Brad Spurgeon

Brad Spurgeon has covered Formula 1 for the International Herald Tribune since 1993, and for The New York Times since 1999. His passion began when as a child of 9 he attended the first Canadian Grand Prix, at Mosport in 1967.

Brad's passion grew as he absorbed European racing culture firsthand after moving to France in 1983, where he made driving go-karts and other racing machines a weekend hobby. During the racing season, Brad travels to most of the Formula 1 races as a journalist, having attended all of the European races for the last decade, as well as many of the fly-away races such as China, Japan, Malaysia and Bahrain. Formula 1 is about much more than what happens on the track, so Brad's broad journalistic background of over 25 years of writing on a variety of related subjects, from technology to business to entertainment, informs his F1 reporting. In 2006 at the IHT he created the first Formula 1 blog by a regular F1 reporter. He has made frequent TV appearances as an F1 expert, on Eurosport, CNN, Al-Jazeera and L'Equipe TV.

Brad's first career choice was in entertainment, for which he took a diploma in broadcasting from the National Institute of Broadcasting in Canada. After a three-year career in show business he shifted his focus to writing, taking a degree in English and Literary Studies at the University of Toronto, and then studying French at the Sorbonne in Paris. This allowed him to communicate perfectly in two of the F1 paddock's four most commonly used languages of English, French, German and Italian.

When I ran away from home at 18 to join a traveling circus, it did not take long to decide it was not the life for me. Years later, however, while firmly established as a Formula 1 reporter, I realized that I had come full-circle: For it is as a circus that Formula 1 people refer to their traveling road show, with its motor homes, paddock and daring acrobat drivers. But it was certainly the competitive, business and technological elements of the sport and the pursuit of perfection that made racing the lifelong passion for me that it has remained.