The 2002 F1 annual will be familiar to you if you already have read or leafed through the 2001 annual as the lay out and format is the same as the previous edition. It also is just as comprehensive with seperate chapters for the drivers, teams and races. The drivers each get a least two pages, summarising their season, results and perceived failures. The team summary, covering both drivers, team personnel and commercial activities also includes race by race summaries including practice and qualifying, so the reader obtains a much more complete overview of the race weekend for any particular team, and this is one area where the F1 Annual is clearly superior to the Hazelton Autocourse series.
In a double dose of information since you get a team summary of each race in the teams chapter, there is also a chapter relating to the overall picture of each race of the season, including what I think are quite nice circuit graphics. Also covered in this annual is race by race technical profiles of changes to the cars at each race, including drawings by Giorgio Piola, another clear advantage over Autocourse. The last chapter is a results section, giving the race results for every Grand Prix since 1950. Also included, unusually I think for an annual, is an index.
On the downside, the photography at times is not the best. I'm not sure, but I think some of the images are screen captures from the Digital TV feed. The picture quality, or lack of it, is further amplified by the paper itself, which is quite lightweight. Having said that, if the paper was of a heavier bond, the book would weigh more than its already considerable weight! While the results from 1950 onwards is nice to have, I wonder whether it is really necessary. If the producers of F1 Annual choose to keep with the Statistics section, then I would think having some further stats relating to drivers and teams, most GPs, most wins & poles etc... would add to the merit of this section. I have also noticed a number of typo errors, which for the amount of money invested into this book is unacceptable, but this is also something the producers of Autocourse are guilty of.
Overall, despite the deficiencies in the book, this is a throughly comprehensive review of the 2002 season, and is probably much more laden with the info that the F1 "anoraks" like myself like to see than Autocourse is likely to give.
