THE SCIENCE OF SPEED

By David Tremayne.
Published by Haynes.

There are a few books that talk about the technical side of Formula One, but finding one that goes much deeper than telling you how the wind tunnel works can be tricky. That's where David Tremayne's 'The Science of Speed' comes in. Rather than simply relating the particulars of each aspect of F1 engineering, this book attempts to fully explore the concepts behind each development, their ramifications, and the forces that brought them about.

Nothing is ever simple in Formula One, as is amply illustrated by the controversies, accusations, and political machinations that accompany virtually every major technical development or regulation change in the sport. One of the highlights of this book is the extent to which Tremayne follows up the different forces that are acting upon each situation. People are interviewed, compared, and interviewed again, until the exploration of whatever topic happens to be under the microscope begins to read less like a report and more like a dialogue. It results in a book that manages to simultaneously be more informative and more interesting.

That is no mean feat, because this book is nothing if not interesting. Every imaginable aspect of the sport is covered, from data acquisition to Max Mosley's leadership style, or from the politics of using exotic materials to the employment of traction control. You won't find much detail about how carbon fibre is made, but you'll find plenty about the regulation changes that arose from, say, Imola 1994. It's that kind of book.

The author makes an effort to place certain developments, situations, or people into some kind of historical context, which not only adds much to the readability of the material, but also results in one of those increasinly rare books that can serve equally well as bedtime reading or reference material. This is the second edition of The Science of Speed, which, according to the back cover, has been "fully updated" since it was originally published.

These types of claims should generally be approached with some degree of caution, and this book is unfortunately no exception. That the book has been expanded since it was originally published in 1997 is beyond doubt - there are detailed explorations of such issues as grooved tyres and dodgy Ferrari barge boards. But the earlier parts of the book have not been revised; or at least, not completely. There are a number of details that are outdated - references to certain team personnel, for example. And the survival of shots of stuff like Damon Hill strapped to a Williams only serve to remind the reader that the book is now a few years old.

Another problem is that by focusing on certain 'current affairs' carries the disadvantage that the material tends to age faster. For example, the section on grooved tyres, while undeniably extremely interesting, was also in some ways redundant, since many of the issues that the Max Mosley and the designers were speculating about a couple of years back have since been resolved.

While we're on the topic of problems, it must be said that the photos in the book were a little disappointing. As a hardback title from an established author and a blue ribbon publishing house, it would at least be expected that at least some of the photos would be in colour. Somehow, the picture of the Sauber under braking that is supposed to draw the reader's attention to the glowing red discs doesn't have quite the same impact in black and white. These, while irritating, are by no means serious enough for me to recommend avoiding the book. It's well worth a read, irrespective of how long you've followed the sport, and it's substantial enough to keep you busy for a bit longer than your average 'Man with a heart of steel'-type biography.

It's usual for me to include an excerpt of the book to give you some idea what you're in for. Normally, one or two passages jump out, but that didn't happen in this case. With 'The Science of Speed', I reasoned to myself (this is what I think about when I'm driving to work), you could open to virtually any page and find something interesting. So that's what I have done. Brace yourselves for a completely random selection:

"The third method (of acquiring telemetry) is activated when the car stops at the pits. An engineer connects his own portable lap-top computer to the car's onboard system and can download 12 million bits of data in moments. This third method provides a valuable safety net, since the other two methods rely on radio transmission from the car, and at times this may be compromised by fluctuations in radio reception due to buildings, changes in the elevation of the track, or interference from external electronic systems. This is particularly problematic at circuits such as Monaco.'

"'It's all very quick,' Gary Anderson said. 'I don't know just how much data there is, but it's huge! Good stuff, but too much of it. It should be banned! The problem is finding the time and staff to go through it all. We have one guy on each car just going through it all the time, looking at a certain set of parameters. At night you can spend hours and hours and hours, just dicking about, but also sometimes it's really important to engineer the car from a gut feeling, because that's what is real and there. It's the driver driving it still. The bloke who is driving the car is still human, and if he can't transmit to you what he's feeling, you won't find the theoretical thing on a squiggly line. We can look at the squiggly lines which tell us the parameters of the car, and that it's working reasonably well within them, centre of pressure, roll stiffness, ride height, etc, but after that it's still down to driver feeling, how much porridge he's had in the morning, or something..." (p122-123).