Winterbottom’s newly released biography, simply titled Frosty, delivers a deep and moving insight into one of Australian motorsport’s true modern-day heroes.
Published by HarperCollins, Frosty has been written by Winterbottom with James Phelps, who developed a close friendship with the driver during his time as The Daily Telegraph’s V8 reporter.
The basics of Winterbottom’s inspiring story are well known to those who follow the sport in which he’s played a prominent role for two decades.
From working-class beginnings in Doonside in Sydney’s west, Winterbottom rose through karts, Formula Ford and on to Supercars, ultimately becoming a Bathurst winner and series champion.
The trials and tribulations of that journey are of course covered in detail, which Phelps brings to life with brilliantly crafted prose that puts the reader right in the moment.
Where the book truly excels, however, is the detail in which Winterbottom is prepared to delve when it comes to family dynamics and, specifically, the contrasting relationships he held with his parents.
Winterbottom gives a raw and honest account of an incredibly close bond with his late mother, June, including how her breast cancer struggle during his childhood shaped his character.
While Winterbottom has referenced that connection at times during his career, estrangement from his father, speedway racer Jim, remained largely unspoken about publicly.
Rather than brush this aside, Winterbottom openly unpacks this uncomfortable element of his story – including the fact they never reconciled before his father’s 2020 death.
To not only cover but dig deeply into these parts of his life, as well as deliver insights into his own experiences as a husband and father, is a powerful level of vulnerability for an athlete to show.
Winterbottom appears to pull few punches when it comes to his racing life, either.
Many motorsport figures receive heart-warming levels of praise and appreciation, but there’s no shying away from key scraps – including with two of the paddock’s most-loved characters.
Mark Larkham receives arguably the biggest whack as Winterbottom details his exit from the now TV star’s team in 2005, claiming Larkham cost him a chance to move to Triple Eight.
Winterbottom’s rivalry with Jamie Whincup is, as expected, covered at length, but it’s the character of Craig Lowndes that cops sharp critique amid their robust battles in 2014/15.
And then of course there’s the recent exit from Team 18, which many will be keen to read about. Spoiler alert: Charlie Schwerkolt and Adrian Burgess are not portrayed well.
This breakup is recorded in rather more gory detail than the end of Winterbottom’s 13-year stint at Ford Performance Racing/Prodrive/Tickford, which is unsurprising given his recent return.
As these anecdotes suggest, there’s plenty here to appeal to the hardcore motorsport fan, be they supporters of Winterbottom or not.
However, readers will have to accept more than a few crossed wires when it comes to facts and timelines throughout, many of which will be evident to close followers.
The most jarring involves the late Howard Marsden, who had been at the helm of Ford Motorsport when it ran the KartStars program that launched Winterbottom’s career.
There is a detailed account of a conversation with Marsden at Hidden Valley in 2005, complete with quotes, in which Marsden pledges to find an engineer to help the struggling driver.
This was almost two years after Marsden passed away. A later mention of Marsden’s role in orchestrating Winterbottom’s career-defining move to FPR for 2006 is equally unfortunate.
Other anomalies, including his appearance in the Honda Young Guns races on the Gold Coast being recorded more than four years ahead of reality, are also frustrating.
Such fact-checking miscues are not the fault of Winterbottom, though, and do pale into relative insignificance when contrasted to the key themes of his story.
Make no mistake, Frosty is a powerful book with wide appeal and well worth consuming, either in hardcover ($45.00 RRP), eBook ($19.99) or Audiobook ($26.99) form.
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