The Genesis of the Red Books Project
Motor Racing Guide Publishing is an independent publishing house based in Marseille, France, born from a lifelong passion for motorsport and a simple observation: much of racing history now exists as digital data — scattered, constantly updated, sometimes difficult to retrieve, and ultimately fragile.
The Red Books project is the result of more than twenty years spent collecting, organising and structuring motorsport data. Its purpose is to transform this digital archive into physical books, designed to be consulted, preserved and passed on.
A Passion That Began in 1982
It all began in 1982. At the age of eleven, I discovered Formula 1 through the San Marino Grand Prix and the fierce battle between Ferrari teammates Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi. A few weeks later, Villeneuve was killed at Zolder. Pironi would then suffer a serious accident that brought his Formula 1 career to an abrupt end.
That period left a lasting mark on my relationship with motorsport. Over the years, a passion for racing gradually became a desire to understand, document and preserve its history.
I began collecting information and organising it into databases. Since 2000, this work has progressively developed into a personal archive covering numerous disciplines: Formula 1, IndyCar, Champ Car, endurance racing, Formula E, MotoGP and various junior and development categories.
From Passion to Professional Standards
My professional career has been built around two worlds: motorsport and web development.
Between 2011 and 2013, my work as a webmaster at ORECA gave me the opportunity to contribute to projects involving Toyota Hybrid at Le Mans, Sébastien Loeb Racing, GT Tour and the French SEAT Championship. This experience introduced me to the standards demanded by professional motorsport: accuracy, technical rigour and reliable information.
At the same time, I have worked in web development since 1998, progressively specialising in WordPress and in the creation of systems capable of structuring and managing large volumes of data.
This combination of experience led to the idea of becoming a publisher-developer: not simply producing books, but designing the tools and systems required to build and maintain a consistent documentary collection.
The Transition: The Book as a Lasting Archive
For more than twenty-five years, my daily life revolved around code and the digital world. I built virtual structures, websites and platforms designed, by their very nature, to evolve or eventually disappear. The web is a continuous flow, but it remains fragile and impermanent.
In April 2026, following a French employment protection plan (PSE), I felt a strong need to turn the ephemeral into something tangible.
I no longer wanted my archives, patiently accumulated and structured since 2000 in my personal databases, to remain trapped on a server.
I chose to move from the digital flow to something that can be owned, touched and preserved: paper, ink, the feel of a page, a book that can be opened years from now and passed on.
Creating these books is my way of giving lasting form to all this work and leaving a trace.
This transition from the digital world to the physical book is at the heart of Red Books.
A Purpose-Built Publishing System
Red Books is also the result of an engineering project. A historical database built with Microsoft Access forms the core of the system. It contains the information collected, checked and structured over many years.
This database is connected to WooCommerce and to a production workflow developed specifically for the project. Creating a publication can therefore trigger the automated generation of its content, results tables, statistics and graphic elements.
This approach makes it possible to produce new publications efficiently while maintaining a consistent editorial structure and minimising the risks associated with manual data entry.
Red Books: Document, Don’t Comment
The Red Books collection puts facts before opinion and documentation before media noise.
The books are deliberately understated, with a visual identity inspired by technical publications from the early twentieth century. The A4 format, typography and layout have been designed to give the books a timeless appearance while making them easy to consult.
The Red Books collection is organised into five categories, each offering a different way to explore, follow or preserve the history of motorsport:
- Agendas — everyday companions combining personal organisation with immersion in the racing season, including official calendars, schedules, major events, driver birthdays and historical milestones.
- Guides — season companions published before competition begins, introducing championships, teams, drivers, circuits and key events to help readers prepare for and follow the season.
- Indexes — reference publications dedicated to the drivers and data that have shaped motorsport history, bringing together careers, entries, results and major milestones.
- Reviews — publications focused on a specific season and placed within the broader history of its championship, bringing together results, statistics, circuits, drivers, teams and key race events.
- Yearbooks — reference publications offering a broader view of motorsport history, bringing together champions, winners and results across different eras, from 1894 onwards.
Each category has its own purpose, but all share the same goal: to organise the data, preserve the history and create books that can be consulted, collected and kept.
A Memory Built to Last
Motor Racing Guide Publishing was not created simply to publish books about motorsport. It is the result of a personal, professional and technological journey that began several decades ago.
Red Books brings together that passion, those archives and the skills required to transform them into physical objects.
Digital preserves the data. Books preserve the memory.
