With Flying Colours - The Pirelli Album Of Motor Sport

Welcome to With Flying Colours: The Pirelli Album of Motor Sport (1987) by L. J. K. Setright, Derek Forsyth, and Robert Newman — a book that sounds like a polite scrapbook and then immediately reveals itself as a full-throttle celebration of speed, glamour, danger, and the single greatest truth in motorsport: if you can’t win, at least look magnificent while trying.

Because this is the Pirelli Album, and that means two things. First: it’s drenched in the era’s visual drama — big colour photography, bold design, and that late-80s confidence that everything important should be shiny, loud, and heroically framed. Second: it’s a love letter to the wider world of racing, not just lap charts and statistics, but the whole rolling theatre: machines, personalities, circuits, crowds, and the quietly terrifying reality that motorsport is a sport where your hobbies can catch fire.

Setright brings the brainy, beautifully opinionated voice — the kind that can make tyres sound philosophical and aerodynamics feel like fate. The photography and presentation do the rest: you’ll get the sense of the paddock as a travelling circus of competence, ego, and obsessive detail. It’s not merely “cars going round.” It’s engineering as performance art, and performance art as a reason to invent new forms of engineering.

Expect a broad sweep of motor sport: different disciplines, different machines, different kinds of madness. The book is likely to bounce between the grand and the gritty — glamorous world-class events on one page, then something slightly rougher and more heroic on the next. The “album” format gives it that delicious browseability: open anywhere, get hit with a scene, a moment, a colour-soaked memory of an era when sponsorship logos were basically part of the car’s personality.

And yes, there’s something wonderfully ironic about a Pirelli-branded book celebrating motorsport “with flying colours” — because tyres are the quiet, black, unglamorous heroes that make the whole show possible, while everyone else gets the champagne. This book is the tyre company saying, very calmly: You’re welcome. Also, look at these photos.

Condition: Good, meaning it’s been enjoyed — handled, looked through, possibly used as a coffee-table magnet for anyone who can’t resist a great racing shot. It may show a bit of honest wear, but it’s still doing what it was made to do: deliver gorgeous, high-energy motor sport nostalgia with enough text to make you feel informed while you’re admiring the visuals.

Perfect for:

• motorsport fans who like their history in colour,

• collectors of glossy racing books and sponsor-era aesthetics,

• anyone who enjoys Setright’s particular blend of insight and attitude,

• and readers who believe that a racing car should be both fast and photogenic.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, naturally — because where else would a big, colourful 1987 motorsport album end up, if not waiting for the next person to flip it open “just for a look” and immediately fall into a happy spiral of tyres, triumphs, and beautifully framed risk.

Keep browsing: See more Transport books Other books by LJK Setright - Derek Forsyth and Robert Newman