MOTOR RACING'S STRANGEST RACES


By Geoff Tibballs.
Published by Robson Books.

The potential for a great book here is enormous. There is something about motor racing that makes it a breeding ground for strange happenings ­ maybe it's the proliferation of strange people, writers included. Anybody who has followed racing for any length of time can probably immediately recall a particular race or two that left them scratching their heads or arguing loudly in the pub afterwards. It could have been a Grand Prix, or it could just as easily have been a club race at a small local circuit. That being the case, I'm a little surprised that a book like this hadn't hit the shelves much earlier than now. (Then again, good ideas always seem obvious after someone else has thought of them!)

This isn't quite a stand-alone project, though. The page that recommends other titles from the same publisher points to similarly-themed books concerning everything from boxing to horse-racing to golf. But motorsport is what we're here for, and this book contains more than 100 accounts of races that presumably represent the publisher and writer's idea of the strangest ever. Sounds interesting, huh? I thought so too.

It's a particular shame, then, that such a golden opportunity to produce a guaranteed crowd-pleaser with a comparatively minor investment of effort has largely gone through to the keeper (it's a cricketing term, for those who happen to live somewhere that wasn't once a British colony).

With more than 100 races - each granted an individual 'chapter-ette' - squeezed into around 260 pages, it scarcely needs to be pointed out that detail was not exactly a code-red priority. When the book was being prepared, the main target of the research would have been to simply find races worthy of inclusion.

And that's the problem. Too many of the races that feature in this book just didn't seem ... well, strange enough to really warrant inclusion. It probably doesn't help that we don't really know what, according to the author, constitutes 'strange'. This is where the introduction could have proved helpful had Tibballs shared his thoughts with his audience, but unfortunately he remained silent on the matter.

The target audience is probably a factor, too. The emphasis is very heavily on European/British racing, particularly open-wheelers. This is probably not surprising, given that I would wager that this book will sell better in the UK than anywhere else, and enthusiasm for that type of racing runs high amongst British fans. But in doing this, Tibballs has missed a lot of interesting stuff.

NASCAR's colourful history, for example, paints US stock car racing as a veritable breeding ground for the bizarre, and to an extent it continues to do so even as it becomes ever more commercialised. I remember one account of an African-American driver in the 1950s who decided to deal with increasing hostility and threats from certain racist competitors that he drew a gun on one of the main culprits. 'So what,' you might be thinking. Well, they were in their cars at the time - side by side on the banking during a race. And then there's the famous story of Tim Flock, who had to make a pitstop because a crazed monkey (seriously!) named 'Flocko Jocko' had broken loose from its harness and was wreaking havoc in the cockpit.

But NASCAR rates just one mention, and that is the 1988 Daytona 500 that saw Bobby and Davey Allison greet the flag for a father-son 1-2. And then there are other series such as Touring Cars - next time you're drinking with an Australian V8 Supercar fan, ask them about the 2001 Queensland 500, which saw Paul Radisich win the race while stranded in a gravel trap. No doubt most of you are thinking of your own examples from other series, so I won't go on, but hopefully you see my point.

Instead we get the lowdown on races such as the 1969 Italian GP, where Jackie Stewart hit a hare. While a racing car hitting an animal is not quite an everyday occurrence, it does happen often enough to raise the question of why this particular incident was deemed to be so exceptionally odd.

Similarly, Tibballs recounts the 1959 French GP at Reims, where high ambient temperatures led to extreme deterioration of the track surface without once mentioning that something very similar happened in the 1984 US GP at Dallas.

If you think back over the past few F1 seasons you can probably hazard a pretty good guess at what is included. Schumacher winning the 1998 British GP in pitlane is featured, and deservedly so. The disgruntled ex-Mercedes employee who so efficiently screwed McLaren's race at Hockenheim in 2000 also gets his head in, although again there a few incidents that were included that probably shouldn't have been.

The book does have its moments though. I got a perverse amount of pleasure from the account of Margaret Thatcher's son getting totally and completely lost during the Paris-Dakar Rally back in 1982, and had I been English I probably would have liked it even more. Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton's rapid turnaround from barflys to Le Mans winners in 1953 was also good for a laugh.

Ultimately, the narrow scope of the book's focus is its greatest downfall. A field full of such rich picking should not be subjected to the amount of padding that you find in 'Motor Racing's Strangest Races', and the tedium is only enhanced by the (no doubt budget-related) lack of photographs. It's not a bad book as such, although historians will be pulling their hair out over the lack of detail and contextual information. I also picked up a few minor factual errors, which only reinforced my suspicion that the occasional corner was cut during the preparation of this book.

If you get this book as a present or happen across it in the library, by all means check it out. But if you're looking to actually spend some money, I'd advise that you avoid disappointment and wait for the end of year sales.