Racing with Rich Energy

How a Rogue Sponsor Took Formula One for a Ride

By: Elizabeth Blackstock, Alanis King

Narrated by: Linda Jones

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Formula One has long maintained a glitzy aura that masks dark and strange goings-on in the background. But with the 2019 season came a force louder than Formula One could dream of muffling: William Storey, the founder of British energy drink startup Rich Energy.

Storey became a multimillion-dollar sponsor of the Haas Formula One team a year after records showed Rich Energy having a mere $770 in the bank. He equated his doubters to moon-landing truthers and publicly mocked both the Haas team and the entities winning legal disputes against him. But where were actual cans of Rich Energy, and did the supposed sponsorship funds exist?

In the six months between Storey's first race as a Formula One sponsor and his very public exit, he stole the spotlight with a loud mouth and an active Twitter account. Haas team boss Guenther Steiner once described the Rich Energy news cycle as: "I'm getting sick of answering these stupid f--king questions on a race weekend. I've never seen any f--king thing like this." No one else had, either. This book uncovers the complete, bizarre story.

©2022 Elizabeth Blackstock and Alanis King (P)2023 Tantor

Not a good topic

Unfortunately the topic is not interesting because no one the authors requested interviews with would talk to them or go on the record. The tweets by Mr. Storey sound like he was drunk or high and the endless hashtags are enough to make the listener want to drink or get high. I really wanted to like this book, I love Formula 1 and there are just so many more interesting stories that the authors could have told. Disappointing and boring.

Not much new information here

I was excited to read the inside story of Rich Energy and William Storey. However, I only got information already in the public domain, and there was minimal investigative reporting. If you are familiar with the story of Rich Energy and Haas F1, you will already know most of what is in this book. If you’re unfamiliar with the story of Rich Energy, I’m not sure why this book would interest you.

The authors rely heavily on desk research, i.e., the internet, Twitter, and people returning emails or phone calls instead of in-person interviews. Don’t get me wrong, desk research has its place, but it should be used as a starting point. Here, when people didn't return the authors' emails, they just gave up and moved on. The book goes from one dead end to another with little new information. I'm not sure the authors ever left their respective desks and attempted an interview with a live human. Aside from sending the errant email, the authors never ventured out and tried to interview people who might have information.

I wanted to know how William Storey paid the first installment on his Haas F1 sponsorship. The question is broached but not answered. The authors don’t even speculate about the source of Storey’s original payment to Haas. Why didn't they try to find a can of Rich Energy or visit the Rich Energy manufacturing facility (if that even existed)? Why didn't they dig into Rich Energy's and William Storey's finances? Why didn't they interview (something beyond sending an email) associates/friends of William Storey and employees of Rich Energy?

The authors talk about Rich Energy's U.S. distributors, but they never attempted to speak with anyone. Did they ever determine if Rich Energy was available anywhere in the U.S.?

Also, was it really necessary to include every hashtag every time throughout the course of the book? It was arduous, and I almost felt the authors ran out of content and wanted to fill pages.

Finally, the fact that a person or organization doesn’t answer your emailed questions proves nothing. It also wasn't necessary to list the questions that people didn't answer - Rather, the authors should have started with the emailed questions, and when they didn’t get answers, they should have attempted to answer them with independent interviews or documentation.

Overall, very disappointing and not informative beyond what was previously reported.

Took an interesting story and made it dull

Intersecting story and made it dull. The repetitive hashtags being called out area brutal. It’s a tough listen with the monotone narrator.

14 hours of reading tweets

is it really "investigative journalism if no one will speak to you or go on the record answering your questions? The authors had the right idea, asked the right questions, but it seems no one would return their calls or answer their emails with anything substantial. There are a few early interviews with William Story but they were never able to get him to sit down and really tell his story. Who was he? What was his upbringing? And nothing from HAAS. And then half of the book is about unrelated F1 scandals and other motorsport stories. So what you are left with regarding Rich Energy is someone reading tweets from Twitter and quoting Companies House financials.

Missing details and a few facts

Decent story a little political. Misses the big story lazily accusing without deep dive.
Has a …
“Could have been written by read a few blogs.”

it feels like a really long blog post

If you followed the store at all you won't learn much except that William Story didn't support masking in 2020. Something that nobody cares about frankly. The author comes off like a tattletale not a hard hitting investigative journalist.

No one on record, nothing new, no actual story…

Just providing the questions asked with no replies does not make a story. It’s great if you just like publicly filed business records and the same details over and over again. Reads like a tax filling listicle

HOW DID THIS HAPPENED

i really enjoyed this book and the two authors dive into the insanity and stupidity that was the Rich Energy debacle. They help you understand how someone could have deceived by William Story. I strongly recommend this book especially if you're not an F1 nut but more of a casual fan

How could this have happened!

I follow Alanis on Twitter and enjoy her outlook, attitude, and humor, and am jealous of her access to some of the biggest racing series and auto manufacturers in the world. That alone was enough to listen to this book. I was not super aware of what was happening with Rich Energy at the time, so much of this was quite new to me and interesting. How the heck did some of the smartest people in the world fall for this con man? No wonder nobody wanted to talk about this as it showed a total lack of due diligence on so many powerful and successful people. I understand that some may not like how much of this story cannot be fully vetted due to this reticence to be shown as gullible or even negligent, but the authors did a good job of laying out all the efforts to gain the answers to critical questions. Maybe someday more information will come out and the authors could finish the story we all want to know.

A great read for all knowledge types of the sport

I found this to be a great read, i fact bought a few paper copies to give to friends who just got into F1. Masterful in the way the story is latex out and investigated beyond anything I’ve heard to date on anything F1, my family loves it we really hope to see more from these two in the future.