivers and traditions of the glory years. Stanley shares the feeling of many that big money has tarnished the sport and eliminated much of the comaraderie and plain old fun that existed even during the years when death on the track was all too common.Readers of this book will once again see the images of legends like Graham Hill, Count Wolfgang von Trips, Masten Gregory, Jimmy Clark, and Stirling Moss. Whether you agree with him or not, Stanley's pungent pen-portaits are always entertaining, and I smiled to see personality characterizations from his earlier books reappearing here, not always about the same person to which they were originally applied!So, I admit, there are times when Stanley shows his age. The writing is sometimes a bit rambling and the transitions abrupt, but the photographs take you back too a simpler time and a nobler time. The old BRM chief has given us one last tribute to the sport he loves.