Comments on: From the vaults: Old F1 magazines

By: Alianora La Canta

Alianora La Canta — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:14:28 +0000

doctorvee, the Grand Prix 96 one wasn’t so bad as I believe the BBC only did two a year (I have the season preview one, and there’s no indication in there that they expected anyone to go out and buy any magazines from them mid-season. It’s probably fairer to think of it as the paperback (or “bookazine”, as I believe is the fashionable term now) version of the ITV “Grand Prix [insert year here]“, which was £10 in 2002 (the only edition I own), rather than comparing to a monthly magazine like F1 Racing.

My access to old magazines in the late 90s was almost non-existent. This shows because although I have several F1 books from the time, the only magazine I own from the 1990s apart from the BBC 1996 preview is “Formula 1 – 50 Golden Years III”, which came out at the end of 1999 and was a retrospective. It was interesting at the time and provided me with some interesting information that was still useful to me when I started participating in a F1 forum at the end of 2003. However, a lot of the material dated surprisingly quickly for a retrospective.

I’ve still got my F1 Racing Greens, a Toyota “One Aim”, a F1 Racing retrospective insert, a Lewis Hamilton special, two copies of the same issue of Red Bulletin and an A1GP CD from F1 Racing and Autosport freebies. I think the “One Aim” was the only one of those I didn’t manage to finish (which tells you how boring it was!)

I don’t have any GPX, but I do have an issue of Top F1. To the best of my knowledge, it’s the only issue they ever did because my newsagent didn’t stock it before or after that issue. My guess is that doing a sub-50-page issue for £3.50 in 2006 probably wasn’t the greatest of business models…

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:55:36 +0000

Stuart C, thanks for the comment. I did think that about the internet while I was writing this post. I bet most of the budgets that went into making these magazines would nowadays go towards making good web content, videos, podcasts and the like. I guess if nothing else it saves on a lot of dead trees.

There would be a downside to that though. Stuff like this on the internet often tends to get deleted rather than archived, so it will be more difficult to delve into the time capsule.

By: Stuart C

Stuart C — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:21:05 +0000

Hello. Fascinating saunter down memory lane – I remember the production of the first 8 or so of these and worked on One Aim for two years. It was a massive project – published in 8 languages, with the occasional one-off in Hungarian, Turkish and Arabic.

Magazines are quite expensive to produce nowadays, owing to the mounting cost of paper and distribution, and as you can imagine F1 magazines cost a fair bit more because you have to spend quite a lot on travel.

The rise of the internet means that it’s often more cost-effective for customer titles to be published on-line. My colleagues in our US office produce a very good digital magazine on behalf of the IRL which is free for anyone to view.

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:45:35 +0000

Yeah I remember GPX and I did have one issue of it – I wonder if it’s still buried somewhere back home? I never new they only made it as far as their fourth issue but I’m not surprised it was pretty poor! I’ll have to have a rummage through my old boxes of stuff sometimes and see if I can find anything unusual.

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:24:04 +0000

Sidepodcast — The irony is that I don’t think I was very interested in most of these. I certainly read the ones I bought — BBC and F1 News. But the ones that came free with F1 Racing, I probably just flicked through them and just put them away almost immediately. Although I definitely read the Stewart Ford one at the time.

I think it’s more interesting looking back at these rather than reading them at the time. It’s like a time capsule, seeing the predictions that went wrong and stuff like that.

By: sidepodcast

sidepodcast — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:20:58 +0000

just have to add, i really, really enjoyed this look back. poptastic.

sadly i own none of the above, or anything similar. i think i must’ve been a “sit on the floor in smiths and read it for free” kinda chap. i might be regretting that now.

By: doctorvee

doctorvee — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:55:42 +0000

I’ve just noticed that Grand Prix 96 was £3.50! I think that’s quite a lot even if you don’t take inflation into account. At the moment F1 Racing is £4.20.

By: Ollie

Ollie — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:48:03 +0000

Now that brought back a few memories. In particular, F1 News, which as young lad, I’d buy instead of Autosport (my hatred started at a young age, although I still bought the weekly standard once every month or so).

It’s interesting that after all this time, only a few publications from the late-nineties made it big, whereas many were left behind to wither and be discontinued.

The crazy thing about all this: I remember nearly all mentioned in the article, with one exception: GPX. It never crossed my path and I have no recollection of it. I don’t think I missed much, but I do feel left out.