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Reject Games: Nelson Piquet’s Grand Prix: Evolution
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Ah, futuristic anti-gravitation racing. Once a thriving subgenre of its own with F-Zero and Wipeout being the main franchises, it hasn’t really survived to this day with the few recent releases emphasising other gameplay elements instead of pure racing. But back in 2000, all was still well, and the cooperation of a budget games…
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Reject Games: Johnny Herbert’s Grand Prix Championship 1998
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The late 1990s was a wild time to be someone interested in Formula One video games. Each year saw the release of multiple titles, some with an official license and some without, and with quality ranging from carefully-crafted masterpieces to rather subpar efforts destined for the bargain bin. Johnny Herbert’s Grand Prix Championship 1998…
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Book Review: How to Build a Car
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Eight years ago, Adrian Newey published a book called How to Build a Car. This was after he had designed eleven championship-winning Formula 1 cars from the most recent 26 seasons, and before adding another four in the intervening years. After much badgering from a relative, this author finally got down to reading Newey’s…
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Reject Games: EA’s F1 Manager
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Those who have become inextricably entwined in the Football Manager jungle at some phase in their life understand the all-consuming nature of management sims. Coaxing your team to a string of victories does not simply equate to a series of routine synaptic flickers, but instead an exponentially growing dopamine hit cruelly extinguished by the…
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Reject Games: Prost Grand Prix
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Before the start of exclusive licensing agreements in 2003, anyone could produce a game based on Formula One. As computer and video game systems matured in the 1990s, the amount of games produced increased exponentially. Some had a full official licence featuring all of the real-life teams, drivers and circuits, while at the other…
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Test Drive Unlimited – the perennial test drivers of F1’s unlimited testing era
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Prior to the 2009 ban on unlimited testing, a lot of drivers carved out long careers in various F1 teams as testers while potentially never actually starting a race. Through hard work, some would eventually make it through as actual race drivers and have a decent career, while some would never get a proper…
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Book Review: Niki Lauda – The Biography
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A year after the death of three-time Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda, renowned British journalist Maurice Hamilton (no relation) wrote and published a final biography of the great Austrian. In it he collected countless reports and interviews from then and now, taking the reader through the central events of Niki’s life from a…
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Book Review: The Unknown Kimi Räikkönen
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Tuntematon Kimi Räikkönen, or The Unknown Kimi Räikkönen in its English-language publication, is an-off track biography of the life of the 2007 Formula 1 World Champion, written by the nationally popular and respected Finnish author Kari Hotakainen. Hotakainen is outspokenly not a follower of Formula 1 or very knowledgeable about the sport as he…
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Formula Two: A Subtle Proposition
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The second-tier series that runs below Formula One has gone through many names and changes since it was first formalised as the FIA European Formula Two Championship in 1967. For around the first dozen years of Formula Two, Formula One drivers would sometimes appear on the entry list to gain valuable time behind the…
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Book Review: Nigel Mansell – Staying on Track
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Back in 2015, 1992 Formula 1 World Champion Nigel Mansell published his most recent autobiography entitled Staying on Track. With a title as thrilling as the man himself, this author finally got around after some years to review it, and share some nuggets of wisdom from the book. Overview To start with, Staying on…
A tribute to the heroic failures of Grand Prix racing