BOOK REVIEW | Insightful look at inner workings of F1 pit lane

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F1 Insider: Notes from the pit lane

By Ted Kravitz

(Cassell Publishing)

With less than a month to go until the first Formula 1 race of the 2026 season, fans who are craving their fix of the action will love this insightful examination of the sport by well-known television pit lane analyst Ted Kravitz.

Before launching into the juicy stuff, Kravitz takes us along his journey into filling a role some of his colleagues have described as “a made-up job” because it didn’t exist before he started doing it.

Kravitz finds himself a spot somewhere in the pit lane during each race, qualifying session and preseason test, and provides the viewer with all the excitement that is happening among the team bosses, mechanics, and other pit lane dwellers, adding a level of knowledge that the main commentators who are observing the cars on track would not be able to provide.

He became obsessed with the sport as a child before even seeing his first race, gathering statistics from newspaper cuttings about each previous weekend’s Grand Prix.

He went into a career in journalism, and managed to find a way to push himself towards covering what was happening on the race track, and the rest is history.

Talking of history, Kravitz takes us through some of the most memorable moments of the sport for the past two decades ranging from fatal or near-fatal crashes, to spying scandals, “crashgate” (when Nelson Piquet Jr crashed on purpose to help Fernando Alonso win), and of course, the best on-track rivalries and personalities.

Ted Kravitz F1 Insider (book cover) (Supplied)

It is his insight into these personalities that makes the book a success.

His descriptions of learning from the ultimate mentor, Murray Walker, capture the humanity and humour of the sport’s most beloved commentator.

Other intriguing chapters deal with the rise of stars such as Max Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, while he also shares some opinions as to which of the new crop of young drivers could be the champions of the future.

The sport can be extremely technical, so an analysis of its inner workings has the potential to become quite boring, but Kravitz has a way of enlightening the reader while keeping his writing style light and easy to understand.

Before you head off to the races in Melbourne (from the comfort of your lounge chair) in the first weekend of March, first make a pit stop at your local bookstore to get all the inside information.

— This book is available from Exclusive Books for R485.