5 Books to Peruse During the F1 Summer Break

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The dog days of summer are here so, like our canine friends, it's time to lie under the shade of a tree and relax a little. There's nothing better for relaxing than a good book. Here are four of them.

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BMW Motorcycles 1923-2023: 100 Years of Cutting Edge Engineering and Design, by Jackie Jouret

Is there a better expert on all things BMW than Jackie Jouret? She was editor of Bimmer magazine for 17 years and has authored 11 books on BMW cars and even executives over the years, including discovering, documenting, and writing a book about Elvis’ 507, a car restored and displayed at Pebble Beach by BMW North America.

In addition to that she has always been a motorcycle rider. She once dropped out of grad school at Berkeley “to ride around Ireland with a friend.” Out of school she started writing for San Francisco’s famous City Bike newspaper before going on to Bimmer and freelancing.

The book takes us through BMW Motorrad’s founding as an engine maker, pre- and post-war survival, and technological innovation that leads us to the sterling line of bikes we now enjoy.

“Cataloging every innovative feature introduced over 100 years of BMW motorcycle history would be next to impossible, but I’ve tried to capture as many as I could on these pages,” she says. “It’s been a fun adventure.”

You’ll have just as much fun reading it. It’s all presented in bite-sized, two-page chapters that each contain a photo, a headline and a few hundred words about an important aspect in BMW Motorrad history. You can skip ahead to find your favorite bike or start at the beginning and get the whole story, warts, world wars, and all.

Through My Eyes: The Coming of Professional Sports Car Racing in California, by Dave Friedman

Dave Friedman has published many books from his time as Shelby team photographer in the golden age of both Shelby American and of sports car racing in America. Friedman was there for seemingly the whole scene, at a time when the greatest names in racing competed against one another in the greatest sports cars ever made.

This book concentrates on the L.A. Times and L.A. Examiner Grands Prix as well as the USRRC championships in Laguna Seca, from 1958 to 1965. It was a time when the best Grand Prix drivers in the world drove in races like these because it was the off-season and they just loved to race.

Seemingly every great driver of the era is here: Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Lance Reventlow, Roger Penske, Ken Miles, Carroll Shelby, Lloyd Ruby, Parnelli Jones, Bob Bondurant, Jim Hall, A.J. Foyt, and on and on. You’ll see great racers who don’t get mentioned as much as some of the above but should, too.

I guarantee you have not seen these photos before. I had never seen them and I thought I’d seen everything. You will love paging through this book, especially if you were there. You will even see a very young George Lucas working the pits, clipboard in hand, doing who knows what?