THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

By Mark Donohue with Paul Van Valkenburgh.
Published by Brooklands Books.

Sadly, I never had the opportunity to see Mark Donohue drive – or even, for that matter, follow his career from afar. I was twelve months old when the popular American's decision to bounce back from retirement ended tragically with a fatal crash during practice for the Austrian Grand Prix in 1975. Most motor racing fans with any degree of sensitivity for the sport's history would have some idea of who Donohue was – the merest mention of his name immediately conjures images of those spooky Can-Am Porsche 917-30s. But it wasn't until I finally got around to reading 'The Unfair Advantage' that I got any sense of who he really was, and why, particularly in America, he remains revered 26 years after his passing.

The first element of 'The Unfair Advantage' that got my attention was a quality that, initially, struck me as rather odd, and upon reflection I can't decide whether it says more about Donohue or the nature of racing driver biographies as a whole. Combining all my recreational reading with the books that I have reviewed for Atlas F1, I am really struggling to think of any biography or autobiography that presents itself as unpretentiously, honestly, and modestly as does 'The Unfair Advantage'. It's bizarre, because in theory, you would expect 'life stories', virtually by definition, to be personal. Instead, the vast majority seem to be precisely crafted pieces of PR. If you're lucky, they might be well-written, but even that is by no means guaranteed.

Donohue, by contrast, is refreshingly open, candid, and dispenses with vanity almost to the point of being too hard on himself. The biography is coloured throughout by the recurring theme of 'The Unfair Advantage'; a term which, to Donohue, meant something very different than it probably did to Smokey Yunick. It's rare that Donohue takes much credit for his on-track success.

Instead, a description of successful races or championships usually involve some reference to him driving well simply because it's his job and that's what he's expected to do, and then some intense reflection upon what may have been his 'Unfair Advantage'. This could mean almost anything, from a particularly good piece of equipment that his team have managed to put together, to some new discovery regarding brakes or tyres that he may have stumbled upon in testing and then put to good use in the race.

Once you come to terms with Donohue being so damn down-to-earth, you can get on with the business of reading about the different categories and machinery that he was let loose in during his career. I don't know nearly as much as I would like to about the American Sports Car scene in the 1960s, but I never tire of reading about it, and Donohue's accounts of coming up through the ranks of the SCCA are brilliant. It's probably going too far to describe Donohue as a kind of American Stirling Moss, but he nevertheless drove an astounding range of machinery during his career and he does a great job of communicating the quirks of each type of car to the reader at a level that is accessible to both hard-core enthusiasts and casual motorsport fans.

Donohue's insights into his cars are enhanced by the fact that he was one of those rare characters who was as skilled an engineer as he was a driver. A large chunk of space is devoted to his accounts of trying to sort out some cars (that in many cases simply did not want to be sorted out), particularly in the early part of the book, and this leads to some of the most entertaining anecdotes. While many of the development routes that Donohue followed with his cars were logical and planned, there were just as many that came out of either pure chance or blind improvisation, some of which, unsurprisingly, did more harm than good.

It's difficult now, for example, to imagine anybody trying to set their brake balance by getting somebody to stand at the side of the track and judge which discs were glowing the brightest, but I guess that helps illustrate how far general knowledge of racecar engineering has progressed.

Normally, the last part of a book that I would turn to for an excerpt would be the end, but I'm going to make an exception in this case, because I think it says so much about Donohue as a person. He ends the book by trying to rationalise his decision to return from retirement to drive in F1, and I have reproduced a chunk of the final page here.

"I was kind of embarrassed about it at first. I was wishing I could change my name so that I wouldn't have to explain why I was 'unretiring' after the tremendous send-off I got. And I wouldn't have to make apologies for not winning races again for a while. But again, it was my own decision. I had to decide what's right for me, and I had a lot of reasons to consider.

"Most of the reasons turned out to be positive. The year I spent out of the driver's seat gave me time to stand back and look at myself. I could look back over the story of my career as it's written here, and see it in better perspective. One of the things I realised is that one person can only do so much. And I learned that everyone doesn't blame the driver when he loses. He doesn't carry all the responsibility …

"Of course, there were some negative concerns. For one thing, I'm putting my life on the line again, and many people have shown some disappointment that I'm driving again, for just that reason. And to be quite honest, I needed the income. When I was racing, I never looked to the money. I hardly considered it. But when I retired I tried to get an automobile dealership, and learned that it would take some fraction of a billion dollars to get started. Maybe I'll still do that some day, and there's no faster way for me to come up with the cash than by driving.

"I do still have a lot of problems though. I have to face up to the fact that I'm not going to be winning any races for a while. At one time, winning wasn't the most important thing – it was the only thing. Now I'm in new territory, I'm out of practice, and I'm out of shape. But some good drivers have to lose. I've seen them do it, and it doesn't take them apart. So I'll have to put winning to the back of my mind for a while. I've got a fresh attitiude, Roger sees to it that pressures on me are reduced, and I think I can cope with it mentally. We will be using our familiar old systems of development and maintenance, and trying to adapt to Formula One as rapidly as possible. Just like in USAC and NASCAR, we'll have to serve an apprenticeship.

"And hopefully, in a few years, I'll have another story to tell." (p. 332)

Sadly, he never got the chance. But at least some consolation lies in this recent reissue of 'The Unfair Advantage' which makes the title accessible again after a long period where fans were forced to forage for second-hand copies – often at premium prices. It has been re-released with the original (and oh-so-seventies) cover, with a new preface written by his sons, who, tantalisingly, hint at a future project involving some of the stories, anecdotes, and pictures that never made it into this book. Hopefully it comes off, and in the meantime, those who can't get enough Donohue can share other's personal memories of the man at www.unfairadvantageracing.com. But first, if you haven't read this book, go out and do it. Now.