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Overdrive: Formula 1 in the Zone
Listed in the Daily Telegraph's top ten sports books of the year, Overdrive draws on exclusive interviews with 100 of the world's quickest men - from Stirling Moss through to Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton - to reveal the magic of motor racing at the limit and beyond.
Ayrton Senna once famously crushed the F1 field at Monaco while in an apparent trance, an experience that led him to a spiritual rebirth. Overdrive reveals the grand prix greats have all shared aspects of Senna's epiphany at their finest hours.
To ride on a thousand screaming horses may seem an unlikely source of inner peace but life at 200mph can lead to surreal effects from slow motion to journeys out of the body. Stars of other sports confirm this mystical 'Zone' is accessible in any field but in motor racing only the masters tame it, bending time and space as they speed to Earthly laps of the gods. Overdrive is the first book to look deep inside their crash helmets and tell the story of how they do it.
Simon Briggs (Daily Telegraph) 'The product of ten years labour, Overdrive is insightful and leaves you with a fresh perspective on F1 - exactly what Senna experienced in Monaco all those years ago.'
Dan Cross (Motorsport Musings) 'Fascinating as it is thought-provoking, Overdrive is no ordinary sports book. It has clearly been a labour of love for the author and his passion for the subject shines through on every page.'
Julie Gueguen (FOFA) 'Far from alpha males fighting it out, Overdrive pictures racers as profoundly human, sometimes mystical men. All agree the perfect lap justifies the years of sacrifice. Not the champagne...'
Damien Smith (Motor Sport) 'Brolin risked being laughed at when asking drivers including Alonso, Schumacher and Hamilton if they have experienced out-of-body sensations. Instead, they were happy to oblige. The most original motor racing book of 2010? Without a doubt.'
Laurence Edmondson (ESPNF1) 'Overdrive leaves you looking at sport's greatest achievements in a different light. The content is incredibly fresh and brilliant descriptions include darts player Bobby George: 'Like a thousand starlings flying out of your a*******...'
Ayrton Senna once famously crushed the F1 field at Monaco while in an apparent trance, an experience that led him to a spiritual rebirth. Overdrive reveals the grand prix greats have all shared aspects of Senna's epiphany at their finest hours.
To ride on a thousand screaming horses may seem an unlikely source of inner peace but life at 200mph can lead to surreal effects from slow motion to journeys out of the body. Stars of other sports confirm this mystical 'Zone' is accessible in any field but in motor racing only the masters tame it, bending time and space as they speed to Earthly laps of the gods. Overdrive is the first book to look deep inside their crash helmets and tell the story of how they do it.
Simon Briggs (Daily Telegraph) 'The product of ten years labour, Overdrive is insightful and leaves you with a fresh perspective on F1 - exactly what Senna experienced in Monaco all those years ago.'
Dan Cross (Motorsport Musings) 'Fascinating as it is thought-provoking, Overdrive is no ordinary sports book. It has clearly been a labour of love for the author and his passion for the subject shines through on every page.'
Julie Gueguen (FOFA) 'Far from alpha males fighting it out, Overdrive pictures racers as profoundly human, sometimes mystical men. All agree the perfect lap justifies the years of sacrifice. Not the champagne...'
Damien Smith (Motor Sport) 'Brolin risked being laughed at when asking drivers including Alonso, Schumacher and Hamilton if they have experienced out-of-body sensations. Instead, they were happy to oblige. The most original motor racing book of 2010? Without a doubt.'
Laurence Edmondson (ESPNF1) 'Overdrive leaves you looking at sport's greatest achievements in a different light. The content is incredibly fresh and brilliant descriptions include darts player Bobby George: 'Like a thousand starlings flying out of your a*******...'
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
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32 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 3, 2013
I was disappointed with this book. For a few months there it was being shamelessly spruiked on GrandPrix.com where I get my F1 news, and it sounded like a fascinating in-depth exploration of the psychology of the competitive individual. Racing drivers are strange people, introverted yet hyperactive, and a book unravelling how their minds work sounded like it was worth a look.
Sadly, it didn't really deliver on that promise. It's deeply fascinating for the first few chapters, which Brolin devotes to his influence and personal deity Ayrton Senna, taking an especially close look at his famous qualifying session from Monaco 1988 (for the un-initiated, Ayrton focused so hard he lapsed into a trance and took pole by nearly 1.5 seconds over the next-fastest guy – who was his teammate in the same car). This section of the book is interesting and covers the event from a few angles I haven't seen anywhere else, so that alone was worth a read.
Unfortunately, from there Brolin lapses into outright Senna-worship. To be fair he does warn us almost from the get-go that to him, "God was Ayrton Senna", but I still find it irritating. Senna was an amazing driver, no question, and he gave hope to a massive nation like Brazil, but I can't help feeling anyone who sees him this way has been bamboozled by his charisma. As Damon Hill said in Senna Versus Prost , "Ayrton created an impression that if you were around him something really important for the world was taking place." It wasn't. To paraphrase Monty Python: "He's not the Messiah, he's just a very good racing driver!"
And then, after interviewing a few of the people who were in Ayrton's life, as well as a handful of other drivers on their experiences of "the zone" (which is admittedly also absorbing), Clyde seems to lose all interest in the book and it devolves into rhetorically asking the same questions over and over so he can pack in all his interviews with boneheaded soccer players and other random sportspeople. By the end the book is a muddled mess with no focus, no common thread and precious little point. Maybe the deadline caught up with him and he had a word quota to hit, I don't know, but it almost completely spoils the excellent first third of the book.
When musicians do this sort of thing we call them "filler tracks", a phenomenon iTunes seems to be killing off, thankfully. When we find a way to cull books the same way, readers will walk away with a third of Overdrive and Brolin will walk away with a third of a paycheque. I wouldn't bother buying it unless you really, really enjoy close scrutiny of Ayrton Senna circa 1988, but if you find it at your local library or something, it is worth checking out.
Sadly, it didn't really deliver on that promise. It's deeply fascinating for the first few chapters, which Brolin devotes to his influence and personal deity Ayrton Senna, taking an especially close look at his famous qualifying session from Monaco 1988 (for the un-initiated, Ayrton focused so hard he lapsed into a trance and took pole by nearly 1.5 seconds over the next-fastest guy – who was his teammate in the same car). This section of the book is interesting and covers the event from a few angles I haven't seen anywhere else, so that alone was worth a read.
Unfortunately, from there Brolin lapses into outright Senna-worship. To be fair he does warn us almost from the get-go that to him, "God was Ayrton Senna", but I still find it irritating. Senna was an amazing driver, no question, and he gave hope to a massive nation like Brazil, but I can't help feeling anyone who sees him this way has been bamboozled by his charisma. As Damon Hill said in Senna Versus Prost , "Ayrton created an impression that if you were around him something really important for the world was taking place." It wasn't. To paraphrase Monty Python: "He's not the Messiah, he's just a very good racing driver!"
And then, after interviewing a few of the people who were in Ayrton's life, as well as a handful of other drivers on their experiences of "the zone" (which is admittedly also absorbing), Clyde seems to lose all interest in the book and it devolves into rhetorically asking the same questions over and over so he can pack in all his interviews with boneheaded soccer players and other random sportspeople. By the end the book is a muddled mess with no focus, no common thread and precious little point. Maybe the deadline caught up with him and he had a word quota to hit, I don't know, but it almost completely spoils the excellent first third of the book.
When musicians do this sort of thing we call them "filler tracks", a phenomenon iTunes seems to be killing off, thankfully. When we find a way to cull books the same way, readers will walk away with a third of Overdrive and Brolin will walk away with a third of a paycheque. I wouldn't bother buying it unless you really, really enjoy close scrutiny of Ayrton Senna circa 1988, but if you find it at your local library or something, it is worth checking out.
July 16, 2021
This book was a huge missed opportunity to really explore the workings of the mind and body in elite sportspeople. It started off well before petering out into the author's dubious hypothesis of 'we don't really understand this supreme state of mind which delivers incredible performance, so therefore God did it'. What a cop out.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews