Speed Reader

Despite what you might think, preparing a fried calf's head a la piemontaise is pretty straightforward. Or so I am told by Larousse Gastronomique, the huge tome that serves as the ultimate authority on French cooking.

I was given one of the earliest English-language editions for Christmas, and have not been able to put it down since - which is why I also know that the average roasting time for a woodcock is 15 to 18 minutes per pound in the oven (slightly longer if you are cooking it on a spit), and that white lotus roots were eaten in ancient Egypt, but the pink variety was considered sacred and its consumption banned.

Larousse Gastronomique is one of those books that you can just pick up, flip open at any random page, and lose yourself in. Philip Raby doesn't quite hit the Larousse heights with his book 'Grand Prix: Driver by Driver', but it's a pretty good effort nonetheless - and another prime candidate for arbitrary page-dipping.

Raby's book is essentially an annotated cast list of every driver to have attempted to qualify for an F1 race, from the establishment of the world championship in 1950 right up to the 2007 season - the full spectrum from Abate to Zunino.

Right off the bat, those with a keen interest in the sport's past will spot possible pitfalls - the years where the Indy 500 counted towards the championship, for instance, or the era where F2 cars joined F1 cars on the grid.

Raby pre-empts all this himself, and clarifies his position early on. Drivers did not have to actually qualify for a Grand Prix to make the list - merely entering the race was enough to earn them a spot. Drivers of F2 cars that joined the field in the 1950s are included on the basis of having started a world championship event, while Indy 500 entrants get their own special section at the back.

It's a book of breadth rather than depth - which is not intended as a criticism. I haven't stopped to count exactly how many drivers appear in total, but coming up with a 150-word bio of each must, at times, have been a fiddly job, especially in some of the more obscure cases.

Naturally, a little more space is given to the Sennas and Clarks of the world, although Raby resists the temptation to go overboard, presumably recognising that anyone who cares enough to look up someone like Osward Karch is probably sufficiently familiar with the careers of the sport's icons to not require a 2,000-word recap.

An inescapable problem with books like this is that they invariably fall out of date very rapidly. That said, Raby has still done an admirable job of remaining reasonably current in the face of an even more tumultuous season than usual.

Markus Winkelhock and Sakon Yamamoto both make it in, although Raby must have despaired when Kazuki Nakajima was called up at short notice to replace Alex Wurz at Williams for the final race at Interlagos.

If you were being a pedant, you could perhaps question some of the photo choices: Is depicting Narain Karthikeyan with a Williams potentially confusing when he only ever raced in a Jordan?

And having used his introduction to celebrate the sport's lesser-lauded drivers, could a better shot from Satoru Nakajima's five-year career have been found than one of him firing across the gravel? (There are some who would say probably not)

On the whole, though, this is one of those books that is fun to have kicking about the place, if only to just open up at random every now and then to see what you turn up.

Whether you find yourself revisiting the career of Ronnie Peterson, learning what Oscar Larrauri did after his racing career ended, or pondering the sudden and mysterious retirement of Minardi rookie Esteban Tuero in the late 1990s, there are certainly worse ways to kill a couple of hours.

Christopher Hilton has also gone down the 'annotated list' road with his new book, 'Michael Schumacher: The Definitive Race-By-Race Record Of His Grand Prix Career'.

If I'm being honest, I have to say that I don't see the point. I could almost stretch myself to accept the premise of a book covering each of Schumacher's wins - there were certainly enough of them - but every race? I'm not sure that even the most die-hard of the German's fans could get through that.

The concept could have been saved somewhat by some new analysis or interviews with relevant people, particularly regarding the more significant races. For example, I would love to read what Ross Brawn had to say about the 1998 Hungarian Grand Prix - one of the greatest driver/pitwall performances in F1 history.

Instead, it's page after page of lap-by-lap tedium, retreading paths that are already worn bare. Everyone's taste is different, and all reviews are by definition subjective, but this sort of stuff really leaves me cold.

I was also bewildered by the sudden format change half-way through the book. Early on, each race is described as a single narrative. No problem with that. But from 2000 onwards, Hilton suddenly starts breaking each weekend into Friday and Saturday practice, and qualifying. And confusingly, there is no delineation between qualifying and the race.

Hilton explains the change in format as being necessary to accommodate a "unique, unprecedented and at times scarcely believable domination." But Schumacher looked pretty dominant at Benetton in 1995, too - yet this section retains the old format.

And on the flipside, for the 2005 and 2006 seasons - when Schumacher was beaten - the 'domination' format is retained. You could argue that while Schumacher went down to Alonso on both occasions he was still a contender, but that doesn't hold water either - he was a threat in 1997 and 1998, too. It just doesn't pan out.

The rush of Lewis Hamilton books late last year spelt a relative quiet patch for Schumi fans, so on that basis alone, this new release might find its way into a few bookcases. But will anyone actually read it?

Oh, and the calf's head? In case you're wondering, you can serve it on a bed of risotto with a "not too thick" tomato sauce.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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