Of course there is much more to racing than that, just as there is more to football than a group of overpaid bunch of endorsement hounds chasing an inflated sphere made from a dead cow.

That special, indescribable, magical element of racing is the thing that made me, a person with no prior interest in cars and a mere passing interest in sport, turn on the TV one day when there happened to be a race on, and think to myself: 'wow'. And it's the same thing that inspired Vergeer to come up with this book.

Vergeer is something of a romantic, make no mistake about that, but in attempting to trace the source of his passion for Formula One he has managed to indulge his enthusiasm without becoming either an apologist for the sport or a naive, flag-waving fanatic. His love affair with racing may have had slightly dorky origins – how else do you describe someone who kept scrapbooks, created imaginary races on paper and so forth? But on the other hand, I suspect that the only reason that I never did anything similar was that I was rather older when F1 and I discovered one another.

Like all relationships worth having, Vergeer's support for Grand Prix racing was not without its hiccups. For example, his first race, at Zandvoort in 1973, exposed him to both the best and the worst of F1 all in one go when the thrill of seeing the likes of Peterson and Stewart through a child's eyes was countered by Roger Williamson's death in one of the most horrific incidents in F1 history.

But by and large, Vergeer is the 'perfect' fan. He watches all the races, no matter what ungodly hour his obsession may find him tip-toeing out to the television in the living room. He buys all the gear. He is as engaged with the sport as any general punter can be. In a way, Vergeer embodies all of the coloured, blurred, indistinct shapes that crowd the grandstand as Michael Schumacher shrieks down the straight at Monza.

His description of his first encounter with F1, as an eleven-year-old taken along to the race by his father, nails the spirit of this book perfectly.

"At once all the cars scream together, setting off a scream inside me that is just as furious. Everything I know about Formula One, everything I have thought, dreamed and hoped, is contained within this one race. They're coming. Through the dunes. Tearing, tearing up everything. It's almost frightening, this distilled rage, this terrible pack passing over such a narrow stretch of asphalt – there's no knowing the damage they could cause.

"Here they come. In the distance they flash over the circuit. Black in front of blue, Peterson in front of Stewart. The next moment they're shooting past, followed by Pace, Cevert and the rest, a tangled mass, a confusion of cars, Hailwood and Fittipaldi dangling along behind.

"This is it. This is Formula One. It is the absolute pinnacle of my eleven-year-old existence. I am part of it. And here they come again: Peterson, Stewart, Pace with Cevert at his heels, then a group of white cars, two BRMs and the rest. The field has already spread out a little, it's a pulsing avalanche of noise, of speed, of virtually untamable energy. This is what brought me here.

"I sometimes think that those first eight laps of the Dutch Grand Prix were the peak of my existence to date. Never again has my mind been so open, my consciousness so clear and so unbiased, on the edge of knowledge but still free of inhibiting fear." (p. 23)

But just as Vergeer's relationship with the sport peaks with his first introduction to F1 in the flesh, so does the surge of inspiration that initially drives the book. After a while, Vergeer embarks upon a magical mystery tour that essentially covers the history of the sport over the past thirty years, with special emphasis on the major players of the various eras.

Some sections of this are little short of brilliant – his analysis of Prost and Senna are particularly clear and perceptive. But far more often, Vergeer falls victim to the simple fact that all of this is ground that has been covered innumerable times already. Despite the fact that the author has clearly thought long and hard about what he has written, it remains that most of it has all been written before. His cause is not helped by his bibliography.

Vergeer has read relatively widely – he refers to twenty or so books that helped him to prepare his manuscript – but the quality of the material that he consulted is not exactly first-grade. (The fact that Christopher Hilton books account for around a quarter of the material that the author consulted immediately sets the alarm bells ringing).

The first seventy or so pages of this book represented some of the most thoughtful motorsport writing since Richard Williams produced 'Racers' a few years ago. Unfortunately, the momentum drops off a little from there on. Flashes of brilliance do return sporadically, and the rest of the book is certainly not bad, but as analysis gradually gives way to lessons in a history that most of us are already more than familiar with, so does the reasons to pay top dollar to buy this.