Ford Versus Ferrari: The Battle for Le Mans and sports car supremacy [Hardcover]

The 1960's racing scene has always been a big interest to me, and it is often called the golden age of Sports Car racing, and for good reason. With some of the best looking race cars to grace a track, with some of the biggest personalities in Motor racing history, there are many stories to be told. Most famous of these is the battle between Ferrari and Ford and their battle for supremacy, which this book chronicles from start to finish.

The book takes on a chronological order, telling the reasons for Ford opting to come into Sports Car racing in the mid-60's and follows everything from its origins to its final achievement at Le Man 1969. It should be noted, perhaps as a minor grumble, that the bulk of the story is centred on Fords efforts, with an extensive history from the AC/Shelby Cobra (and Daytona) project to the GT40's birth and development. Included in this is a number of cutaways of the car designs to show the inner parts of the cars and is festinating, if only on the Fords (and a Matra later in the book). I wouldn't say that the author is biased in any way towards Ford; he gives them a fully deserved bashing for their mentality and efforts early into the GT40's story. Ferrari gets a number of chapters telling of their race car development and racing history leading up to 1965, but disappointingly little on later prototypes on cars like the 330 P3/4 which battled the Fords in later years.

After the development chapters are finished, the remainder of the book looks at each year of the World Sports Car Championship (in its different guises) with an explanation on regulation changes for that year and a review of the races, ranging from a short review to more extensive one (on races such as Le Man). Along with these come some wonderful anecdotes from various parties involved with the cars and separate, short chapters on incidents that happened, such as the multiple GT40 crash in 1967.

The pages are set out in a nice way, with text fitted between photographs of various sizes and in colour or black & white. On the pictures, it has to be said that they are wonderful to look at and there is plenty of them and its not just the Fords & Ferrari's in them, but other cars such as those from Lola, Chaparall and Matra. With each photo is a comment which range from a couple of sentences to short paragraphs explaining what is happening in it. The other small issue I found was the spacing of the main body of the story, which might talk about a race for a small amount on one page, only to have it continued 3 pages later, with the 3 pages filled with photos! It's a minor frustration as I found myself being drawn into the photography before stumbling back into the race review.

All in all, this is a wonder full book with lots of material to engross yourself in, whether its reading about the cars or looking at them. There is an appendices at the end, with specifications for the Ford & Ferrari cars involved and a race results section following. The author clearly cares a good deal about this period of time when the racing was fierce and sometimes deadly, its treated with great care into a book which, minor complaints aside, is fantastic.