Description
Author: Robert Newman, ISBN: 9781845847487, 384 pages, Published in 2014, hardcover
Covering almost 100 years of motor racing history, humanity, not simple statistics, is revealed here as the true source of the subjects' heroism. Take Andre Boillot; so tired at the end of the 1919 Targa Florio, he made a silly mistake, spinning his car backwards across the finish line - yet he still won. Or Grand Prix winners Robert Benoist, William Grover-Williams and Jean-Pierre Wimille, all of whom became French resistance fighters during WWII. There's David Purley's valiant attempt at
rescuing a trapped Roger Williamson by trying to overturn Willamson's blazing March with his bare hands during the 1973 Grand Prix of Holland. And Alessandro Zanardi, who lost both legs in a CART accident, yet still came back to win races.
The lighter side of motor sport is also here, with Giannino Marzotto, who won the 1950 Mille Miglia wearing an immaculate double-breasted suit. Or Giovanni Bracco, who won the 1952 Mille Miglia as he swigged from a bottle of red wine!
There are so many heroes and heroines in this sport. This book is about 100 of them.
- Benoist, Williams, Wimille: French resistance fighters
- David Purley: tried to lift blazing car with bare hands
- Halle Nice: the stripper who became a Grand Prix driver
- Alberto Ascari: plunged into Monte Carlo harbour at 120mph
- Andre Boillot: won the Targa Florio travelling backwards
- Maria Teresa de Felippis: first woman Fl World Championship driver
- Ferenc Szisz: winner of the world's first GP in 1906; his report
- Elizabeth Junek: heroine of the 1928 Targa Florio
- Michael Schumacher: won his first championship at 7 years old
- Archie Scott-Brown: the severely crippled race winner
About the Author:
BORN IN ASHFORD, Kent, Robert Newman spent almost a decade in Melbourne, Australia, avidly following motor racing and the careers of his personal heroes, Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, who were to become major participants in his life many years later.
Returning to the UK in 1955, Newman joined the Kentish Express as a reporter, and later acted as correspondent for The Times, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard and Southern TV. Graduating from the National Council for the Training of Journalists scheme in 1959, he joined Pirelli's British subsidiary as its press officer, in 1965, where he worked with some of the great names of motor racing and rallying.
1979 saw Newman move to Milan, Italy, as Pirelli's international PR manager, and during his 13 years at the Italian headquarters, he worked with many more motor racing greats, including Fangio and Moss (with whom he produced the book Fangio: aPirelli Album, written by Doug Nye and Stirling Moss), Gigi Villoresi, Phil Hill, Tony Brooks, Jose Froilan Gonzalez, Karl Kling, Giannino Marzotto, Jack Brabham, John Surtees Ronnie Peterson, Nelson Piquet, and Nigel Mansell, as well as World Champion rally drivers including Sandro Munari, Markku Alen, Bjorn Waldegard, and Stig Blomqvist.
Newman became PR director of Pirelli's United States subsidiary in 1992, and continued his association with the stars of motor racing. He toured South Africa with Juan Manuel Fangio that same year, translating for the five times World Champion at special events and on television.
Newman retired to Italy in 1996, where he translates motor sport books from Italian into English for Giorgio Nada Editore, and writes a monthly column on motor racing drivers and famous cars for the American magazine Vintage Racecar Journal.
