The Sports Bookshelf

BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2012 Books about Porsches, E-type Jaguars and Audis and the McLaren racing team are on the shortlist for the new Motorsports Book of the Year category of the British Sports Book Awards 2012.  Today The Sports Bookshelf outlines the six shortlisted titles as the build-up to the announcement of the winners in all categories continues. These will be revealed at a black tie dinner at The Savoy Hotel in London next Monday, May 21, when Nick Hornby will also be presented with an award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Sports Writing’ some 20 years on from the publication of ‘Fever Pitch’. The winners from the 10 categories will then be entered into an online public vote to find the overall British Sports Book of the Year . Each winning title will be promoted in a media and retail campaign in the run-up to Father’s Day. The public vote will held on the official website – www.britishsportsbookawards.co.uk – the overall winner will be announced on June 11.

Sebastian Vettel’s timing could not have been better.  With the Formula One drivers’ championship still open to four contenders as the cars lined up on the grid for the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi, Vettel produced the perfect drive at the perfect moment. With pre-race points leader Fernando Alonso unable to finish in the first four, which would have denied Vettel the title, the 23-year-old German became the youngest F1 champion, his victory putting him in front for the only time in the championship. By consensus, he drove a superb race.  But did he find himself in the zone?  It is not a phrase often recognised as carrying profound meaning.  Indeed, in most sports it would convey nothing more than a sense of focus or concentration, a basic prerequisite to success. In motor racing, however, to be in the zone is to reach an almost mystical place, or a state of mind in any event, in which the driver and car effectively become one entity, the occupant of the cockpit as m

Tom Bower, famous for unearthing dark secrets in the corridors of politics and business, is turning his attention to sport for the second time in his career. The renowned investigative journalist, who won a William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for Broken Dreams , his study of corruption in football, has been working on an authorised biography of Formula One motor racing supremo Bernie Ecclestone. The UK and Commonwealth rights to No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone have been bought by Faber , who plan to publish in March 2011 to coincide with the start of the 2011 F1 season. Bower, 64, has earned a fearsome reputation for doggedly uncovering every aspect of his subjects’ lives, favourable or otherwise. He focused his attentions on spies and Nazis in the early part of his literary career before finding fame with his exposé of Robert Maxwell, the now disgraced and deceased former owner of the Daily Mirror. He went on to get his teeth into former Lonhro businessman Ti