The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue with Paul Van Valkenburgh

The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue with Paul Van Valkenburgh is the classic account of racing car set up by one of its best practitioners. The book is massive coming in at over 150,000 words. It is really a technical treatise masquerading as a memoir. Donohue for example won the 1972 Indianapolis 500. There is only a few pages discussing the race more space is taken up with description of the car. Many of the technical innovations that Donohue and Roger Penske developed are still in use to this day. This was also the beginning of race teams as businesses there's an interesting discussion of the factory system and how well it worked or didn't. He really wasn't impressed with Ferrari for instance. Originally the print run in 1975 was very small but it was updated with some new material and republished in 2000.

If you have any interest in racing you must buy this book.

Highly recommended!

Is available through Abebooks.