The problem with any book will always be that the moment it's published it's sitting there waiting to be criticised and there is nothing the author can do except, if the book sells well enough, make corrections in future editions. At least with a website any mistakes can be corrected almost immediately.
I know from bitter experience with both this site and my F3 History site how easy it is to get things wrong. I pride myself that most of my mistakes are made in good faith in as much that I have got my information from a reputable source e.g. Autosport, Motorsport or a book with a reliable author e.g. Doug Nye, Mike Lawrence etc. However if theses sources have it wrong then I happily compound the mistake by repeating it again.
However I have made several mistakes due to my own incompetence on both sites but luckily people have very kindly pointed out my cock-ups and I have been able to correct them. For example I tied myself up in knots when writing about the F1 Lola Mk4 as I got hopelessly muddled about the relationship between Yeoman Credit and Bowmaker Finance (in my defence it was all a few years before I became a FI fan
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.) Fortunately two members of the Samengo-Turner family took the time to explain it all to me in detail so that I was able to put it all right, something I couldn't have done with a book.
In John Starkey's defence, (although since he's a member of this Forum, I'm sure he's quite capable of speaking up for himself!), I don't think he had any special access to the Lola Records other than perhaps having a copy of some of the Lola chassis logs. Not that it would have helped him much more if he had I think.
I've currently gone through about 75% of the Archives and trust me they are a long way from being perfect
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. For example many photographs are not identified and I've come across a depressing number that when they have got something written on the back it's wrong
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. As another example, in an album of photos a couple of pages apart there is are two identical photos of Mario Andretti in a CART Lola, each has a different chassis type on the back, I haven't checked to see which is correct, for all I know both may be wrong! Furthermore many chassis types don't appear in the Archive, many have almost nothing, it's rare for there to be a lot of detail for any type although I do turn up the odd gem
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.
I have to admit though that I do find it very surprising that, with Lola coming up to it's 50th Anniversary, that nobody has undertaken a full history of the company. Maybe if I have a few days spare sometime I'll write one, I'm sure you will all buy a copy
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.
Gerald (now dreaming of being a famous author)