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Grand Prix Racers: Portraits of Speed
The heroes of Grand Prix racing--Fangio, Jim Clark, Phil Hill, Bruce McLaren, Jackie Stewart, Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, and Michael Schumacher, to name but a few--are familiar to F1 fans. But would their faces and feats be so well known if not for the extraordinary efforts of the photographers who have captured their images in legendary fashion?
This book gives readers a look at Grand Prix racing’s top drivers by way of its top photographers, the father and son team of Bernard and Paul-Henri Cahier. Bernard Cahier began shooting F1 in 1952. In the late 1960s, he was joined by his son. Their images, reproduced here in all their brilliance, capture some of the most memorable, even legendary, moments in the history of Grand Prix racing.
These incomparable photographs comprise intimate portraits of seventy-two of the sports’ greatest drivers from the 1950s through today. Beautifully printed in rich black and white, the pictures treat readers to an encounter with the legendary racers of the Grand Prix that is at once remarkably fresh and historically rich.
This book gives readers a look at Grand Prix racing’s top drivers by way of its top photographers, the father and son team of Bernard and Paul-Henri Cahier. Bernard Cahier began shooting F1 in 1952. In the late 1960s, he was joined by his son. Their images, reproduced here in all their brilliance, capture some of the most memorable, even legendary, moments in the history of Grand Prix racing.
These incomparable photographs comprise intimate portraits of seventy-two of the sports’ greatest drivers from the 1950s through today. Beautifully printed in rich black and white, the pictures treat readers to an encounter with the legendary racers of the Grand Prix that is at once remarkably fresh and historically rich.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published May 15, 2008
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December 4, 2012
I thought this would be a simple book of photographs - amazing photographs, covering the history of Grand Prix racing from Fangio and Ascari to Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso - but it's much more. The brief biographical texts, from several short paragraphs to two pages, give subtle but deep portraits of the protagonists and trace the development of the sport from a privateer's hobby (or obsession) to a streamlined business. Then there is the construction of the book, dividing the drivers into categories - the stylists, the romantics, the tough ones, etc - based on their dominant personality trait. This adds more depth the ones understanding of the drivers and the sport, the dancers and the dance. What kind of drivers are likely to with pole position and race brilliantly from the front, but can't sustain the emotional and physical violence of racing from the middle of the grid? What are the characteristics of consistent champions and who are the dismissed drivers, able to turn out one brilliant season or perhaps one consistently competent season that's enough to fix their names in that very small list - 28 - of world champions.
All that aside, it's really the personalities and personal histories of the men that makes this book brilliant. (And, as an aside, over the history, it has been almost exclusively men, with a lonely 2 or so women among the 600 to 650 drivers that have sat at the wheel of an F1 car in the starting grid.) Without their character it would be a book of competent photos and clever blurbs about tedious persons. There are the daredevils, as one would expect - Gilles Villeneuve who drove with furious abandon, somersaulting out of the cockpit to his death only because his helicopter antics didn't kill him first. And the relatives of Spanish kings that cross the globe with no suitcase, toothbrush in the pocket of their (buttery soft, one would assume) leather jackets, to race wherever there is speed to be had. Or the sons of disgraced and now impoverished New Zeeland farmer who showed up to his first F1 race barefoot because that's how he drove tractors back home. Or the passionate but less talented men that died of despair when demoted from the peaks of F1. Or the British gentlemen that saw racing as an art, that wrapped their Jaguars around trees after retiring only to find that they had inoperable liver conditions that would have killed them soon anyway. And the sex fiends - Hunt, with "Sex - It's What's For Breakfast" embroidered on his coveralls - that would die in early middle age from a youth spent indulging in every form of acceleration imaginable. And the mystics, that saw the racing as just another form of transcendence. The international playboys - Cevert dating Brigitte Bardot and looking as good as Alain Delon ever did, but with less brooding and more incandescence - who died on the same track where they took their only victory, on the brink of ascendance. The technicians, who tend to be the most honest of the bunch, like Jackie Stewart who once said of the Nurburgring, but might as well have been speaking of F1 in general or providing a fundamental live philosophy for racers, "it gave you amazing satisfaction, but anyone who says he loves it is either a liar or wasn't going fast enough."
All that aside, it's really the personalities and personal histories of the men that makes this book brilliant. (And, as an aside, over the history, it has been almost exclusively men, with a lonely 2 or so women among the 600 to 650 drivers that have sat at the wheel of an F1 car in the starting grid.) Without their character it would be a book of competent photos and clever blurbs about tedious persons. There are the daredevils, as one would expect - Gilles Villeneuve who drove with furious abandon, somersaulting out of the cockpit to his death only because his helicopter antics didn't kill him first. And the relatives of Spanish kings that cross the globe with no suitcase, toothbrush in the pocket of their (buttery soft, one would assume) leather jackets, to race wherever there is speed to be had. Or the sons of disgraced and now impoverished New Zeeland farmer who showed up to his first F1 race barefoot because that's how he drove tractors back home. Or the passionate but less talented men that died of despair when demoted from the peaks of F1. Or the British gentlemen that saw racing as an art, that wrapped their Jaguars around trees after retiring only to find that they had inoperable liver conditions that would have killed them soon anyway. And the sex fiends - Hunt, with "Sex - It's What's For Breakfast" embroidered on his coveralls - that would die in early middle age from a youth spent indulging in every form of acceleration imaginable. And the mystics, that saw the racing as just another form of transcendence. The international playboys - Cevert dating Brigitte Bardot and looking as good as Alain Delon ever did, but with less brooding and more incandescence - who died on the same track where they took their only victory, on the brink of ascendance. The technicians, who tend to be the most honest of the bunch, like Jackie Stewart who once said of the Nurburgring, but might as well have been speaking of F1 in general or providing a fundamental live philosophy for racers, "it gave you amazing satisfaction, but anyone who says he loves it is either a liar or wasn't going fast enough."
Displaying 1 of 1 review