Customer Reviews

The Last Road Race: The 1957 Pescara Grand Prix

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Richard Williams has done a masterful job of re-creating what I call "period-feel" in his splendid little book "The Last Road Race." What he actually does in the early-mid chapters is to examine the personalities of the key drivers who found themselves at Pescara in 1957 and how their driving careers started and evolved up to that point. He inserts characters such as legendary motor racing correspondent Denis Jenkinson, photographers Bernard Cahier and Michael Tee and plenty of local Italian officials into his account to give the reader a "you are there" sensation as the story unfolds and you begin to approach race day. Williams is not afraid to fast-forward in time to draw somewhat unflattering comparisons between what real racing meant back then in contrast to to the technology and money dominated, track-safety conscious Schumacher-era of today. At one point, Williams confuses the name of the Casablanca circuit (Ain Diab) with that of the pre-war Tripoli circuit of Mellaha but there are otherwise few obvious factual errors which would detract from this book. This is a truly good yarn about a watershed time in motorsport history and it is at its most evocative when Williams draws out the driver's personalities, often through long direct quotes of what they said about their friends, rivals, and themselves in the dangerous yet chivalrous world of late 1950's Grand Prix road racing. I can only hope that Williams and other authors like him will be further motivated to research other pivotal moments in motor racing history and to bring them to life as adroitly as he has done in "The Last Road Race."

From the color tinted black & white photo on the cover, the most evocative photo of Grand Prix racing in the 1950's that I've ever seen, to the Published Sources in the final pages; this small book is a treasure of personal reminisces, photographs by a great photojournalist, Bernard Cahier, and a detailed recreation of that special weekend of actual road racing through hills and villages surrounding Pescara, Italy. Truly, reading this little gem will transport you back to that time and that place; better put in your order quickly, I think I hear Musso's Ferrari coming up the long waterfront straight....

Richard Williams does a masterful job retelling the story of the last F-1 race at Pescara, won by Sir Stirling Moss. He adequately covers all the key players and gives just enough background about each, both on and off the track, to make the reader interested in the unfolding story. I appreciate the compact, small size of the book since it is much easier to handle and read late at night as compared to those monstrous coffee-table books publishers keep cranking out. I'd like to see Richard Williams do some more similarly-sized books on other races of the Golden Era, perhaps covering the Monaco GP during the 1960s. The 1961 race would be a good start, esp. now that Sir Stirling Moss has "officially" retired from racing.

The description of the race itself was enthralling but only occupied 14 out of the 140 pages. The rest was just a lot of foreplay much of which I had read in other books. There was a lot of duplication of facts between chapters which appeared to have been lifted from other sources without adequate editing. I certainly enjoyed the race account itself and have an enormous respect for all the participants but the book will end up on my bookshelf never to be referred to again.