THE BOOKSELLER OF MONZA

A few years ago, at the Italian GP, I wrote this column for Autosport Magazine. Not much has changed since at Sgr Mario Acquati's Monza bookshop, Liberia Autodromo, but its days appear to be numbered Sgr Mario Acquati, owner of Monza's fabled Liberia Autodromo MARIO Acquati sits opposite, white-haired, time to spare, with large glasses and a crisp-ironed blue check shirt. He’s more Italian than a double espresso in Piazza San Marco over a copy of La Gazzetta dello Sport and seems infused with a spirit of the place that has shaped his existence since 1965. That place is Monza, the Milanese temple of speed that has hosted the Italian Grand Prix for the past 55 years (with only one interruption, in 1980). Myth intertwines with reality here. A sense of times past – sepia-tint images of lost years – informs every square metre of the circuit’s environs, from the largely intact old concrete banking that once tested drivers’ bravery beyond known limits, to the small memorial to marshal Paulo Ghislimberti, killed by flying debris after a second-chicane accident in the 2000 GP.Sgr Acquati has seen it all from his patch of Monza turf. He has had a shop at the track for 40 years, which, over those four decades has developed into a shrine for any fan with a feel for the romance of the sport. What started out as a tiny business selling Momo steering wheels on race weekends became a flourishing book and memorabilia store, specialising in the rare and obscure. Liberia Autodromo is a treasure trove of literary gems On any Monza grand prix weekend a steady stream of visitors can be seen to pop in, “just for a look”. Journalists are the most common breed (Autosport’s own Nigel Roebuck is one of Sgr Acquati’s most loyal customers), but sit and watch long enough and you’ll see team managers, mechanics, marketing types, PRs, even the occasional driver walking furtively from paddock gate to shop entrance to dig out some rare treasure. They might be after the newly-published biography of Jacques Laffitte, or maybe an historic Italian GP programme – the shop holds a copy of every one printed since 1922. Sgr Acquati takes one from a box in his office. It’s from 1934, fascist-era Italy, and is graced by a full-page picture of Mussolini on the inside cover. Particularly minted customers might want to enter into negotiations with Sgr Acquati over what he estimates to be his most valuable single item – a copy of the Ferrari yearbook from 1948, its first year of publication. Yours for £10,000. It’s an eye-watering fee for what’s little more than a magazine, but there are a number of Acquati loyalists who wouldn’t blink at the price. “Several of my customers are extremely wealthy collectors who have collections of Bugattis and Ferraris," he says. "They don’t worry too much about this sort of cost.” Sgr Acquati might be fully au fait these days with the numbers, but like any salesman, he had to learn the hard way about the value of his goods. Kiwi journalist and memorabilia trader Eoin Young gave the first lesson. “He came in on the first day we were open,” Mario recalls, “and he picked up a small book about Lorenzo Bandini. He asked me how much it cost. I think it was 500 Lira, you know 25 pence or something. So he asked me if he could have 20 copies – for a discount, of course! So I sold him 20 for 400 Lira. Three weeks later I was given a catalogue by a friend and I saw he had put the books on sale for £14 each!" But there’s another item he might be less keen to part with. He pulls a green hardback book from a shelf – blows off the dust – and opens it. It’s a copy of ‘12,000 Giri’ (‘12,000 Laps’) by Franco Lini – a record of the 1972 F1 season. It recounts the year team by team and driver by driver, all but a few of whom have signed their entry: Jacky Ickx, Clay Regazzoni and Mario Andretti for Ferrari; Ronnie Peterson and Niki Lauda for March… it goes on. In Marco’s hands, as he turns the pages and recounts how he went to seek out the autographs more than 30 years ago, the book becomes living history, bringing back for a moment so many of those who have died: Graham Hill, Peterson, Denny Hulme, Peter Revson, Ken Tyrrell.He snaps shut the pages and the moment’s gone, as the moment will go soon, also, for Sgr Acquati’s bookshop. Rising rents and a dwindling customer base have pushed him to call time and he will close the doors after next year’s Italian GP. He’ll continue to buy and sell on the internet but the magic of his esoteric emporium will be gone for good. “It will be very sad”, he reflects, “very sad. But young people just don’t want to read any more.” One of the many rare finds at Liberia Autodromo POST-SCRIPT Despite his predictions, Sgr Acquati has continued to ply his unique trade since I wrote this column in 2005. This year, however, really could be the last time F1's travelling circus gets to visit Liberia Autodromo. After the death of his wife, earlier this year, Mario says he no longer has sufficient desire to continue the business. If it closes, so, too, will a small, but significant, chapter of Monza history.

NOTES FROM MONACO

Nothing does glam like the Monaco GP

Sometimes things just won't go to plan. My interview slot with Lewis Hamilton over the Monaco GP weekend was one such. A little background will provide some context.

For the next issue of F1 Racing magazine, our July British GP preview issue, we'd been discussing with Mercedes, for some time, a particular Lewis Hamilton story. For a number of reasons, it failed to come together in time for our deadlines, so an alternative plan was hatched.

When you buy the July mag, this is the Lewis story you'll see (God willing, as we haven't yet closed the issue).  It's one of our trademark You Ask The Questions interviews, for which Lewis was on excellent, entertaining, fully engaged form (life is so much easier when drivers play ball). All well and good then? Well yes, but...

Consider that in order to get to Monaco I'd driven south from the UK with F1R publishing director Ian Burrows (@ipburrows) as my co-pilot. [There aren't many people, incidentally, with whom I'd happily share a 14-hour car trip with breaks only for fuel refills, but a caffeine-powered IPB was great company from lights to flag.] With that logistical hurdle cleared, the prospect of a short daily rail trip into Monte Carlo from my hotel in Beaulieu-sur-mer seemed a mere fig. As, indeed, it was... Apart, of course, from the day on which I needed to interview Lewis, Friday.

Things began well enough, with a 2-minute stroll to the station for a 1230 train. With the journey taking only 12 minutes and the walk from station to paddock only another 10 I was relaxed and in good time... Or so I thought.

My train, of course, 'went technical', delaying its arrival. 'Une heure en retard' are not the words you want to read when you're expecting a total journey time of vingt minutes.

So, now decidedly agitated, I hot-footed to the cab rank for a coastal drive to Monaco which, on any other day, would have been dreamily serene, but on this day proved excruciating. 

"Plus vite, Madame…"Gallic shrugs and smiles from behind the steering wheel. This journey would proceed at Côte d'Azur speed, not F1 panic pace.

"Vouz prenez la carte?" This bit she understood. "No, cash only". My 30 Euros of folding were only half what Madame Taxi would require. So began a (slow) search for a cashpoint, all the while with the clock ticking towards my allotted Hamilton 20 minutes and with Monaco traffic miring progress still further.

Enough! Would she, I demanded, take my £20 note as well as the €30? A quick haggle ensued and we established to Madame's satisfaction that a British 20 would be near enough to the French 30 she'd had in mind, for her to allow my release. This, for a journey of less than 10 miles.

But still the agony wouldn't end. Only half a mile from paddock sanctuary, but still a race weekend throng to negotiate. Nothing for it but to tighten the straps on the backpack and run. It's moments like these that remind why I generally wear trainers on F1 weekends and carry a backpack that'll stick. Why? Because sometimes you just gotta move!

This was one of those occasions and to any of the race-tripping Monaco weekenders I barged aside in my pell-mell dash for the Merc motorhome I can only apologise and offer the interview you'll read in next month's issue by way of recompense.

Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton being interviewed just before F1R's time slot

In the final reckoning I was 150 seconds behind schedule, which, under the circumstances, wasn't too heinous and anyway the ever-efficient Merc PR duo of Bradley Lord and Nicola Armstrong had shuffled two media commitments to allow F1R's to go ahead seamlessly, brows having duly been mopped.

And that's how it was. We're taught from day one of our journo education – quite rightly – about the craft and love and care that must always go into the creation of a monthly magazine. And, by golly, they do. But still, sometimes, there's nothing for it but to pull every trick in the book and pray that it all comes together.

Photographer Andrew Ferraro, whose work regularly graces the pages of F1 Racing magazine

FACETIME

I promise to get up to speed with my blogging, but as I'm new to this (post #2), I'm still a day late (and, I guess, a dollar short). So I'm going to write about yesterday, Tuesday March 28.
It was fun for a number of reasons, but the bits I most enjoyed were two web TV guest spots.
The first of these was on Sky F1 HD's Midweek Report, hosted by the excellent Anna Woolhouse (@woolyanna). I was invited on the show to speak about matters of F1 moment alongside Adam Parr (@adam_s_parr), familiar to most, I expect, as the former Williams F1 CEO. More on Mr Parr anon, but before that, I have to mention that Anna has a remarkably firm handshake. There's no "for a girl" caveat necessary here: she really grabs your mitt pretty firmly by way of greeting and I can't remember being so taken with someone's grip 'n' grin since rally legend Markku Alen shook my paw in the Imola paddock a few years back.
That particular handshake is the single most memorable of my life to date, for Markku squeezed my mitt so hard, he literally made my knuckles pop – BANG! I can feel it now. In a world where 'smile, shake, chew the fat, move on' is the norm, Mr Alen seriously got my attention. Not enough, evidently, to be a man of mighty deeds back in the Group B rally era. If you are one of the original Flying Finns, you have to 'shake 'n' break, baby'.
It's not that unusual to encounter some serious palm squeezing over a race weekend. Nigel Mansell is another who likes to emphasise his machismo by crushing digits; Mark Webber is his modern-day equal. So, @woolyanna, I salute you for joining my small but glorious club of memorable hand-shakers. Next time I'll know what to expect…
 

   Anna Woolhouse, Adam Parr & @Rowlinson_F1R in the Sky F1 HD Midweek Report studios

So what of Adam Parr, I hear you ask. Well, I'm pleased to report that this feisty former Williams team boss remains on robust good form and is exceedingly well informed on all topics relating to the sport. That much you might expect from an individual who has fought a team's corner in such a relentlessly competitive arena.What you perhaps wouldn't anticipate is how hotly opinionated Adam remains about current controversies. Sadly those opinions must remain off the record, but for the record I'd like to state that his acute mind and nonconformist thought processes are a loss to the F1 paddock. He maintains that while Bernie Ecclestone remains in charge of F1, it would be impossible for him to return to the sport. But I'll wager he'll be back one of these days…

Web TV moment number two came later in the day, back at F1 Racing's Teddington HQ, where I chewed the fat with my esteemed colleague Peter Windsor. For anyone familiar with F1 Racing since its 1996 launch, Peter needs no introduction. He's our controversial, lucid, laser-insightful star columnist and long may he so remain. These days he's also engaged with hosting his own, self-started web TV show, The Racer's Edge (formerly known as The Flying Lap). F1R is delighted to have been able to assist PW with his endeavours to popularise his terrific (free!) webcast and I can do no more than commend it to your attention: search for 'The Racer's Edge' on YouTube or download both video and audio podcasts every week from iTunes. Once you've subscribed I can guarantee you'll feel 'under-knowledged' without it.
Peter, I should add, also wears some truly outstanding shirts on the show, from time to time, in true Forrest Gump fashion: you never know what you're going to get…

A sober-shirted F1 Racing star columnist and TRE host, Peter D Windsor

     

RIDE ON

One way or another, a lot of my life revolves around wheels.
I write about Formula 1 for a living (day job: editor of F1 Racing magazine); I spend as much of my spare time as possible riding a bike. And thanks to both these things (plus the fact that I commute to and from my office, in Teddington, Middlesex), I spend a lot of time on the road.
Not particularly glamorous roads, mind you. Not Route 66, nor the Pacific Ocean Highway. More like the A23, then the M25 in rush hour.
But there are highlights. My trip to the Australian GP in 2008 included a drive along the Great Ocean Road, from Adelaide to Melbourne, with friend and fellow F1 scribe Matt Youson. And only last week I took in a round-trip to Monaco for the Grand Prix (just under 2000 miles averaging 17.5mpg in a 5.0-litre Infiniti FX 50S – a petrol V8 beast that was built for the Autoroute/Autobahn/Autovia and is a quite marvellous machine so long as someone else is picking up the tab [thanks, Infiniti]).

It's moments like these that I'll be sharing on this blog as and when the mood takes me.
Don't expect a definitive account of Formula 1 goings-on here – you can find a closer approximation to that particular aspiration in F1 Racing (@F1Racing_mag). Here, instead, I hope to be able to provide  some of the 'off-cuts': the stuff that ends up on the cutting-room floor because, sadly, 132 pages per month sometimes just ain't enough.
There will also be bike talk, oh yes, because I do like bicycles. By way of example, my non-paddock highlight of the Monaco race weekend wasn't the epic bash thrown by Force India on Vijay Mallya's yacht, The Indian Empress. I didn't go to that (I'd rather die, tbh). But what I did do was take a spin up the Col de la Madone, just north of Menton in the Alpes-Maritimes.
Readers with an inclination towards road cycling will recognise the CdM as a classic Tour climb – not an epic, such as the Alpe d' Huez, the Mont Ventoux or the Col du Tourmalet, but still a lung-stretching 970m grind up from the Med, rewarded by a descent through La Turbie to the sea quite breathtaking in its speed and beauty.
Even writing about it is making me ache for a return; the spin made me realise why so many of the current F1 posse are such keen cyclists. If you lived in Monaco (as so many of them do), why wouldn't you get out and ride? The roads, the climbs, the scenery… all sublime.
I hope you find something to interest and entertain here. Through highs and lows, on track, in the paddock and beyond, the F1 life is quite a ride.