Rare Book Review: The Kings of the Nürburgring by Chris Nixon

While fans will be happy the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim has been given a lifeline extension next year, the modern version of the circuit itself is an unfortunate abbreviated version of the historic track. The German GP has often in modern times toggled between Hockenheim and the Nürburgring. Its a shame the Nürburgring is unable to host a modern F1 GP as it truly is one of motorsports most historic and classic race tracks. The circuit was the theme of Chris Nixon’s excellent “The Kings of the Nürburgring” back in 2005 – which is one of the collection of rare Nixon books. Let’s take a look…

Typical of his previous books, “The Kings of the Nürburgring” contains an enormous amount of detailed historical research and photos – particularly for the pre-1967 period of GP racing. The opening chapter explores the history and evolution of the circuit itself during 4 distinct time periods: 1925-1939, 1940-1949, 1950-1969 and 1970-1983. Nixon includes a brief study of the circuit’s builder Dr Otto Creutz including construction photos. In fact, the book’s foreword is penned by Dr Creutz’s daughter.

This book doesn’t chronicle each season’s race at the circuit but instead focuses on 14 drivers (with a chapter dedicated to each one) that dominated the track, many of them being legendary Grand Prix drivers including Caracciola, Nuvolari, Rosemeyer, Ascai, Fangio, Moss, Brooks, Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Surtees, Clark, Stewart and Ickx.

Given the historic circuit essentially stopped hosting GPs on a regular basis by the late 1970’s, its easy to forget that the 1000km and 500km sportscar racing was also run there. Indeed, Vic Elford is included as one of Nixon’s ringmeisters even though he DNF’ed 3 times in the German GPs. Elford’s 6 sportscar victories at the track are impossible to ignore. In later years, Alboreto and even Seb Vettel and Lewis Hamilton would take victories at the modern version of the Nurburgring circuit.

For old F1 fans, its still the longer 22km historic Nordschleife layout of the track that is the most appealing. This is also one of the few books I’ve seen with shots of both John Surtees’ bike racing and F1 racing.

Presentation-wise, this book is excellent – a proper hardcover with a fantastic photo of Fangio’s Maserati turning into the Northern Turn during the 1957 German P. The quality of the square gloss pages are also excellent. The photography is beautiful – although there are a few grainy B&W photos – ironically, it’s the older 1920’s photos that are incredibly high resolution and superbly reproduced for print publication. Photos of race posters provide more nostalgic memorabilia and feel from the book.

The middle section is a special pictorial collection of photos from various races from 1927-1983 featuring different parts of the circuit. Again, like previous Chris Nixon books, the pre-1940 race photos are really eye catching.

This title is definitely one for the more appreciative F1 history fan (unfortunately this book is hard to find nowadays, so its price is a little steep in the motorsport memorabilia bookstores).

Wow Factor/Money shot:  Even though in black & white, the aerial photo from the 1954 GP (pg 27). All the pre-WWII photos are fantastic.

Suitable for: F1 history fans