Throughout the last twenty-five years, Life in the Fast Lane has become a staple of Formula 1 literature. In essence, Matchett’s story is a monthly diary of a Benetton grand prix mechanic. This essential book gives a behind-the-scenes account of the daily life inside the trenches of F1, each page written throughout the tragic and turbulent 1994 season. The author’s unique view alone makes this book indispensable reading for any serious motor racing enthusiast but Life in the Fast Lane is much more than an informative diary of this highly exclusive, multimillion dollar world: its remarkable insider setting, its exceptional subject matter, its unfolding tension, its ease of narration… all of these thrilling ingredients have been wonderfully blended to produce a truly captivating page-turner. From January through to December, the enthralled reader is simply compelled to follow the author’s stunning racing year from start to finish. Written by popular Formula 1 television personality and audiobook narrator, Steve Matchett, Life in the Fast Lane proved an immediate success; a catalyst carrying the author from the F1 pit lane to America, working with FOX and NBC television, a commentary position from where he has called all the live grand prix racing action for the past twenty years. When Matchett wrote Life in the Fast Lane, however, he was a member of the Benetton grand prix team, a Formula 1 race mechanic working alongside celebrities like Flavio Briatore, Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn. His fast-paced story of the frantic, unending backstage activity to become the fastest and best in the world gives a fascinating, unparalleled insight into Formula 1 during some of its darkest and most difficult days. Matchett was himself engulfed in the terrible fire in Hockenheim where Jos Verstappen’s race car dramatically exploded. In Life in the Fast Lane he reveals the full inside story of the momentous 1994 season, including the death of Ayrton Senna, the Hockenheim fuel fire, along with the numerous fines, penalties and disqualifications that embroiled the sport as the Benetton and Williams teams battled tooth and nail for the drivers’ and constructors’ world championships. The final showdown came in Adelaide, Australia, the last race of the year, complete with that controversial title-deciding racing collision between Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill.
The US Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers are at the heart of global American military force. With nuclear-powered oceanic range, complements of nearly 5,000 crew, and typically carrying more than 70 combat aircraft, US carriers can remain on station for months, delivering aerial combat strikes on distant targets around the clock.
The Haynes US Super Carrier Operations Manual offers unrivaled insights into understanding how a modern US super carrier is operated. The US Navy has given Haynes author Chris McNab and photographer Patrick Bunce official clearance to spend time at sea on one of its ‘Nimitz’ or ‘Gerald R. Ford’ class super carriers.
During the visit Chris conducted interviews with key personnel of all major departments, including flight-deck crew, aviators, ordnance officers, engineers, logisticians, operations crew and the captain; while Patrick photographed life above and below decks, with a special focus on the engineering side of carrier aviation often not covered in other publications.
Listed in the Daily Telegraph’s top ten sports books of 2010, 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. 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.’ 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.’ 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…’ 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*******…’ 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.’
In Joyride Flatout, Dan Quarnstrom revisits the territory that originally inspired him, taught him to draw for the sheer fun of it and to recognize the opportunities he was presented with. Before he had a career, and throughout the one he has persued, he’s been completely nuts about Hot Rods. This book is the manifestation of that obsession.
JOYRIDE – in its simplest incarnation a joyride can be as innocent as taking the family car out for a spin. Perhaps taking mom’s station wagon or dad’s sedan to an empty stretch of road and opening them up for some velocity challenged friends.
More elaborate schemes to fulfill the need for speed include “borrowing” a stranger’s car and returning it a few hours later, albeit with the addition of a few extra miles on the odometer and a lot less rubber on the tires.
In an effort to quench this primal desire, rational men will drop big block Chrysler motors into tiny Fiat bodies and smoke their way down a quarter mile of asphalt. In belching fire and screaming noise, dreams are made real, and so it is on the printed page.
To Joyride is to recapture the sense of what is possible. The exhilaration of ideas well executed, barriers being broken, the collision of the sublime and the ridiculous.
If JOYRIDE is inspiration, then FLATOUT is intensity.
The artwork in this book is the continuation of Quarnstrom’s lifelong fascination with hot rods, dragsters and custom cars, currently called Joyride Flatout. As the source of his earliest inspiration and having provided him with the raw materials for a lifetime of drawing, he revisits this subject matter often. These are the drawings he wanted to do when he was 12 years old, but didn’t have the skills to pull them off (some are drawings done when he was 12).
The pioneers of wild style car design, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and his contemporaries, were at the height of their powers as custom car designers, providing a panorama of challenges for thousands of aspiring pencil jockeys. They provoked, validated and sustained his interest in the mechanical as art.
On the other side of the fence the drag racers were creating some of the most aesthetically pleasing, murderously loud, fire breathing beasts imaginable. More characters than cars, machines had been transformed into something beyond our comprehension. They made quite a lasting impression.
The concepts Dan Quarnstrom internalized then about design, attitude, character, shape, volume, weight, mechanics, precision and patience, he now uses professionally, on a daily basis. More importantly the real lesson was the enticement, the challenge, to think unconventionally, to color wildly outside the lines. It was a conspiracy of fun.
This is a book about finding inspiration and holding on to it.
