By Pete Lyons
2025 review by Peter McFadyen
‘This is not a motor racing history – it’s my memories of it’ declares the title page of this thoroughly absorbing book and thank goodness for that. It is, in fact, the life story of one of the best motor racing reporters of the last sixty years or so and that’s not just my opinion. In his foreword, Sir Jackie Stewart writes [Lyons] “was one of the best journalists in F1 at the time I was racing” and that is backed up by a cutting of JYS’s 1975 letter to Autosport’s editor saying much the same. Following in the footsteps of his father, Ozzie Lyons, Pete was also a very competent photographer, often contributing both words and pictures to the magazines he worked for and the book includes many examples of his work.
Before his four-year stint covering F1 worldwide for Autosport and the American AutoWeek, Lyons had made his reputation covering the spectacular Canadian-American Challenge Cup – or ‘Can-Am’ as we knew it – which started out in 1966 with what Lyons points out was the thinnest rule book of any contemporary race series. His reports of these and other North American races were always eagerly devoured by yours truly.
But the book is not so much about the races as how Pete Lyons contrived to get to them and what happened along the way. Whether conveyed by the family Rolls-Royce or his 350 Norton motorcycle or anything in between, his nomadic existence took him vast distances in both Europe and America and he describes the whole experience with all the skill and panache he applied to his race reports and background articles and it makes for a very, very readable story. The book concludes with a conversation with Mario Andretti about ‘passion in racing’, something which the author and the racer clearly share and have done throughout their lives.
Altogether, a superb book and one which will surely appeal to all those of us who have tried or even just dreamt of leading a similar existence.
My Travels On Racer Road – Can-Am and Formula 1 in their golden age. Pete Lyons; published by Evro Publishing; hardcover; pp560 with 560 illustrations. ISBN 978-1-910505-87-8. £70.00
Publisher: Evro Publishing (https://www.evropublishing.com)
Price: £70.00 plus postage.
Description: 560 pages, hardback published without dust jacket, 24.7cm x 21.7cm. 550 illustrations in black & white and colour.
ISBN: 978-1-910505-87-8
Thank you very, very much, Fellow Peter! I am pleased that you enjoyed it. — Pete Lyons