Just two weeks after the last MotoGP race, the 12th edition of the Official MotoGP Season Review is now available. It is edited by BT Sport commentator Julian Ryder with contributions from some of the most respected journalists in the paddock. Mat Oxley, himself a TT winner, writes his compelling take on the season and technical guru Neil Spalding contributes analysis of the bikes.

There has never been a season quite like 2015. It had everything: Valentino Rossi at 36 years of age coming within one race of his tenth world championship title and sealing his legacy as the greatest ever seen; Marc Marquez struggling with recalcitrant machinery; Dani Pedrosa coming back from what looked like career-ending arm problems.

And it had Jorge Lorenzo. The Spaniard won his third MotoGP crown by winning decisively, leading each lap of each of his seven victories.

A unique feature of the Official MotoGP Season Review is Julian Ryder’s ‘Rider’s Rider of the Year’ in which the riders themselves vote for their top ten. Some years this produces surprising results and this happened in 2015 – the number one according to the riders’ votes isn’t the new world champion!

Just published, the sixth title in Evro’s decade-by-decade series covers the seven Le Mans 24 Hours races of the 1920s, plus, as a prologue, all the events held at the Le Mans circuit during the period 1906-23.This volume covers the exciting era in which Bentley came to the forefront, winning in 1924 with a sabotaged car, in 1927 with a damaged car, in 1928 with a broken car, and in 1929 with a car that set an entirely new standard for Le Mans racers. Woolf Barnato, the man whose wealth kept the company solvent, won twice, while Dudley Benjafield, ‘Tim’ Birkin, Frank Clement, Sammy Davis, John Duff and Bernard Rubin were the other ‘Bentley Boys’ who tasted success.

The victors in the other three years were French marques, Chenard-Walcker (in 1923) and Lorraine-Dietrich (in 1925 and 1926), and indeed French drivers and cars predominated in these early years, accounting for 220 of the 287 drivers and 38 of the 54 manufacturers that took part during the decade. Amazingly, only five of the competing manufacturers – Aston Martin, Bentley, Bugatti, Chrysler and Peugeot – still exist.

The 24-hour event conceived by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) was originally called the ‘Grand Prix de l’Endurance’ and run as an endurance trial for series-production cars rather than as a motor race. But the teams went racing anyway and the event quickly matured into a unique challenge that fostered many advances in automotive engineering and technology – just as it still does today.

Aerodynamic bodies, front-wheel drive, air-cooled engines and four-wheel hydraulic brakes were tried and proven at Le Mans in this decade. Such was the pace of change that the fastest average speed jumped from 57.21mph (92.06kph) in 1923 to 73.63mph (118.49kph) by 1929.

The rapid evolution of the cars is seen vividly in this book’s photographs, which also show year by year how the crowds grew, how the circuit infrastructure expanded and even how the track surfaces improved.

With the help of almost 500 evocative photographs, this book tells the remarkable story of the sudden fall and steady rise of the annual Le Mans 24 Hours between 1990 and 1999.

This historic race had been stronger than ever in 1988–89. Only three years later, its promoters found themselves with the smallest field for 60 years, and having to devise innovative methods to achieve a lasting recovery. The cause of this débâcle was the unwelcome introduction of an entirely new category that was simply too expensive for the professional sportscar racing community. When it failed, Le Mans was left high and dry – but not for long.

The 24 Hours is an exceptional event, with a unique status. The decade brought as much Le Mans fascination as ever: the last victory by TWR Jaguar, one of the outstanding competitors of the thriving Group C ‘fuel formula’ that had been so irresponsibly replaced; the only win by a rotary-engined car, from Mazda, which was also the first Japanese manufacturer to win; popular home wins by Peugeot with one of the most effective racing cars ever made; Porsche’s win after exploiting a loophole in the rules to present a racing car as a GT car, and then working with TWR to win in successive years with the very same prototype, and finally winning again with another controversial GT; successful Le Mans forays by the McLaren and Williams Formula 1 teams, both with BMW; and the persistent misfortune that thwarted three potential victories by Toyota.

Even before 1999, the race had recovered fully, and seven major manufacturers were again engaged. How was it done? That is a constant theme in this book, serving as explanation of the many brilliant engineering developments that were achieved during this decade, and as background to the individual stories of all the teams that took part. These 10 races were contested by 43 different marques that accounted for 445 starts – and every one is covered within these pages. Complete data for each year includes technical regulations, entry list, circuit changes (with diagram), lap chart, full results and category awards.

For the people who attempt this daunting challenge, requiring racing cars to cover more miles over a single weekend than an entire Grand Prix season, delight must go hand in hand with dismay. The Le Mans 24 Hours may have had a dramatic reversal at the start of the 1990s, but it remained the greatest race in the world.

Officially licensed with the ACO, the organisers of the annual Le Mans 24 Hours race, this sumptuous book is the fifth title in a decade-by-decade series that is building up into a multi-volume set covering every race since 1923. Each year is exhaustively covered in vivid photographs, many of which have never been seen before, plus a detailed and insightful commentary, full results data and a glorious rendering of the official race poster. Compiled by an acknowledged authority of this legendary race, this series of books will be treasured by all enthusiasts of sports car racing.

Published to mark the 50th anniversary of John Surtees becoming Formula 1 World Champion, in 1964, this long-awaited book is a photographic memoir by the only man to have won World Championships on motorcycles and in cars. Containing nearly 300 photographs from Surtees’ own collection as well as from the world’s finest motorsport picture libraries, this major book presents a complete visual record of Surtees’ life accompanied by insightful commentary in his own words and is written in collaboration with co-author Mike Nicks.

In motorcycle racing through the second half of the 1950s John Surtees was in a class of his own, winning seven World Championships on Italian MV Agusta motorcycles. Aged only 22, he became 500cc World Champion in 1956 and followed that with an incredible run of six titles – three each in the 350cc and 500cc categories – in the three years from 1958 to 1960.

In his extraordinary 1960 season he accepted an impossible challenge – to anyone but John Surtees – of competing in both motorcycle grands prix and Formula 1 cars. With MV Agusta he won seven of 12 races entered and took his last two world titles. In Formula 1 he did six races and finished second with a Lotus 18 in the British Grand Prix, only his second World Championship start.

As with bikes, by 1963 he was racing for an elite Italian team, Ferrari, in both sports cars and Formula 1. He won his very first race with Ferrari, the 1963 Sebring 12 Hours for sports cars, and in 1964 he became Formula 1 World Champion with a fine run of results as the season reached its climax – including forever winning the hearts of Italian fans with victory at Monza.

Ever versatile as a racer, in 1966 he bounced back after injury in a huge sports car crash to win the inaugural Can-Am series in North America, driving a Lola T70. Then Honda recruited him to its new Formula 1 team for two seasons that saw him win the Italian Grand Prix again.

His talents were not confined to being a rider and a driver. From 1969 his Team Surtees became a constructor, building 100 cars in a nine-year period and winning titles in Formula 2 and Formula 5000.