Toby Vintcent on how his passion for Formula 1 spawned a book

Who doesn’t like a bit of escapism once in a while? A favourite film, a special album, a particular place, a treasured book – something to take us away from our everyday routine?

Since I was a boy my escape was a particular television show broadcast at lunchtime on Sunday –nothing less than the greatest soap opera ever staged.

It has everything: glamorous people, dramatic action, exotic locations, inspirational leaders, ever-larger sums of money and every now and again a jaw-dropping scandal. Welcome to my escape … the world of Formula 1.

I moved to Oxfordshire to get married 13 years ago and to bring up our son, now aged 11. My wife despaired however when I did the school run. I would be gone for hours – forever chatting. Being Oxfordshire and the heart of world motorsport, a number of my fellow parents in Swalcliffe worked for some of the local Formula 1 teams. I would make a beeline for anyone who had been away at the previous Grand Prix and pump them mercilessly for what actually happened in the latest race. Joyously, my Oxfordshire school run became part of my escapism.

My obsession with Formula One then morphed into a different form of escape. I have always loved thrillers – stories that excite you and take you elsewhere. My great uncle was literary agent to the famous jockey Dick Francis and instrumental in publishing his autobiography, The Sport of Queens. After its success, it was my uncle who suggested Francis try his hand at fiction – and 40-plus novels later the rest, as they say, is history.

Growing up, my other form of escapism was to devour these brilliantly written thrillers set in the exotic sport of horse racing.

With my passion for Formula 1, my love of intrigue, and all the extraordinary goings-on in motor racing, it baffles me there is no fiction set in modern-day F1. So I decided to try and write a sports thriller set in Formula 1 myself and I loved it.

The rush of writing was like reading a book – you couldn’t wait to get back to it, except I was driving the plot. And when my characters and key twists came to me, the buzz was like nothing else.

But writing Driven was the easy bit. Multiple rejections in publishing are such a cliché: even books like Harry Potter, the Da Vinci Code and The Chronicles of Narnia were each rejected dozens of times. Just because a book is rejected, though, doesn’t mean it’s not any good! I was rejected 70 times by agents. Even when I finally achieved representation by my current agent, my book was rejected dozens of times. She got so fed up with publishers that she decided to publish it through her own imprint, Moreton Street Books.

What does it feel like to finally to see your story in print? I would need to be a poet or a songwriter to answer that properly – the sense of achievement was extraordinary. But then you’re faced with a terrifying thought: What if people don’t like it?

Being a Formula 1 thriller, the first person I sent a copy to for a kill-or-cure opinion was the legendary Murray Walker. He liked it, as did Boris Johnson.

Then, in April this year, Driven was shortlisted for the 2015 British Sports Book Awards.

The struggle to get published started to feel worthwhile. These compliments even attracted an exciting new publisher, Arcadia Books.

A newly packaged Arcadia version was launched last month – in time for Silverstone – and will make Driven available in all good bookshops, as well as via Amazon as a paperback and an e-book.