Customer Reviews

Inside Racing: A Season with the PacWest CART Indy Car Team

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been involved in motorsports for over 10 years, on a pit crew and with a major supplier. It was always amazing to me that many crews members, drivers and sponsors really did not know what it was really like until they were heavily involved in the sport. That has changed with Paul's book. It is very informative for both the casual Indycar fan, and for those who are already in the sport. Many of us on the "inside" of the sport are not able to hear what the engineers/drivers/crew are saying during the course of a race weekend, and especially private testing days. Paul has taken the reader literally behind the "closed doors" of a major Indycar team. If you have ever wondered how a team gets a sponsor, or how they make the car go faster, or what the team does when they leave the track for the day, then Paul will tell you. It is told in a matter-of-fact and easy to follow way, that will keep you interested throughout. I recommend it for the race fan and team member alike! I can't wait for another book by Paul!

Paul arranged the year we'd all love to have: traveling with a top-line CART team and listening in to all their radio traffic on race weekends. He combines a talent for explaining technical issues with painstaking note-taking (the part of the year we didn't have to worry about) and presents it all with a fresh, self-effacing style.

The bulk of the book is Paul's description of how engineers and drivers set up the PacWest cars. We can listen in as they drift in and out of the right setup, struggling to find the right combination in this hugely competitive racing series.

Buy it if you're fascinated by the technical part of Champ Car racing. Stay away if you're looking for brisk narrative about people or a tight dramatic structure. This is hardcore racing.

This is the book I've always wanted to read. I've been a fan of auto racing for many years, but no book has ever given a real "behind the scenes" look at what goes on in a top line race team. Haney's style is very readable and gives a good honest potrayal of all the key members of the race team. None better!

I chose a group of books for researh for starting a race team, this was one... If you want detail, this has it, but let me warn... I feel there is too much time spent on the driver/crew chief talks during warm-up/qualifying/race. If you want to learn what goes on between the two this book is for you. The nitty gritty detail of a year in racing is, in my opinion, a bit lacking, but the detail of what goes on between the driver and crew chief is terrific. Haney gets a bit lenghty in the middle races of the season, he found a tape recorder, but rounds out the book back on the brief... while I enjoyed reading the details of weight jacking and spring adjustments, I found too much "car adjustment" detail and not enough "a year in the life of..." details.

This book delivers exactly what the subtitle promises - unfortunately. It is the result of a great deal of time and effort from a competent writer. It provides insights into the staffing and operation of a racing team that I haven't found anywhere else but keeping a reader's interest through a 17 race season is a difficult assignment.

Dedicated fans may love it but it was too much detail for a casual fan like me.

I ordered this book to educate myself in a sport that I recently found exciting. It was the perfect fit! It was a diary of a complete season with Pacwest Racing Team; from the development of the team, search for sponsors, the day by day regime thru to winning. I knew I loved to watch Indy / Open Wheel racing, but really wanted a source to educate myself on the specifics of the team members and everyones roles, to car specifics and terms, and what it is all about to race in this sport. I found it to be quite informative, a little tedious at times due to the detail, but extremely helpful. I even re-read and used the book as a dictionary of Indy Racing terms, due to my growing knowledge as the book progressed.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants an indepth /behind the scenes feel for what Indy Racing is about!

About a year or more ago, I started to take a serious interest in what is now called the FedEx CART series for single-seat mid-engine car - the type formerly know as Indy Cars until there were legal complications withy using the phrase - and I bought a book called Indy Car Champion about the '96 season in which Jimmy Vasser won the highly prestigious PPG Cup for the championship-winning driver in that series and it made a favorable impression on me. It was, in short, a nice little book. But therein lie the problem: its brevity and its inablilty to treat the subject matter in any detail. A highly inexcusable thing to have happen, since author Ned Wicker is an acknoledged expert on CART and the force behind Indy Car Racing magazine. Inside Racing has more than made up for that. What Paul Haney has done is taken the reader into the workings of the highly successful PacWest Racing Group and gone further behind the lines, as it were, than Wicker did with Jimmy Vasser's Target-Ganassi team and it more than shows. There is not only a good race-by-race breakdown of the '97 season, but almost a minute-by-minute treatment of an area of racing that seldom does the average fan get a chance to see. Haney's photographs, while only black-and-white, are highly complimentary to the text and show him to be as skilled with a camera as with a notebook. It has to be one of the best racing books I've ever read and one I'd never hesitate to recommend, and not just to a CART fan, but to a fan of any form of motorsports. James Brooks N. Wilkesboro NC