Competition Car Controls

by Ian Bamsey and Alan Lis. 238 pp. 10″ x 7″. Foulis & Co., Sparkford, Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7JL £19.95

Ian Bamsey, one-time Editor of Motoring News, has built up a great reputation for his knowledge of modern motor racing techniques since joining Racecar Engineering and the result has, among other things, been a number of erudite and useful books on racing engines and kindred subjects. Now, with Alan Lis, a researcher and photographer also for Racecar Engineering, he has turned his attention, and that of his readers, to the many and complex aspects of safety as they involve today’s high-tech. motor racing.

In this Kimberley Motor Racing book every part of the safety operation as it concerns F1 racing is covered, commencing with Lis’s inside story of the Berger fire at Imola, as recounted to him by that courageous driver. The racing car’s controls, the driver’s elaborate equipment, radio, overalls, intercom, track-side signals, the lot in fact, and the text and 120 very clear pictures tell the whole story, not only of how to be as safe as possible in a racing car but how it is controlled and driven. F1 drivers know it already, and would not have time to read about it — I shall be corrected if I am wrong! — but for the rest of us, an informative book with a fresh angle on racing.

WB