Tag Archives: Motorsport Publications

Motorsport Books — The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most Dangerous Era by Michael Cannell

The winter interregnum between the major American and European motorsport seasons is the perfect time to wet one’s whistle for the upcoming action by catching up with the best books on racing. Easily qualifying for any serious fan’s motorsports library is Michael Cannell’s 2011 The Limit: Life and Death in Formula One’s Most Dangerous Era, which chronicles the epic battle between Ferrari teammates Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips for the 1961 F1 World Championship. While it relies heavily on the period reportage and essays of the great Robert Daley and those passages may be familiar to anyone who has read his seminal The Cruel Sport and Cars at Speed, Cannell’s volume still stands on its own merits. By focusing on the divergent personalities and biographies of the two friendly rivals and the common motivation that drove them to compete and succeed at the very highest level of the sport, a finely limned portrait emerges of not just the men but also the highly charged era in which they performed. And of course that charge came from the constant and absolutely genuine threat of crippling or fatal injury at every Grand Prix.

Phil Hill, 1960

Phil Hill, 1960

Phil Hill grew up a frail and insecure boy in Southern California, one who’s low self esteem was reinforced by a domineering father and an admitted incompetence at team sports. He only found his calling when an aunt gave him a Model T Ford to tinker with. As a teenager Hill quickly evolved into a prototypical hot rodder and he began getting paid to race, winning nearly every open sports car competition in California. Wolfgang von Trips was the heir to a noble German family who nearly lost everything during the cataclysm of World War II. When his family mansion near Cologne was occupied by American soldiers after Germany’s capitulation, von Trips became obsessed with the GI’s Jeeps and trucks. Eventually he would acquire a series of ever more powerful Porsches, which he raced with reckless abandon, earning him the nickname “Count von Crash.” Despite his proclivity to overstep the limit, or perhaps because of it, von Trips still managed to attract the attention of the Machiavellian Enzo Ferrari, founder of the greatest marque in motorsports. Hill, having left the oval racing-obsessed US to try his hand at European road racing, also managed to be pulled into Ferrari’s orbit by his early success with the Jaguar team. By the late 1950s both men were driving sports car races for the Prancing Horse and in line for a top-level factory Ferrari drive in Formula 1.

Wolfgang von Trips, 1961

Wolfgang von Trips, 1961

While graduating into the Ferrari F1 team may sound glamorous today, back in the classic era this was mainly achieved by having the drivers currently occupying those seats dying in action. Continue reading →

Motorsport Books — The Cruel Sport by Robert Daley

The companion piece to Robert Daley’s seminal Cars at Speed, The Cruel Sport is ostensibly more of a coffee table picture book. With its oversized dimensions featuring beautiful black and white photos of Formula 1′s golden era taken while Daley was a correspondent for the New York Times in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, The Cruel Sport captures the romance and danger of Grand Prix motor racing during its mythic past. Shots of the greatest drivers of the era — Phil Hill, Jack Brabham, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, Dan Gurney, Jackie Stewart, et al — doing what they do best make up the bulk of this great tome with the text secondary and spare.

Scene from 1964 GP of Holland (Photo by Robert Daly)

Scene from 1964 GP of Holland (Photo by Robert Daley)

The fantastic record of the state-of-the-art cars of this era — thin, gasoline-filled aluminum monocoques surrounding the driver like a casket with a giant engine newly moved to behind his back — pay tribute to the beauty of the Ferraris, Lotuses, BRMs and all the other land rockets of the pre-safety, pre-downforce era. Interspersed throughout are brief profiles of the drivers and circuits written in Daley’s inimitable wry, Hemingway-esque prose. Showing through, as in all his writing on motorsport, is the paradoxical ambivalence of at once being highly attracted to the derring-do of the men’s wondrous achievements as pilots and revulsion at the wonton waste of life inherent during this era of Formula 1, when the death of drivers and spectators was nearly guaranteed several times a season.

Death of Lorenzo Bandini, Monaco, 1967 (Photo by Robert Daley)

In fact, the footnotes to the photos in the closing “Photo Identification” section are practically another book unto themselves, with detailed ruminations about the deaths of Graham Hill by plane accident in the 1970s and Jim Clark at Hockenheim in a Formula 2 race in 1968, among many other anecdotes. And Daley’s quietly devastating recounting of the death of Lorenzo Bandini in a Ferrari at the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix and his journalistic need to photograph it (the horrifying shot of Bandini trapped beneath his burning Ferrari is the fitting endpaper of the book) makes for essential reading in and of itself as a shattering piece of self-reflective journalism, motorsports notwithstanding. In short, along with Cars at Speed, The Cruel Sport is a must have volume for any serious racing fan and anyone who cherishes the bittersweet history of Formula 1 and the men who lived & died it in its most glorious years, as told by its finest, most clear-eyed chronicler.

Check out more of Robert Daley’s life and work at his website, robertdaleyauthor.com.

Motorsport Books — Cars at Speed by Robert Daley

Arguably one of the greatest books ever written on auto racing, Robert Daley’s “Cars at Speed” covers the Golden Age of the early to mid 20th century’s grand road races and nascent Formula One scene.

As a correspondent for the New York Times, Daley covered Grand Prix racing in Europe and around the world from 1958 to 1964 and the book was published in 1961, right at the crossover period between front and rear engined Grand Prix machines.  Along with Carroll Shelby, Daley is largely credited with helping to introduce the thrills of twisty circuit and street racing to the broader United States’ public, which previously only had interest in Indianapolis 500 and stock car-style events.

In “Cars at Speed”, Daley recounts the death defying years before seat belts, fire suits or big money, when men raced for glory and their own strange need to live on the edge and when drivers and spectators died with brutal regularity.  In this book, you’ll find stories of Phil Hill & Dan Gurney, Jean Behra and Juan Manuel Fangio, Alfonso de Portago & Stirling Moss and many others.  You’ll find tales from the Targa Florio, the Mille Miglia and Le Mans.  In this book, you may learn more about the history of road racing than you thought you knew and discover a lifelong passion for motorsports and admiration for the men who take the risks.  That’s how it worked out for me, anyway.

In a style heavily indebted to Hemingway, Daley’s wry, brutally honest tales are both funny and horrifying.  And always but always exciting and immensely enjoyable.  Along with his slightly later, larger photo-centric book “The Cruel Sport”, “Cars at Speed” may go in and out of print but belongs in every racing enthusiast’s library, casual or fanatical.

You can get nearly new copies through used book dealers on Amazon starting at around $4. Not a bad price for a lifetime of enjoyment.