Book Review: Grand Prix Circuits by Maurice Hamilton
:
Positives
Negatives
With the upcoming return of the Dutch and Vietnamese GP for next year’s F1 season, the current debate is on whether the calendar is too full. As the European heritage tracks make way for Tilke designed tracks and street circuits, its often forgotten just how many circuits have hosted Grand Prix. Maurice Hamilton’s “Grand Prix Circuits” is one of many books that have attempted to cover all past F1 circuits.
At 300pages, this book has a relatively simple structure – for every track that has held a Grand Prix race from the first 1922 race at Monza to 2014 Sochi circuit in Russia – there is a brief 1 page summary of the track history, a 1 page archival photo and a double page spread of the circuit layout. The layout pages also include basic stats – including length, corners, lap record, driver with the most wins and memorable race events.
The book has the usual obligatory foreword – this one is by Sir Jackie Stewart.
The best feature of the book is the photography which includes famous photos from the Schlegemilch and Kelmantaski archives.
Whilst the double page track diagrams are easy to read and overlays over actual road names – the diagrams are simple and don’t show track evolution over the years. By comparison, the more recent “Formula One Circuits from Above” by Bruce Jones contains circuits layouts against Google earth photos with more detail including cornering information.
This book has good basic history summary of historic circuits but nothing that you couldn’t find online.
Wow Factor/Money Shot: pg 29 – Hawthorn & Fangio – Reims 1953
Suitable for: F1 history fans
