The great challenge 5

The Schumacher era

Dieter Streve-Mühlens/Rainer W Schlegelmilch

Schlegelmilch’s stunning photography is the heart and soul of this beautiful coffee-table tome covering Formula 1 in the years when Michael Schumacher was on the grand prix trail. It’s split into sections covering individual drivers with Schumacher understandably occupying the biggest chunk. The German’s fellow World Champions Fernando Alonso, Mika Hdkkinen, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve are also in the spotlight, with smaller sections for other top drivers of the period. Here you’ll find all those you’d expect from David Coutthard to Jean Alesi and Eddie Irvine, plus, bizarrely, Pedro Diniz.

The photography is superb whether it’s the consciously artistic shots that are used at the beginning of the larger sections or the spur of the moment action shots like that of the flash fire on Michael’s Ferrari in the pits in Austria 2003, or of brother Ralf seemingly trying to bury the unloved ‘walrus’ nose of the 2004 Williams in the gravel at the Nurburgring.

‘School photos’ of the classes of 1992 and 2006 on the inside covers may not be the most beautiful in the book, but show the contrast between the more relaxed, bigger field of 1992 and the smaller, more commercially-driven ’06 set. This volume (the fifth in the series) starts with recollections from the likes of Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore and Martin Brundle, and there’s extensive text too from Hartmut Lehbrink, but really it’s all about the pictures which is just as well because the English translation of the text is a little awkward. NP

Published by Rainer W Schlegelmich, ISBN 978 3 00 0210877 7, £170