Customer Reviews

Bob Bondurant on High Performance Driving

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is full of photos of Bob sliding old cars around on the track, and posing with other great old drivers. Some of the anecdotes are real hooters. But it's skinny on the "how to" parts. There's a lot of discussion about setting up your seat and pedals for a comfortable and efficient driving position, but not much about the specifics of choosing a line for this corner, in this car, in this weather, today. Not much about footwork or other aspects of driving technique, not much about car set-up, and nearly nothing about the physics underlying it all. A few glancing blows at topics like contact patches, but disappointingly little.

Skip Barber's "Going Faster" is a better textbook, especially for someone like me, an engineer with an analytical mindset.

If you want a driving textbook, get Barber's. If you want driving stories, get Bondurant's.

I bought this book because I wanted to learn more about high performance driving without the cost of going to a school, but roughly half of this book is just advertisement of Bob's driving school in Southern California. For example, on controlling skids, he talks very little about how to get out of a skid and then he begins on how you can learn more if you come to his driving school because the school has such and such equipments. There's even an entire chapter dedicated to how to graduate from his driving school. He also seems to be obssessed with his past glory, which he doesn't mind spending time to talk about. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS PIECE OF GARBAGE.

If you want to read some poorly organized stories about Bob's
good old racing days, this might be the book for you. If you
want to learn to drive quickly, this book will disappoint you.

I found this book to be an excellent starting point for anyone interested in doing some Road-Racing. It teaches you proper lines, braking, posture, etc... However, if you have raced, or have taken part in a racing school, this book is basically a waste of time, unless you like reading about what a great driver Bob Bondurant was(or is). And trust me, the book tries to make him look like he's the best driver that ever lived.(Which we all know is Michael Schumacher). Anyways, the book is entertaing, yet I would not recommend it to the experienced road racer.

A primer on the dynamics of car control. This is simply the best book that I've read for translating racetrack skills to your every day street driving. Senna's book is excellent for race car and race track, but doesn't translate to the street as well as Bondurant's book. Drive to Win is also very good, but Bondurant does it best. A must for anyone who wants to improve their driving knowledge and skills.

If you're interested in learing to drive race cars, this book is a great place to start. It teaches you the basic skills such as proper seating and hand placement, heel toe downshifting, cornering and other fundamentals. There is, however, no substitute for actual hands-on training and wheel time, and the book emphasizes this. I did get the impression that this book was a 144 page plug for Bondurant and his school which is why I only gave it 4 stars. But overall, a very good book for beginners.

It has been a while since I read this book, but I disagree with those who only see it as a plug for Bondurant's racing school. This is a well-written explanation of vehicle dynamics, and contains a wealth of information that is useful in everyday driving. I have tried to apply what I learned from this book in various low-buck automotive sport competitions, and frankly I just don't have what it takes to excel in motorsports. I do appreciate, however, Bondurant's efforts to explain everything from seating position, to how to place your hand on the sift knob, to proper line through the corner to gain the fastest exit speed. I believe reading this book has been at least as much benefit to my every day driving skill as the mega-buck 3-day race car driving school I took a few years back.

I've read a lot of books about Performance driving/racing techniques lately and I have to say that this one pretty much ranks at the bottom.
It is a well written biography about Bondurants life (a whole chapter in the book, and intersperced throughout the text), but lacks on much useful information on driving and racing techniques. After reading a lot of other books on this topic I feel that this one is fairly light on actual information and driving techniques in comparison. It is more up to date though than some books written on this topic. I would probably recommend Carl Lopez'/Skip Barber's book "Going Faster" Or Piero Taruffi's book "The technique of Motor Racing(Driving)" and similar titles over Bondurant's book. It does make a quick read and an introduction to the sport though.

Shameless advertising of Driving School and associated sponsors/products, nowhere near enough focus on the art of car control. The content taught me nothing I didn't already know, and even that was in poor detail. The few images that are used as examples to explain various controls and actions where extremely dated and unclear. While any 'current' images would have to be straight out of a brochure for said driving school. A lot of Red Herrings that have little, if any, relevance to topic being discussed. Merely self promotion. There are many other publications that explore and explain performance driving much more clearly and concisely.

if u really want to start out on hi-per driving u must get this one above all!!!