Car Racing 1971

With this seventh instalment of the Car Racing collection, the publisher is pursuing its exploration of the DPPI’s photographic archives, which contain tens and tens of thousands of images. As always, it was About rediscovering a beautiful forgotten photo, a moment that made history, a mythical landscape or an illustration of a technical breakthrough that revolutionised the automobile.

Cars were the stuff of dreams, central to the imagery of the seventies: the object of all desires and the emblem of freedom. With audiences as eager to see and hear them as to feel them, the mission for the DPPI photographers was both simple and complex. To capture this energy and passion in images.

It all began in the relative tranquillity of the motor shows. 1971 saw the birth of the Alpine A310, the Alfa Romeo Montréal, the Ligier JS2 and the spectacular Lamborghini Countach. And it continued in the hustle and bustle of the race paddocks. Fans of technology and photographers were in for a treat, as craftsmen and manufacturers abounded in ideas to constantly increase the speed of their cars. Colin Chapman, always on the lookout for technological innovations for his Lotuses, thought nothing of installing a turbine in a Formula 1 car. And when we see images of the complexity of some of the systems, it’s easier to understand not only why records were broken year after year, but also why drivers very often had to abandon their vehicles at the trackside or on the road, their engines flagging…