The Formula : How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World’s Fastest-Growing Sport

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERONE OF THE FINANCIAL TIMES’ BEST BOOKS OF SUMMER 2024’HANDS DOWN THE GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN ABOUT F1.’ -Sam Walker, author of The Captain Class’MODERN F1 IS THE SPORTS STORY OF THIS ERA AND NO ONE COULD TELL IT BETTER’ -Kevin Clark, ESPN’THE FASTEST READ YOU WILL EVER PICK UP’ -A.J. Baime, author of Go Like HellF1 is now the fastest growing sport in the world; the full story of its unbelievable rise is a riveting saga only hinted at by the likes of Drive to Survive. In this book – the first, definitive account of how F1 came to achieve total global fandom – Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg take us inside a world full of racing obsessives, glamorous settings, petrolheads, engineering geniuses, dashing racers and bitter rivalries.
The story of F1’s world dominance is one of near-constant transformation and experimentation. This is a sport where the only way to win championships is to land a series of technical moon shots – and then do it all over again. With fast cars, big money, beautiful people, and glamorous locations from Monaco to Melbourne, The Formula tells the full, epic story of the sport.
Starting in 1950s Britain, where six years of wartime engineering laid the foundations for a new type of motorcar racing; to the first global star partnership of Senna and Ecclestone; Spygate; Crashgate and its transition into an entertainment juggernaut. Bringing unique insight and access to F1’s most storied teams and personalities – from Ferrari to Lewis Hamilton to Christian Horner and Daniel Ricciardo -The Formula offers a riveting portrait of the drivers, corporations, cars, rivalries, and audacious gambles that have shaped the sport for half a century. The end result is a high-octane history of how modern F1 racing came to be – the first book to tell the story of the outrageous successes and spectacular crashes that led F1 to this extraordinary yet precarious moment.
More than just a sports story, it is the tale of a commercial empire, one built in the 20th century, rendered almost obsolete in the early 21st, and re-emerged world-dominant today; a disrupter that claimed its place in the crowded sports marketplace through cash, personality, and a new understanding of what a sport needs to be in the age of wall-to-wall entertainment.