I've found out where Nigel mansell is. (Formula 1 Magazine)

Name: jimmibb

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Product:	Formula 1 Magazine
Date:	28/06/02 (608 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: all you need to know about Formula One

Disadvantages: it's shrinking

After I bought the first issue of Formula 1 Magazine I became very excited. (I hope this doesn't expose some sad aspect of my character.) It was everything I had dreamed about in an F1 magazine, it had and still has the things that I most enjoy in F1; up to date news, technical stories and facts, driver profiles, past, present and up and coming. It has history, a bit of gossip and full race previews and reviews. I subscribed straight away, with an offer of 15 issues for the price of 12, a cardboard binder and a promise of over 200 pages per issue I would have been mad not to.

The first issue had 250 odd pages and over the next few issues averaged around 220, now the pages average around 160 (I don’t usually count pages of magazines, honest). While this does go against their original promise I’m not that disappointed as there are less adverts now, but I do miss the amount of historical articles they used to run.

In the beginning Nikki Lauda was the editor in chief and his introductions were sometimes a little controversial, however he had to leave to run a small team called 'Jaguar Racing', so Nigel Mansell took over. While our Nige can be a bit boring he does make interesting comparisons between when he was a driver and the relative easy life of the drivers now (that’s the way it comes across anyway.)

F1 magazine is set out into different sections, first there is an introduction from our man Nige, this month (June 2002) he talks about the Austrian debacle and of course how things were different when he drove for Ferrari. Next is “paddock confidential” which gives you all the latest news about the teams and F1 personalities. There are also regular columns from Tom Rubython (I don’t know who he is, but he sometime talks cr. oops, rubbish.) and Eddie Irvine (I know who he is he’s the man who should have won Ferrari’s first drivers championship for however many years it was, but h
is name wasn’t Schumacher.) Eddie is his usual self, sometimes bitching and always going on about how wonderful he is, but he does give a good insight from a driver’s perspective. Following these are photographs from the last few races, firstly “Postcards from…” these are usualy pictures of scantily clad Pit girls and the drivers Etc. then its “Gallery” pictures of the cars in action. All of the photos are of high quality and there are sometimes spectacular shots of any crashes, June’s issue shows Sato and Heidfeld’s huge coming together at Austria.

The middle of the magazine has team profiles, which are always in depth and some times eye opening, articles on different personalities and technical suppliers and of course my favourite, historical stories. These have ranged from the philandering of Graham Hill (Yes Damon’s dad) to the death of Gilles Villeneuve (that’s right this one was Jacques dad), sometimes these stories can cause a bit of a stir, the one about Graham getting a letter from his wife disputing the claims the magazine made. Most of these articles are written by well known and respected F1 journalists and authors. There have been a lot of complaints that the magazine was overdoing stories about Ayrton Senna, which were, admittedly, going a bit over the top, Ayrton’s Last girlfriend being one, for example. But they also seem to write far to many stories about Michael Schumacher; the first issue had some bizarre photos of him with his wife, in strange clothes and some very disturbing poses. John Watson sometimes test drives fast and expensive cars as well and while they can be interesting I’m not overly convinced this magazine is the right place for these articles.

The rear of the magazine is devoted to the race reviews and previews normally three behind and three ahead. The reviews are extremely comprehensive giving an overall report and then a team by
team rundown of the practice, qualifying and race, where they went wrong or right and the strategies used. Then it’s the statistics, they give the stats of everything, things I didn’t think I wanted to know, but obviously did. There are the obvious ones, Practice, qualifying and race times, fastest sector times, fastest laps and speed trap results. They also include penalties received, pitstop times and track temperatures. This is laid out in a clear and easy to read format, even though it is all fitted onto a two-page spread. After this they show you any technical changes made by the teams, enhanced by well-drawn sketches.

The previews give a potted history of the tracks including past winners, a diagram of the track showing sector times etc and a run down of the previous years results and each preview has a spotlight article on, what the magazine thinks is, the best race from that track In the past.

The last few pages have the obligatory letters page, sometimes interesting but mostly not, book, DVD/video and computer game reviews, I like this, as I do enjoy F1 books and as the books are generally expensive they help you sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak (I’m really sorry but I do so love clichés). The very last page is devoted to the funny and stupid comments people make in F1, such as Barrichello saying to Schummacher, “I was hoping you were going to say no.”

F1 magazine costs £3.50 per issue (incredibly good value) or you can get years subscription for £34.50 (even better value, but not as good as the initial subscription I got alas). All this information, but not much more, is available from their website, which is at www.F1magazine.net

As you can see I really like this magazine and whilst it isn't as good as it was when it first came out, I still think it is the best F1 magazine on the market. It manages to cover all aspects of F1 past, present and future. And it’s glossy
of course.

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