By Quentin Spurring
Publication date: August 2017, UK price: £60.00
ISBN: 978-1-910505-13-7, Format: 280x230mm, Jacketed hardback
Page extent: 368pp, Illustration: over 350 photographs
Evro Publishing
Officially licensed with the ACO, the organizers of the annual Le Mans 24 Hours race, this sumptuous book is the seventh title in this decade-by-decade series and completes coverage of the endurance classic from its very beginning to the end of the 20th century.
This title covers the nine races of the 1930s (no race was held in 1936) in which honours were divided between Italian, French and British manufacturers.
Each race is exhaustively covered in vivid photographs, an insightful commentary providing more detailed information than has ever been published about the period, and full statistics. It includes great stories such as:
• The 1930 race Bentley achieved its fourth consecutive success, Woolf Barnato and Glen Kidston the winning drivers in the very same ‘Speed Six’ with which they had won in 1929.
• Two of Britain’s greats of the era, Earl Howe and Henry Birkin, won for Alfa Romeo in 1931, beginning a four-race victory streak for the Italian manufacturer.
• Tazio Nuvolari, the outstanding Grand Prix ace of the pre-war decade, secured an intensely dramatic last-lap victory in 1933 in the closest Le Mans finish to date.
• Lagonda (1935) and Delahaye (1938) secured a win each, while Bugatti took two with the great Jean-Pierre Wimille driving its innovative Type 57 ‘Tank’ cars, with all-enclosing bodywork.
Highly detailed year-by-year treatment of the decade’s nine races gives unprecedented depth of information and photographic coverage for each year. Complete data for each year includes technical regulations, entry lists, circuit changes, full results and category awards.
Compiled by an acknowledged authority of this legendary race, this series of books has come to be treasured by all enthusiasts of sports car racing.
The author
Quentin Spurring has reported from the Le Mans 24 Hours on 26 occasions. He has been editor of the British magazines Competition Car, Autosport, Racecar Engineering and The Paddock. His books have included six previous volumes of this Le Mans series (1923–29, 1949–59, 1960–69, 1970–79, 1980–89 and 1990–99) and the award-winning Grand Prix: Images of the First 100 Years.
