Best read in 2012

Supervan only gets to race veterans these days,
but it is still balls to the wall all the way.

They lived the petrolhead’s dream as an ego and alter ego; and to discover that these two are now working on another dream turned a titillating bio into something of a text book for me, the motoring hack at South Africa’s oldest daily newspaper.
For there’s a lot that needs fixing in all forms of car racing in SA, and SuperVan Sarel has a plan.
In his book, mild-as-milk Sarel van der Merwe tells how he and his wild-as-brandy alter ego, “SuperVan”, were really two very good racers in one body.
Each of the 256 pages, written by Steven Smith and published by Zebra press, is honest and interesting, especially his advice to professional sportsmen who today complain about jetlag and home advantages: “Grow a pair,” says alter ego SuperVan.
At which point gentleman Sarel steps in to point out that the sports fields are the same sizes everywhere, and that these young athletes should try flying between the U.S., SA and Europe for 45 weeks a year, (en route renewing a membership to a certain elite club), to step off the plane, strap into a super car and then race at night on unfamiliar courses at speeds that taunted death over each blind rise. In more than one race, he saw his competitors crash out. Permanently.
That was how both Sarel and SuperVan lived, and still long to.