Okay, so it’s not from the vaults, it’s from my attic.
I just happened to mention in passing to “me” from Sidepodcast on Identica the short-lived F1 magazine GPX. He asked me to upload it so that he could see what it was like, so I took photos of the two issues of GPX I own and uploaded them to Sidepodcast’s Dropio. I hope the people at Haymarket don’t mind too much. But this is over ten years old and it obviously didn’t make them much money at the time, so…
If you’re interested, Issue #3 starts here, and you need to click the left arrow to go through the magazine. Issue #4 starts here.
Issue #4 was the final issue of GPX. Obviously Haymarket had high hopes for it, and I even remember seeing posters in the window of a WH Smith advertising it. The magazine totally tanked though.
Originally designed to be a “laddish” magazine, issue #4 shows some signs of desperation with features designed to appeal more to females, including the “Top 20 sexy F1 drivers of all time” and a “hunky” poster of Mika Salo. Stuart C from F1 Racing has a bit more on GPX over at Sidepodcast here and here.
In retrospect, GPX wasn’t a quality magazine. It did have some good gags in it though. I like ‘Brainstorming with the Prost team‘ and the joke about spelling out ‘Schumacher’ with beer cans made me chuckle at the time.
The magazine as a whole has slight shades of The Red Bulletin and Sniff Petrol. In fact, GPX might actually have had a chance if it was as consistently funny as Sniff Petrol…
While I was rummaging for those issues of GPX, I found some other interesting old F1 magazines and various other bits and pieces. Most of these almost certainly came free with F1 Racing. Click below to see what I found.
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