Lewis hamilton biography book
Lewis Hamilton: The Biography
June 15, 2023
Good biographies in my opinion need to be about interesting people who have lead interesting lives, they also need to be informative, entertaining and well written. Lewis Hamilton definitely ticks the first two boxes, unfortunately Frank Worral falls short with the last three. His biography of Lewis is dry, poorly constructed and reads like an over long magazine article.
He jumps around a lot which affects the flow of the story and delivers stats on Lewis’ achievements in an encyclopedic way. It is unfortunately a bit boring and I struggled at times to finish it. There is very little here of his own research or interviews, most of the quotes are taken from other people’s articles or interviews. There’s nothing new from Lewis. When he did touch on an interesting point he seemed to gloss over it, especially if it was contentious. I never felt I got to know Lewis any better or learnt anything about him that I hadn’t already read before.
On the plus side there are some nice potted histories of the people around him and of McLaren and his racing team also the analysis and descriptions of his first season and the races is quite good. In fact the section on that first season is the best part of the book and also takes up a considerable portion of it. But again the flow is spoiled by putting chapters regarding ethnic minorities or how he rates amongst the all time greats in between each race. These are totally valid subjects and need to be included but I think the way it is structured doesn’t help. Oddly though after a detailed account of his first season he skims over his first championship winning season. What then follows is a season by season account of his races written in the same encyclopedic way quoting stats such as times and points, it’s not very entertaining. Also bizarrely the last chapter pertaining to the 2021 season, ends abruptly mid season. On whole the book feels light, it lacks depth. You can’t just spend over 300 pages just saying how brilliant someone is, no matter if the reader is a huge fan or not it all gets a bit repetitive.
In conclusion Worral’s book provides a glossed over fact filled account of Lewis’ career, however that isn’t enough to fit the criteria I mentioned for a good biography. Is it informative? - Well the facts are there. Is it entertaining? - Not really, it is as I have said a tad boring. Is it well written? - no unfortunately, it is repetitive, jumps around too much and doesn’t flow, and it tells us hardly anything about the man himself, Lewis Hamilton, therefore it fails to engage the reader, well this reader anyway. Lewis Hamilton is a phenomenal talent and I would love to read a more informative detailed version of events with opinions from the antagonists as well as the protagonist in his story
One of the points that Worral makes repeatedly is that Lewis transformed formula one racing, which by its own admission had become boring, into an exciting spectacle again attracting larger audiences outside of the normal petrol heads. It’s a pity his book doesn’t achieve the same.
He jumps around a lot which affects the flow of the story and delivers stats on Lewis’ achievements in an encyclopedic way. It is unfortunately a bit boring and I struggled at times to finish it. There is very little here of his own research or interviews, most of the quotes are taken from other people’s articles or interviews. There’s nothing new from Lewis. When he did touch on an interesting point he seemed to gloss over it, especially if it was contentious. I never felt I got to know Lewis any better or learnt anything about him that I hadn’t already read before.
On the plus side there are some nice potted histories of the people around him and of McLaren and his racing team also the analysis and descriptions of his first season and the races is quite good. In fact the section on that first season is the best part of the book and also takes up a considerable portion of it. But again the flow is spoiled by putting chapters regarding ethnic minorities or how he rates amongst the all time greats in between each race. These are totally valid subjects and need to be included but I think the way it is structured doesn’t help. Oddly though after a detailed account of his first season he skims over his first championship winning season. What then follows is a season by season account of his races written in the same encyclopedic way quoting stats such as times and points, it’s not very entertaining. Also bizarrely the last chapter pertaining to the 2021 season, ends abruptly mid season. On whole the book feels light, it lacks depth. You can’t just spend over 300 pages just saying how brilliant someone is, no matter if the reader is a huge fan or not it all gets a bit repetitive.
In conclusion Worral’s book provides a glossed over fact filled account of Lewis’ career, however that isn’t enough to fit the criteria I mentioned for a good biography. Is it informative? - Well the facts are there. Is it entertaining? - Not really, it is as I have said a tad boring. Is it well written? - no unfortunately, it is repetitive, jumps around too much and doesn’t flow, and it tells us hardly anything about the man himself, Lewis Hamilton, therefore it fails to engage the reader, well this reader anyway. Lewis Hamilton is a phenomenal talent and I would love to read a more informative detailed version of events with opinions from the antagonists as well as the protagonist in his story
One of the points that Worral makes repeatedly is that Lewis transformed formula one racing, which by its own admission had become boring, into an exciting spectacle again attracting larger audiences outside of the normal petrol heads. It’s a pity his book doesn’t achieve the same.
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