Race Face

A COMMEMORATIVE ALBUM OF THE

6th GRAND PRIX HISTORIQUE

DE MONACO

The Grand Prix Historique de Monaco is unique and unrivalled. Other events may offer a similarly mouthwatering

smorgasbord of important machinery, but it is only at Monaco that the photographer is so close to the cars, and there is

such a variety of background scenery.

In most motorsport photographs you simply see a picture of a car. Here you see the driver at work, especially in the more

open cockpits of early cars, and you can clearly see their eyes. The eyes are very expressive. They give you a real insight

into the driver and that special place in their head people go when racing a motorcar.

Hence the title: Race Face.

My first Grand Prix was Monaco in 1965. I’d hitchhiked from the French school I was studying at near Toulouse and had

a couple of hour’s sleep on the floor of a garage at La Ciotat. I stood in the crowd with a group of Italians and cheered

as Graham Hill’s BRM just beat Lorenzo Bandini’s Ferrari. Monaco has been very special for me ever since.

I was at the first GP Historique in 1997 and back again in 2002. The event has grown and now stands in its own right,

rather than as an interesting preamble to GP week.

In 2008 I used a high performance digital camera, a Canon EOS 5D, and mainly a 400mm lens. This provided the

quality and the capacity to shoot more than 4,000 photographs over the weekend and ensure at least one shot of every car

that raced and most of those that only ran in qualifying. Back in Australia after three months in Europe it was possible

to see all the incredible details on a large computer monitor. The photographs needed to be published and only an A3

size and the latest digital press would do justice to them.

I’ve tried to put you in the car with the driver. You’ll find close cropped detail, splendid colour, and even some incidents.

I was also lucky enough to be at Ste-Devote late in the day where a shaft of light between the buildings illuminated the

cars to create a dramatic effect.

Two editions were produced in a huge A3 size. The Gold edition was leather bound in red leather with gold lettering and the Silver

edition was hard bound with silver lettering.

We also published a DVD which contains all the photos from the weekend. This is available from the Automoto bookshop in

Sydney:

This is the original Proof Edition of the book. Click on the four way arrow button to make it full screen: