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Overdrive: Formula 1 in the Zone
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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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