£2.60 a week!!! (Autosport)

Member Name: cpf1993

Product:	Autosport
Date:	23/01/01 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great writing, great photographs, up-to-date news, reports and gossip.

Disadvantages: £2.60 a week - overly expensive? As up to date as internet sites?

I started reading Autosport about ten years ago now. It was back when I used to visit my Dad a lot and he used to be flamboyant enough with his money to get Motoring News and Autosport every week. Of course it was a lot easier then as Autosport only used to set you back £1.60 then!

My interest in Autosport at the time was generally picture related. While most newspapers used to carry an occasional black and white photo Autosport was filled with glossy pictures from the latest Grand Prix, and only four days after the event! Furthermore it was not just the leading cars that were featured, you were likely to see pictures of all the cars.

As I matured (just a little!) the magazine became more of a read instead of something to flick through. The coverage of Grand Prix was exceptional, and indeed has remained so to this day. It is no coincidence that the formula for their coverage has hardly changed. You get two pages worth of reports on qualifying, qualifying times, race times, fastest laps, lap charts and little snippets summarising the race from the viewpoint of every team. Add in a chunky report on the whole weekend from Nigel Roebuck and it really is an impressive package that takes up at least ten pages in each issue following a Grand Prix. And remember that this is available to buy four days after the race itself!

I mentioned Nigel Roebuck in the previous paragraph, and will do so here again. He really is a superb writer and has his own column in which it appears he has pretty much free licence to write about whatever he pleases. These are always worth reading, as among other things he really gets to know drivers from all categories of motorsport and is not afraid to write things that are controversial. Occasionally his viewpoints look back at the past through rose-tinted glasses, and he admits to having his favourites (e.g. Gilles Villeneuve) and people he dislikes (e.g. Nigel Mansell), but he tells it as he sees it and in my mind that m
akes what he says far more readable.

It is not just Formula One that Autosport covers comprehensively. While the blue riband class of motorsport is undoubtedly their primary focus, just about all forms of motorsport. Major international classes (Champcars, IRL, NASCAR, DTM, etc.), club races (both domestic and international) and rallying are all covered in depth. Quality writers are evident everywhere, with another favourite of mine being North American writer Gordon Kirby. However you are not buying a phone book, as Autosport comes in at a fairly manageable 112 pages or so.

One thing I really like about Autosport is that it is a magazine that is unashamed to be British. When Nigel Mansell won the World Championship in 1992 I thought that Autosport had problems with their printer. As it turned out it was a special "green cover", with the word "Autosport" printed in British racing green instead of the usual red. These are only issued upon a major British achievement within motorsport, and I have the Damon Hill championship edition as well. The magazine also has columns from British drivers, Dario Franchitti and Mark Blundell being two of the more frequent contributors.

As I said I do tend to keep my back issues of Autosport. Every once in a while I will thumb through them, and one feature tends to be consistently eye opening. When I look through the latest news section it is startling just how many pieces of gossip turned out to be true. While these are rarely marked as exclusives it is interesting to look at how people predicted events would work out, and how they actually did. To my mind this shows that Autosport is responsible in whom it listens to and what actually gets printed.

Autosport is undoubtedly a fantastic magazine, but with two points which stop me from buying it more often than I do. Firstly there is the price. £2.60 is quite a lot in my opinion, especially for a magazine that comes out weekly. Th
e problem with this is that the magazine makes good reading whether a Grand Prix has just taken place or not (or even when it is not Formula One season at all!), and so if you are not careful you can find yourself spending over £100 a year on the magazine.

Secondly, can the magazine compete against modern technology? With the internet spawning a number of great Motor Racing websites pictures, reports and data from Grand Prix can be available on the night after a race. You do not need to wait until Thursday now. Therefore Autosport will need to keep ahead of the field, produce consistently excellent articles and worthwhile features to enable it to survive. I hope it does, and that lots more green covers are issued in future as a collector's item to go alongside British motorsport successes.

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