A rare mix of empathy, grit and honesty: Derek Warwick’s autobiography reviewed

Derek Warwick should write another book, about his Uncle Stan. A rambunctious figure, ever ready with his fists, he colours the Formula 1 driver’s early chapters with numerous car crashes and frequent fights on behalf of his aspiring nephew. It’s part of what makes this chunky work an entertaining read, along with Warwick’s own tales of family, friends, adventures and disasters on the way to the grand prix grid and beyond. And early on he wasn’t even interested in F1 having already achieved his life’s ambition aged 19 – World Stock Car champion.

Despite 10 F1 seasons with six teams, he’d never score a GP win, yet his endurance racing career glitters – Le Mans victory with Peugeot and the 1992 World Sportscar Championship, plus series runner-up twice. Then there were BTCC years as driver and team principal – but so much for summaries, it’s the man who shines through here.

Those car-battering stock car laps taught him much about grit and out-psyching opponents, and sometimes he took the Uncle Stan route: fed up of being nerfed, he took out his regular Superstox nemesis by overturning his car, leading to a big fight. “I was banned for three months,” he says cheerfully, “but after that all the drivers treated me with more respect.”

Unusually the captions are in his voice, adding to the feeling that this is Warwick talking with total recall. How much of that is David Tremayne’s knowledgeable tidying is difficult to say, but it seems a sincere account, confessing strengths and weaknesses, mistakes and proud moments with the same honesty.

While stating his immense self-belief (“I never needed a quick team-mate to motivate me – I just needed me”) he admits to being a very selfish racer, even going against an agreement and snatching a championship win from his own father, yet chapters on home life in Jersey show his family devotion. Many interjections from friends, family and colleagues help colour the portrait too.

As a hard racer himself he’s surprisingly understanding about Ayrton Senna rejecting him as Lotus team-mate for 1986, ending up in Brabham’s unloved BT55 while also racing a TWR Jaguar, and he’s frank about a prickly relationship with Eddie Cheever when Arrows partners. They’re friends now.

A chapter on the riotous stuff and what his mates got up to in hire cars makes you sorry for Avis, and the risks they took in the air will make you wince. It’s very funny though, and he got away with those. Unlike on the racetrack.

“I’ve had some good shunts in my time” barely covers it but barrel-rolling his Lotus in 1990 at Monza sums him up. After sprinting back to the pits he got into the spare car even though, as he admits, he shouldn’t have raced. “My eyes were on stalks and I was hyperventilating.” That wasn’t the only time either. This is a tough man. Articulate too.

Weeks later his friend and team-mate Martin Donnelly had that appalling practice crash at Jerez. Derek vividly describes the emotional stress of the agonising decision whether to race. A suspension mount had broken but his mechanics worked all night to reinforce his and he decided to go for it. “I had total belief I would never die in a racing car,” he says, yet admits in retrospect “it would have been braver not to race”.

“This is a man concerned for the feelings of others”

This pales beside the terrible death of his promising brother Paul while leading an F3000 race. In a heartbreaking chapter titled My Little Brother Warwick tells of this awful day and the following black weeks in simple, heartfelt words. Among those emotions it’s clear that this is an empathetic man frequently concerned for the feelings of others, from a couple who have won a day with Lotus on that terrible weekend of Donnelly’s crash to the TWR mechanics who don’t know what to say when he arrives to drive the XJR-14 after Paul’s death. “I have to say I’m now very good at counselling people,” he states. “It’s down to Paul and maybe it’s part of his legacy.” Perhaps it was that which stopped him pummelling Michael Schumacher after the German took the Superstox approach and rammed his Jag. He chased Shuey around the paddock but “when I finally got hold of him and looked in his face all I saw was Paul… and suddenly all my anger subsided”.

Honesty pervades Never Look Back: about people he didn’t like, such as Brian Henton and Teo Fabi, and those he did, like Patrick Tambay (“my favourite team-mate, a lovely, lovely man”).

And as Tremayne’s foreword points out, throughout his time racing he was also effectively doing a full-time job either with the family firm or his Honda dealerships and Jersey property projects, including building several houses for himself. I don’t know Warwick personally but I now have much respect for this battler who kept self-belief and humour – not to mention loyal friends – right through. He can be commended, too, on his later roles as BRDC president, as a prime mover in bringing young drivers forward, and his safety role with the FIA. All that and he’s great company – even in print.

Never Look Back
Derek Warwick & David Tremayne 
Evro Publishing, £60
ISBN 9781910505908

Wild about racing
Derek Wild

All too often we read of the on-track successes of Formula’s 1 finest drivers but there’s something equally alluring about the first-hand stories of those holding the spanners. Mechanic Derek Wild’s account of his globe-trotting with Lotus in the Graham Hill and Jim Clark days is a corker. What we get is the unglamorous existence of little sleep, lots of shouting and endless pranks. Stories are all the more revealing due to Wild’s behind-the-scenes photos, many in colour. LG

BHP Publishing, £30 ISBN 9781738508518

Emeryson
Graham Rabagliati

Paul Emery is a name you constantly see in 1950s races, either as driver or maker, yet the man himself is less known than his peers. Graham Rabagliati fills out the blanks on this restless engineer. A rapid racer himself, he built specials of all sorts plus his own Emeryson cars. Rabagliati pulls together this busy, impatient career from 500s to F1 Scirocco, Shannon and BRP projects, his sports car and GT designs – so many bright ideas, so little money and insufficient business grit to become another Chapman. But a great story. GC

Enigma Publishing, £50 ISBN 9781872955421

Three million miles in a Volvo
Giles Chapman

Remember those Les Leston adverts in the front of this mag, and the quilted rally jackets everyone wore in the ’70s? Did you know that Leston’s actual name was Fingleston? Just one of the details Giles Chapman digs up as he goes through the lives of 50 car people you probably didn’t know much about: race engineers, designers, stunt drivers, marque founders and that mega-mile Volvo’s owner. My new hero? Bob Knight, Jaguar’s saviour. Cute package, cheeky cover. Read, learn, enjoy. GC

History Press, £14.99 ISBN 9781803995496