Spend Your Weekend Reading the Most Delightfully Ridiculous Motorsport Novel

Photo: Elizabeth Blackstock

I grew up in a book-loving family. My mom heads out to Half-Price Books every few weeks, inevitably returning with a stack of discounted literature from the motorsport section. Her greatest score yet may be the goofiest and most wonderful book I’ve ever read: Grand Prix: Formula One in the Deadly Years by Richard Melville.

G/O Media may get a commission

Grand Prix was published in 2014. The author himself was a racing driver in the 1960s to 1970s, after which he pivoted to yacht racing. Melville’s two passions quickly become obvious in the novel, which follows a fictional F1 driver named Will Archer through his final year in racing as he tries to secure his first World Championship. Archer is part of a smaller team — not one of the legends like Ferrari or Lotus — and he has plenty on his mind. He’s trying to develop an island in Central America. His ex-girlfriend says she’s pregnant. He has a new Spanish girlfriend whose father raises fighting bulls, who’s helping Archer finance his island. To get away from it all, Archer regularly heads out on his yacht, the Imperialist.

When I say Archer goes through hell and back, I truly mean it. This man survives a shark attack. He yachts through a hurricane. He crashes his personal airplane. He walks away from multiple, terrible crashes throughout the racing season. He almost gets a ride with Ferrari. He shoots at thieves trying to loot his yacht and ends up in the thick of a Central American extortion scandal. He recounts a lot of sex with a lot of different women. He falls in love with a woman who, at one point in the book, is suspected of being a witch, but mostly just turns out to be A Cool Chick Who Isn’t Like The Rest Of These Blowsy Gals, of whom Archer is regularly critical. I’m sure I’m missing something, because I forgot plenty of Archer’s many escapades when I recounted the book’s plot to my husband.

Melville knows his stuff when it comes to racing, yachting, and flying. As someone who likes a little more grounding in the location, I did struggle to figure out where Archer was racing (and I really wanted to know what year this was set in, but again — that’s probably just me needing to know every little detail). You can tell Melville has experience.

G/O Media may get a commission

Magnetically Docking

Mode Electric Toothbrush

Luxury brushing
Mode is the first magnetically charging toothbrush, and rotates to dock in any outlet. The brushing experience is as luxurious as it looks—with soft, tapered bristles and a two-minute timer to be confident you reached all the crevices of your molars.

I did have a few criticisms, but because this appears to be a self-published book on Amazon, I’m not going to get too picky. The misogyny can become a little off-putting at times — the first chapter details Archer’s sexual escapades with his girlfriend’s “fat friend,” for example. The technical language can be a little difficult to grasp if you’re not familiar with, say, yachting or flying. There are tons of storylines that aren’t wrapped up by the end of the book. But I think the biggest critique I have was the title, which heavily implies that this is a nonfiction recounting of F1’s era of deadly speed, not a novel about an imaginary driver.

But if you’re looking for an entertaining racing-related read to keep you busy this weekend, you’ll have that in spades with Grand Prix.