A few years ago, when I decided to make a more earnest effort at becoming a soccer fan (or football fan, if you prefer) i read a book called The Club, by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg, two reporters for the Wall Street Journal. The Club covered the English Premier League from its formation to the present, focusing on how the league grew into the behemoth it is today. The Premier League, with it’s 20 teams, all owned by wildly rich men with immense egos, is an unlikely cooperative in charge of one of the world’s most popular sports. Robinson and Clegg focused on the human element, telling the Premier League’s story through a focus on the colorful characters who shaped its history, from owners and players to league officials and television executives.
Robinson and Clegg bring the same approach to The Formula, which covers the history of Formula 1 racing. Formula 1 is having quite the moment lately, as you’re probably aware. Between the Netflix series Drive to Survive, a huge pandemic-era hit, to the recently-released F1 movie from Apple starring Brad Pitt, the sport has never been more popular in America. Robinson and Clegg undertake to examine how the sport got to where it today. To do so they focus mainly on the men who have caused seismic shifts in the world of Formula 1, the engineers whose tinkering led to increased speed, the drivers whose derring-do and lack of concern for personal safety expanded the sport’s popularity, and the business tycoons who made it immensely profitable.
Ethically and morally these men are a mixed bag, to be sure, but they make for excellent drama. Men like Enzo Ferrari, whose commitment to horsepower and resistance to change made his namesake company the most popular in the sport despite inconsistent performance on the track. Or Bernie Ecclestone, a working-class Brit who somehow wheeled-and-dealed himself into the most powerful position in the sport, making himself richer and more powerful with each new deal he negotiated on behalf of F1. Or Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian driver who thrilled fans around the world until his untimely death in 1994.
There are plenty of crazy stories in The Formula. Clegg and Robinson make the point that because Formula 1 is such a technical sport, there is an incredible emphasis on what the rules do and do not allow. In many ways, the most successful figures in F1 history are those who have figured out just how far they could bend the rules to their advantage, while the sport’s biggest controversies so often come down to those who bent the rules too far. The book is full of cheating, corporate espionage, and even an intentionally crashed car.
I picked up The Formula purely because of how much I enjoyed The Club. I have never had any interest in motorsports at all, beyond enjoying the occasional motion picture about them. But any story told well can be compelling. By focusing on the human stories in this sport of machines, Robinson and Clegg have written a book that will appeal to anyone with an interest in high-stakes drama.