We have seen some in depth, insightful biographies over the past few years, note Jenson Button’s Championship Year and the numerous Lewis Hamilton biographies. Now Sebastian Vettel has joined that club, with the Souvenir Press published “Meet Sebastian Vettel”.The book was written by Italian journalists Andrea Cremonesi and Marco Degl’Innocenti who released a biography of Vettel’s life in Italy.
Here is my review of the book.
The 2 time world champion has led an interesting life, from racing around his patio on a go kart to his legendary moustache at the 2011 Brazilian Grand Prix. This book contains a number of interviews, including an “exclusive” one with the man himself, quotes from some of F1’s top people and pictures galore.
The 142 page book does, unfortunatly for those of you wanting a long read, contain mainly pictures from his karting years to F1. The book begins with an interview, some strangely worded questions, but gives a better insight into Vettel’s interests and life. It then moves between some stories from his younger years, interviews with people who have helped him on the road to F1 and pictures. The overall set up and layout of the pages is perfectly ok, but could have been done with more attention to detail and been a bit bolder in colour and style.
The written segments at the beginning are in a jumbled order, but are interesting reads once you find them. It is difficult to follow the story as some of it is not in chronological order. The pictures are not in chronological order either, but they are of high quality with many being relatively unseen by the public eye.
They obviously had a lot of resources and contacts to gain such good images, and some of the facts they come out with are something you would not think they could get access to. What we do learn is a good deal about Sebastian and how his head works, how he progressed but it is not in any detail which some die hard F1 fans would prefere. I would not say the writing was vague of the story being told but more detail could have been put in.
The last few chapters are in order and take him through his F1 days. This part of the book is quite an improvement on the earlier chapters and is a lot easier to read and follow. It is still vague in detail but some key events and points are made. Now I am not one to critique writing because mine is not perfect either, but some sloppy translation mistakes have been made.
The ending interview between Vettel and Webber where they are asked the same questions is well set out, designed and done but some of the questions have extremely short answers and could show it has been done in a rush or they were uncomfortable with some of the questions.
Overall the book is picture filled, vaguely written but it has its strong points. The majority of the writing is well done and does what the aim is, to “Meet” Vettel in book form. The pictures and book are high quality and well printed but some layout designs and risks could have been taken. The interviews are good, a wide range of questions have been asked to help us get to know Sebastian.
I think if you are a die-hard Vettel fan this is one to add to the collection, if you are a die-hard F1 fan in general there could be more interesting and in depth books to read on the young German.
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