Sid Watkins’ Beyond the Limit Misses the Mark When It Comes to Formula One Memoirs

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m going to come right out and say it: Sid Watkins’ books are very tedious in my personal opinion. I’m not faulting the man himself, whose role in Formula One’s safety advancements is pretty damn incredible. I have massive respect for anyone who did their part to make sure drivers stopped dying. His writing style… leaves a lot to be desired. I’m a student in a creative writing graduate program. I spend my free time telling folks how I believe they can improve their work—it’s unavoidable when you sit down to read anything else.

Last summer I read Life at the Limit and enjoyed it, but I can’t say quite as much for Beyond the Limit. This book focuses on the safety changes that have been made since the release of Life at the Limit, starting in the late 90s and moving forward, followed by personal portraits of a laundry list of F1’s greatest drivers.

I think part of what threw me off here was the organization of the book itself. The years of 1996-1999 are covered in relatively sparse detail. They mainly consist of anecdotes, the things Professor Watkins remembers most vividly. But when we get to 2000, though, things change. We move from anecdotes to a race-by-race recount of the season, which feels like a pretty jarring swap when you move from the fast-paced previous seasons. And then, as mentioned before, the meat of the books is mostly just Watkins’ personal memories of individual drivers.