Grand Prix motor racing

First Grands Prix

Circuit du Sud-Ouest

Some anglophone sources wrongly list a race called the Pau Grand Prix in 1901. This may stem from a mistranslation of contemporary French sources such as the magazine La France Auto of March 1901. The name of the 1901 event was the Circuit du Sud-Ouest and it was run in three classes around the streets of Pau. The Grand Prix du Palais d'Hiver was the name of the prizes awarded for the lesser classes ('Light cars' and 'Voiturettes'). The Grand Prix de Pau was the name of the prize awarded for the 'Heavy' (fastest) class. Thus Maurice Farman was awarded the Grand Prix de Pau for his overall victory in the Circuit du Sud-Ouest driving a Panhard 24 hp. In L'Histoire de l'Automobile/Paris 1907 Pierre Souvestre described the 1901 event as "in the Circuit du Sud-Ouest, at the meeting in Pau" ("dans le Circuit du Sud-Ouest, à l'occasion du meeting de Pau").

First Grand Prix and the Grandes Épreuves

The only race at the time to regularly carry the name Grand Prix was organised by the Automobile Club de France (ACF), of which the first took place in 1906. The circuit used, which was based in Le Mans, was roughly triangular in shape, each lap covering 105 kilometres (65 mi). Six laps were to run each day, and each lap took approximately an hour using the relatively primitive cars of the day. The driving force behind the decision to race on a circuit – as opposed to racing on ordinary roads from town to town – was the Paris to Madrid road race of 1903. During this race a number of people, both drivers and pedestrians – including Marcel Renault – were killed and the race was stopped by the French authorities at Bordeaux. Further road-based events were banned.

From the 32 entries representing 12 different automobile manufacturers, at the 1906 event, the Hungarian-born Ferenc Szisz (1873–1944) won the 1,260 km (780 mi) race in a Renault. This race was regarded as the first Grande Épreuve, which meant "great trial" and the term was used from then on to denote up to the eight most important events of the year.

Races in this period were heavily nationalistic affairs, with a few countries setting up races of their own, but no formal championship tying them together. The rules varied from country to country and race to race, and typically centred on maximum (not minimum) weights in an effort to limit power by limiting engine size indirectly (10–15 L engines were quite common, usually with no more than four cylinders, and producing less than 50 hp). The cars all had mechanics on board as well as the driver, and no one was allowed to work on the cars during the race except for these two. A key factor to Renault winning this first Grand Prix was held to be the detachable wheel rims (developed by Michelin), which allowed tyre changes to occur without having to lever the tyre and tube off and back on the rim. Given the state of the roads, such repairs were frequent. Early Grand Prix cars could be technically innovative, with marques such as Peugeot using technology that would later become more widespread.

Political numbering and renaming

A further historic confusion arose in the early 1920s when the Automobile Club de France attempted to pull off a retrospective political trick by numbering and renaming the major races held in France before the 1906 French Grand Prix as being Grands Prix de l'Automobile Club de France, despite their running pre-dating the formation of the Club. Hence, the 1895 Paris–Bordeaux–Paris Trail was renamed I Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France; and the true first Grand Prix in 1906 race was renamed the IX Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France (9th). The ACF used this numbering in 1933, although some members of the Club dismissed it, "concerned the name of the Club was lent to the fiction simply out of a childish desire to establish their Grand Prix as the oldest race in the world".

Racecourse development

For the most part, races were run over a lengthy circuit of closed public roads, not purpose-built private tracks. This was true of the Le Mans circuit of the 1906 Grand Prix, as well as the Targa Florio (run on 93 miles (150 km) of Sicilian roads), the 75 miles (121 km) German Kaiserpreis circuit in the Taunus mountains, and the French circuit at Dieppe (a mere 48 miles (77 km)), used for the 1907 Grand Prix. The exceptions were the steeply banked egg-shaped near oval of Brooklands in England, completed in 1907; the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, first used in 1909 with the first Indianapolis 500-Mile Race in 1911; and the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, in Italy, opened in 1922.

In 1908, the United States of America became the first country outside France to host an automobile race using the name Grand Prix (or Grand Prize), run at Savannah. The first Grande Épreuve outside France was the 1921 Italian Grand Prix held at Montichiari. This was quickly followed by Belgium and Spain (in 1924), and later spread to other countries including Britain (1926). Strictly speaking, this still was not a formal championship, but a loose collection of races run to various rules. (A "formula" of rules had appeared just before World War I, finally based on engine size as well as weight, but it was not universally adopted.)

In 1904, many national motor clubs banded together to form the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR). In 1922 the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) was empowered on behalf of AIACR to regulate Grand Prix racing and other forms of international racing. Since the inception of Grand Prix racing, competitions had been run in accordance with a strict formula based on engine size and vehicle weight. These regulations were virtually abandoned in 1928 with an era known as Formula Libre when race organisers decided to run their events with almost no limitations. From 1927 to 1934, the number of races considered to have Grand Prix status exploded, jumping from five events in 1927, to nine events in 1929, to eighteen in 1934 (the peak year before World War II).

During this period a lot of changes of rules occurred. There was a mass start for the first time at the 1922 French Grand Prix in Strasbourg. The 1925 season was the first season during which no riding mechanic was required in a car, as this rule was repealed in Europe after the death of Tom Barrett during the 1924 Grand Prix season. At the Solituderennen in 1926 a well thought-out system, with flags and boards, giving drivers tactical information, was used for the first time by Alfred Neubauer, the racing manager of the Mercedes-Benz team. The 1933 Monaco Grand Prix was the first time in the history of the sport that the grid was determined by timed qualifying rather than the luck of a draw.

Pre-World War II years

All the competing vehicles were painted in the international auto racing colors:

• blue (Bleu de France) for France,
• green (British racing green) for the United Kingdom,
• red (Rosso corsa) for Italy,
• white for Germany,
  • Note: beginning in 1934, the Germans stopped painting their cars, allegedly after the paint had been left off a Mercedes-Benz W25 in an effort to reduce weight. The unpainted metal soon had the German vehicles dubbed by the media as the "Silver Arrows". However, there are conflicting versions of how German Grand Prix cars came to be unpainted. Photos exist of unpainted Mercedes and Auto Union cars as early as 1932.
• yellow for Belgium.

French cars continued to dominate (led by Bugatti, but also including Delage and Delahaye) until the late 1920s, when the Italians (Alfa Romeo and Maserati) began to beat the French cars regularly. At the time, the Germans engineered unique race vehicles as seen in the photo here with the Benz aerodynamic "teardrop" body introduced at the 1923 European Grand Prix at Monza by Karl Benz.

In the 1930s, however, nationalism entered a new phase when the Nazis encouraged Mercedes and Auto Union to participate for propaganda reasons. (The government did provide some money to the two manufacturers, but the extent of the aid into their hands was exaggerated in the media; government subsidies amounted to perhaps 10% or less of the costs of running the two racing teams.) The two German marques utterly dominated the period from 1935 to 1939, winning all but three of the official Championship Grands Prix races run in those years. The cars by this time were single-seaters (the riding mechanic vanished in the early 1920s), with 8 to 16 cylinder supercharged engines producing upwards of 600 hp (450 kW) on alcohol fuels.

As early as October 1923, the idea of a championship was discussed at the annual autumn conference of the AIACR (Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus) in Paris. However, discussion centred on the increased interest in racing by manufacturers and holding the first European Grand Prix at Monza in 1923. The first World Championship took place in 1925, but it was for manufacturers only, consisting of four races of at least 800 km (497 mi) in length. The races that formed the first Constructors' Championship were the Indianapolis 500, the European Grand Prix, and the French and Italian Grands Prix. This world championship was officially cancelled in 1930, but in 1928–1930 no titles were awarded. Subsequently, a European Drivers' Championship, consisting of the major Grands Prix in a number of countries (named Grandes Épreuves) was instituted in 1931, and was competed every year until the outbreak of World War II in 1939 with the exception of the 1933 and 1934 seasons.

Post-war years and Formula One

In 1946, following World War II, only four races of Grand Prix calibre were held. Rules for a Grand Prix World Championship had been laid out before World War II, but it took several years afterward until 1947 when the old AIACR reorganised itself as the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile or "FIA" for short, headquartered in Paris. It announced the new International Formula, also known as Formula 1 or Formula A, to be effective from 1947. At the end of the 1949 season the FIA announced that for 1950 they would be linking several national Formula One Grands Prix to create a World Championship for drivers, although due to economic difficulties the years 1952 and 1953 were actually competed in Formula Two cars. A points system was established and a total of seven races were granted championship status including the Indianapolis 500. The first World Championship race was held on 13 May 1950 at Silverstone in the United Kingdom.

The Italians once again did well in these early World Championship races, both manufacturers and drivers. The first World Champion was Giuseppe Farina, driving an Alfa Romeo. Ferrari appeared at the second World Championship race, in Monaco, and has the distinction of being the only manufacturer to compete in every season of the World Championship, still competing in 2026.

Grandes Épreuves by season

Italics denote that the race was also known as the European Grand Prix.

1906–1914

1921–1929

1930–1939

1940–1945

For wartime events, see Grands Prix during World War II.

1946–1949

Other events

• Argentine Grand Prix
• Australian Grand Prix
• Bari Grand Prix
• Belgian Grand Prix
• Belgrade Grand Prix
• Buenos Aires Grand Prix
• Chilean Grand Prix
• Coppa Acerbo
• Coppa Ciano
• Cuban Grand Prix
• Czechoslovakian Grand Prix
• Danish Grand Prix
• Donington Grand Prix
• Dutch Grand Prix
• Eläintarhanajot
• Gezira Grand Prix
• Hungarian Grand Prix
• Indonesian Grand Prix

• Lwów Grand Prix
• Mille Miglia
• Moroccan Grand Prix
• Mozambique Grand Prix
• New Zealand Grand Prix
• Penya Rhin Grand Prix
• Rhodesian Grand Prix
• Russian Grand Prix
• San Sebastián Grand Prix
• Stockholm Grand Prix (Formula Two)
• Swedish Summer Grand Prix
• Swedish Winter Grand Prix
• Targa Florio
• Tripoli Grand Prix
• Tunis Grand Prix
• United States Grand Prix
• Vanderbilt Cup

See also:

• List of major automobile races in France
• List of major automobile races in Germany
• List of major automobile races in Italy

Grand Prix drivers

Notable drivers of the Grand Prix motor racing era included a few women who competed equally with the men:

• Martín de Álzaga – Argentina
• Antonio Ascari – Italy
• Robert Benoist – France
• Clemente Biondetti – Italy
• Georges Boillot – France
• Manfred von Brauchitsch – Germany
• Malcolm Campbell – Great Britain
• Rudolf Caracciola – Germany
• / Luigi Chinetti – Italy; United States after the war
• Louis Chiron – Monaco
• Albert Divo – France
• René Dreyfus – France
• Philippe Étancelin – France
• Luigi Fagioli – Italy
• Giuseppe Farina – Italy; he became the first Formula One champion
• Enzo Ferrari – Italy
• Jules Goux – France
• László Hartmann – Hungary
• Elizabeth Junek – Czechoslovakia
• Hermann Lang – Germany
• Christian Lautenschlager – Germany
• Emilio Materassi – Italy

• Ferdinando Minoia – Italy
• Felice Nazzaro – Italy
• Guy Moll – Algeria
• Hellé Nice – France
• Tazio Nuvolari – Italy
• Kay Petre – Great Britain
• Charles Pozzi – France
• Georges Philippe (Baron Philippe de Rothschild) – France
• Bernd Rosemeyer – Germany
• Richard Seaman – Great Britain
• Henry Segrave – Great Britain
• Raymond Sommer – France
• Whitney Willard Straight – Great Britain
• Hans Stuck – Germany
• Ferenc Szisz – Hungary
• Achille Varzi – Italy
• Emilio Villoresi – Italy
• Luigi Villoresi – Italy
• William Grover-Williams – Great Britain
• Jean-Pierre Wimille – France
• Juan Zanelli – Chile

Championships

From 1925 onwards, the AIACR and later the FIA organised World and European Championships for Grand Prix manufacturers, drivers and constructors:

• World Manufacturers' Championship (1925–1927)
• European Drivers' Championship (1931–1932, 1935–1939)
• World Drivers' Championship (1950–1980)
• International Cup for Constructors (1958–1980)
• Formula One World Drivers' Championship (1981–present)
• Formula One World Constructors' Championship (1981–present)