The Official Formula 1 Season Review 2004 [Hardcover]

The "Official Formula 1 Season Review 2004" is an improvement over the 2003 annual "The Season". Even the book jacket, a delightful shot of a Ferrari (what else?) speeding across the cover, instead of a series of portraits of the F1 drivers (as was the case with 2003 "The Season") is an improvement. The improvements are not confined to just the cover. This comes somewhat as a relief, as in my review of "The Season", I swore that I would not buy another annual of its ilk, but this year, I had more money than good sense and once again purchased the book to go along with the customary "Autocourse".

This Annual is published by the Haymarket Publishing Group (a glance at the credits page shows input from Matt Bishop and Stephane Samson of F1 Racing as well as Mark Hughes from AutoSport) and Haynes instead of FOM, the publishers of the now defunct F1 Magazine. Despite this, Bernie Ecclestone still contributes the foreword.

Eddie Jordan looks at each of the drivers and gives a brief assessment of how they rank against each other. There is also a section which looks at the technical aspects of the cars of 2004, with the Technical Directors of all 10 teams making a list for "Car of the Year". There is also seperate article with a focus on the Ferrari F2004. Additionally, following the race roundups, there is a season roundup of technical developments for each team although the coverage for the lesser lights (Jag/Jordan/Minardi) is slight. There are additional team statistics (the usual: wins, starts, points and so on) and technical details of chassis/engine as well as key staff for each of the teams.

Jenson Button, Juan Pablo Montoya, Fernando Alonso, and Kimi Raikkonen all contribute a two page spread discussing their own seasons and performances. The race roundups are OK, similar to the style of F1 Racing, with a little input from key technical figures such as Pat Symonds of Renault, David Pitchford of Jaguar and Montoya again. The graphics presented for each race are nice, and there is a sentence or two from each race driver summing up their performances. The race roundups are probably the biggest improvement from the previous year's annual.

The Test drivers have not been neglected: there are a couple of articles dedicated to the "Lost Boys", as well as a statistics section- did you know it was not Ferrari that covered the most testing mileage for 2004, but Toyota? And Williams were second?

On the downside, I note there is some advertising material, and it seems to me to be more advertising than in the past. Still it is not such a huge issue for me. More indepth discussion from other drivers apart from those already contributing articles as mentioned previously would have been nice- at least the 2003 edition did discuss each individual driver.

Overall, this annual, while probably not a serious threat (oh, how I long for an annual to rival the 2001 and 2002 editions of F1 Annual) for Hazelton and Autocourse, does offer a genuine alternative for those who are tiring of the Autocourse product.