Book Review: Ferrari The Grand Prix Cars by Alan Henry
Positives
Negatives
With Fiat putting the Ferrari F1 team management through the cleaners, it looks like 2014 will mirror some of the lean years Ferrari had in the mid 80’s and early 90’s. The F14T couldn’t be that bad, could it? I decided to read Alan Henry’s “Ferrari The Grand Prix Cars” again to try to get […]
With Fiat putting the Ferrari F1 team management through the cleaners, it looks like 2014 will mirror some of the lean years Ferrari had in the mid 80’s and early 90’s. The F14T couldn’t be that bad, could it? I decided to read Alan Henry’s “Ferrari The Grand Prix Cars” again to try to get some perspective on Maranello history.
This book definitely requires several reading sessions to complete. At over 350+ pages, the text is tiny – it’s almost like reading Times Roman 8 point font.
Alan Henry has broken up the Ferrari timeline into 7 Sections:
- V12s of the 1948-1951
- F2 and Ascari
- 2.5 litre 1954-60 cars
- 1.5 litre 1961-65 cars
- 3 litre 1966-80 cars
- Turbo 126V6 cars of 1980-84
- Declining years of 1985-88
If you’re a fan of cars of the GP racing period between 1950-1966, I would really rate this book. You will get a good insight into the Hawthorn, Lancia, Fangio, Surtees periods.
There’s lots of excellent and varied photos to study in the book. A large percentage of these are unfortunately in black & white but many of the older 50’s and 60’s photos still manage to uniquely capture a frozen moment in time of the driver and his Ferrari race car. Mike Hawthorn at the 1957 British GP and Phil Hill at 1961 Monaco GP are good examples.
All in all a good read. The technical development of the car and a recount of each season’s races in the book’s main focus. It doesn’t over endulge in the personalities and politics of Ferrari team personnel, so if you want more lowdown on the internal inter-relationships between Enzo, Forghieri, Montezemolo, etc. you’ll need to rely on other books.
Wow Factor or Money Shot: Great shots of Ferrari prototype cars like the 312B3 and the front tyre mud-guarded 312T2. A nice B&W side profile shot of Gilles in the 312T5 at Interlagos in 1980.
Suitable for: F1 history fans and tifosi.
Hill walked away from Ferrari at the end of 1962, eventually returning to California’s sports-car culture, where he raced and restored vintage cars. He became a kind of elder statesman—a legend who had lived through an incredibly bloody period in racing history.