Book Review: inside Ferrari by Maurice Hamilton and Jon Nicholson

It would be a great time to be a fly on the wall in Maranello. After their title campaign failures over the past few years, Ferrari look like they now have the car and drivers in good form this year right from the start (ok, lets forget about Fernando’s DNF in Malaysia). The closest book with photos I could find about the inner workings of Ferrari is ‘inside Ferrari‘ by Maurice Hamilton and Jon Nicholson. Although published towards the end of the Schumacher/Barrichello pairing at Ferrari in the mid-2000’s,  the author and photographer were given exclusive access to the factory in a way in which I haven’t seen in any other Ferrari books.

Some collectors might remember that Nicolson and Hamilton also collaborated on an earlier behind the scenes style book on Williams in the 1990’s – “Pole Position – The inside story of Williams-Renault”. The production and publication quality of inside Ferrari is much better than their previous work.

The book is divided into 6 main chapters dealing with the factory, testing, the car, the drivers, racing and the Ferrari team family. With Ferrari’s co-operation in the making of the book, its no surprise that Jean Todt provides a few words in the book’s foreword chapter. The factory chapter has lots of photos of inside the factory, the shipping logistics building, Montana restaurant and transporters. Testing shows Ross Brawn, the team and the cars track-side at Mugello and Fiorano. The chapter on the car has some interesting photos inside the pit garage and many close-up shots of the car bodywork and the mechanics. The driver chapter is mostly mood photos in the pit garage with Schumacher, Barrichello, Badoer and the engineers. In the racing chapter, again the car doesn’t feature too heavily, the photos are mainly of the Ferrari race engineers in different situations (mainly victory celebrations!).

Unlike many of Maurice Hamilton’s other books, there actually isn’t much narrative text here. Maurice provides 2 pages of background for each chapter and short paragraph captions for each of the photos. So its Jon Nicholson’s photos that are the main attraction – all in full color with lots of variation in layout panels, photo and subject composition.

inside Ferrari is a unique photobook that focuses more on the behind the scenes work at Ferrari than the drivers or the track action. Although this style of book has been tried before with Williams and McLaren, this is the only one I have found on Ferrari (if anyone knows of other books, please drop me an email!)

For any F1 fan who has dreamed of visiting Maranello but never had the chance, this book is probably the next best option.

Wow Factor or Money Shot: Photos inside Ferrari’s various offices and meeting rooms – Enzo Ferrari’s old office, Jean Todt’s office, the farmhouse meeting room. Of course, there are some spectacular closeup chassis, cockpit and racing photos too. Nice double page top-down photo of Rubens in the cockpit.

Suitable for: Tifosi