Le Mans: The Official History 1930-39
By Quentin Spurring
This fine volume is a welcome addition to others in the series and steps back to the decade of Le Mans 24-hour racing immediately prior to the Second World War. The era begins with the Bentley Boys continuing their successes of the late 1920s and finishes in 1939 with French constructors triumphant with Bugatti taking victory despite Delage dominating the lion’s share of the race. As they say, it’s the Le Mans race itself that seemingly picks the winners—Bugatti earning ultimate success in their last works outing with the “one-off” Bugatti T57C, something of a more than satisfactory conclusion for the marque.
The 2018 event will be the 86th running of the 24-hour race at La Sarthe, eight decades, and more, from the 1930s. This book chronicles the years when victory shifted from the Bentley Boys’ tight grasp on the race to the Italian Alfa Romeos taking honors and in the final years the French take the plaudits in their own race. Of course, there was no racing in 1936 due to strikes and the Great Depression, and by the end of the decade there was the very last race, halted until 1949 when peace was firmly re-established in Europe. The text transports the reader back to those almost forgotten years of this now iconic race, which manufacturers still clamor to win to underline their engineering excellence.
The book examines the tragedies and dramas of the cars, drivers and races too, which were just as momentous then as they are today. It’s also a motor racing barometer of the Le Mans race itself, while still very much in its infancy at the beginning of the decade, it survived social and economic issues and evolved into adolescence prior to the onset of world hostility.
As with previous volumes, Spurring makes the text easy reading, broken down into a year-by-year account of the race with full entry lists and final results, including class and Index of Performance victors. At the back of the book the decade of racing is illustrated and analyzed with various graphs, pie charts and statistics evaluating both car and driver performances. Technical details, the changing face of the circuit and the organizer’s rules and regulations are discussed with each year’s event. A plethora of black and white images compliment the text and immerse the reader in the excitement and celebration of winning the world’s finest sportscar race.
Available for £60 from enthusiast bookstores or direct from publisher Evro at www.evropublishing.co.uk, or from Amazon.
