The Grand Prix saboteurs

Joe Saward

This is a book about grand prix drivers who became secret agents, working with the French resistance. Want to read on? You certainly will.

The story is the result of 18 years of research by Saward, a respected member of the motor racing writing community. This quite extraordinary story uncovers the mysteries of how W ‘Grover’ Williams, the winner of the first Monaco GP, and his friend and rival Robert Benoist, one of the top drivers of the 1920s, came to form a resistance group in wartime France. As well as telling an intriguing and thrilling story of espionage and sabotage, Saward has also come up with information about the earliest days of grand prix racing in a story that has never been told in such depth.

This is as close as you can get to a motor racing thriller, but here the plots are real, taken from friends and recently unearthed records. Neither Williams nor Benoist needed to get involved in such dangerous work, but as well as being dashing racing drivers, they were men of principle and of courage who helped to change the course of the war. RW Published by Morienval Press, £12.99. ISBN 978-0-955486807