Ferenc Szisz’ heroic victory at the wheel of a Renault had aroused great interest in this new form of Motor Sport, ‘Grand Prix Racing’, and with it a new level of interest among the car manufacturers of the time.
Along with the new concept of closed circuits, ideas began to form with regard to a ‘formula’, a set of rules and restrictions to which the contesting cars would be built. From 1902, and through 1906, the only applicable rule had been that all cars must weigh less than 1000g, and it was to this formula that the ground breaking French Grand Prix had been run.
1906 had also seen the first running of a race that would take on legendary status in the decades to come and, although not a Grand Prix, it is worthy of mention in any account of the history of motor sport. That race was the Targa Florio.
Count Vincenzo Florio, the visionary pioneering motorist who dreamt up the magnificent ninety-mile marathon around the spectacular scenery of his home island, Sicily, was the Edwardian equivalent of a modern-day ‘speed freak’. If it went quickly, he drove it, from cars to power boats, and indeed he had procured and entered a Panhard for the fateful Paris-Madrid race of 1903, only for the head of the family (his brother) to lay down the law and prevent him from taking the start.
The original circuit, the long ‘Madonie’ as it was known, was a torturous and demanding slog through the Sicilian mountains, through scenery that could only be imagined in years to come. The prize, the ‘Coppa Florio’, a solid gold plate donated by the great man himself, would in years to come feature many of the greatest names in the history of the sport – the race in 1906 was, truly, the beginning of a legend.
Following I have included extracts from ‘Targa Florio’ by WF Bradley, a writer who chronicled the running of this great race from the beginning, and it is in his descriptions of the location and the problems presented that we get a feel for the difficulty, and the majesty, this marathon presented.
“The circuit, starting from a road a few yards from the sea, was practically 90 miles round – 90 miles into the wild mountains to an altitude of 3,700 feet with few villages, no telegraph or wireless communication, no trains, no linkage with the outside faster than that of a mule. The race was to start at six o’clock and Palermo, the only important town, was thirty miles away with no other connections than a single track railway and a dusty, rutted highway.”
Already we have the impression that this was no ordinary race. This was, clearly, an ordeal removed from the ordinary, a challenge of Herculean proportions. And that was just for the spectators!
“Did this dampen enthusiasm? Not in the least! To see the start it was necessary to rise before dawn, to be packed into an uncomfortable railway carriage, or to spend a couple of hours on the road. Each racing car would pass at intervals of about two hours…and when all was over and the winner had been acclaimed, cheered, kissed, had told his story and related his adventures, the spectators had to fight for places in the trains…or struggle with one another on the highway in a fog of dust. A second day had dawned before most had reached their homes, but already they had decided they would be present the following year.”
Although twenty two entries had been submitted for the race, strikes in France and shipping problems reduced the number that started to ten. Here is a summary of some of the dramas the valiant pilots endured:
“Pope broke his petrol pipe and lost his fuel in a region where motor spirit was unknown; Fournier collided with a boundary stone and damaged his rear axle; Lancia suffered a leaky fuel tank and lost compression on two of his cylinders, and a strange adventure happened to both Rigal and Bablot, at the primitive replenishment stations up in the mountains. In each case someone seized a can marked ‘benzina’ and dumped its contents into the rear tank. But some dumbhead had filled that can with water, as the drivers were to perceive when they had travelled a hundred yards. Le Blon (accompanied by his wife) was dogged with tyre trouble.”
Motor racing in its infancy, as we have seen in both this and the previous account, was clearly a catalogue of disaster that must be overcome, or avoided, before one even began to think about winning, or even finishing the race. The Targa Florio was won by Alessandro Cagno, driving an Itala, at a speed of just over 29mph. Consider the environment, and that is some achievement.
Back to 1907, and Grand Prix racing, and the second French Grand Prix was run on a course near Dieppe, over a distance of 477 miles. The circuit itself measured just less than 48 miles. The race was won, and it would be the first of many, by arguably the very first ‘star’ racing driver, the great Felice Nazzaro.
Aboard his FIAT, Nazzaro covered the distance at an average speed of just over 70mph, to come home ahead of Ferenc Szisz in a reversal of the 1906 result. Baras, in a Brasier, came home in third place.
Nazzaro’s star shone brightly in 1907 as he won, in addition to the French Grand Prix, both the Targa Florio and the new race in Germany, the Kaiserpreis, another tortuous mountain challenge, to seal his and FIATs reputation as the masters of car racing at the time.
These three races became the jewels in the crown of European top level motor sport for the next few years to come, although the French Grand Prix, having been won in dominant fashion in 1908 by Christian Lauchtenschlager in a Mercedes, without a single French entry in the top three, was abandoned until 1912 (and we will come back to that later.)
Our interest now turns to two other regions where motor sport was beginning to grow in stature and interest – Great Britain, and the United States of America.
Britain had seen, in 1905, the advent of the first ‘permanent’ motor racing facility in the country – the Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb. This quaint and picturesque 1000 yard blast would become a legend in its own right in the century to become and, although hillclimbing is considered as a ‘poor relation’ in motor sport terms these days, such was far from the case in the early twentieth century. Shelsley joined such-legends-to be as La Turbie, Mont Cenis, Semmering and Mont Venoux, all of which would play host to legendary names in years to come.
For the uninitiated, Shelsley Walsh remains as the oldest motor racing venue in the United Kingdom today, and is still a regularly used and recognised venue (and is, I might add, well worth a visit.)
However, changes were underway and, alongside the hillclimbing and long road courses, a new type of motor racing circuit was about to be born. These would be short in length, entirely enclosed, and purpose built for racing, not comprising of closed public roads as the Grand Prix venues of the day were. In the decades following the First World War a number of these facilities would spring up across Europe, but the first two, the originals if you like, are the ones we are interested in, and they have become, rightly, famed the world over.
In truth, motor sport features few, if any, names as legendary as Brooklands, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
To attempt anything more than a potted history of these two great leviathans of the genre would be to stray far from the beaten track, and as such I would recommend the reader, should they wish, peruse such as William Boddy's great History of Brooklands tomes, and one of the many such that cover the vast history of the American counterpart. Here, in summary, we will look at a brief introduction to the pair.
Brooklands was the brainchild of Hugh Locke-King, a landowner who had attended races in Europe (including the French Grand Prix) and had come to the conclusion that a race-circuit and test track in Britain would be essential to the development of the fledgling motor industry.
Opened officially in 1907, Brooklands was unique in design, a huge oval with heavily banked corners, designed for both high speeds and spectator satisfaction, with an airfield in the in field that would become crucial to the concurrent advancement in aviation in the UK at the time. With a total length of three and a quarter miles (two miles of which were flat, the rest banked) Brooklands leant itself perfectly to record attempts and racing, of which much would be carried out over the next thirty years.
Initially this high tech circuit played host to wealthy gentleman drivers with their Darracqs and Bentleys, with publicity of the time promising the somewhat exclusive atmosphere of ‘The Right Crowd, and no Crowding!”. It would not be until the 1920’s that Brooklands held a ‘Grand Prix’, so we will return to Weybridge at a later date.
Indianapolis followed a couple of years later, in 1909, with the first ‘500’, surely among the most legendary and well-known sporting events world-wide, taking place in 1911. This two and a half mile ‘oval’ (in truth four straights joined by four corners) has held the legendary race each year since the first running, bar interruptions by virtue of the two World Wars, and continues do so today.
The first ‘500’ was won by Harroun in a Marmon, and notably a FIAT came home in third place, the Italian manufacturer extending its racing dominance to the far side of the Atlantic.
In the years to come America and Europe would begin to follow fundamentally different paths in terms of motor sport, the US following the route of ‘Oval’ racing that is still prevalent there today with circuits popping up across the continent, while Europe would tend toward ‘road’ circuits, as such as Monza, le Mans, Mellaha and Spa Francorchamps came into being.
For now, though, the paths crossed many times, and the European makes Peugeot, Delage and Mercedes, with FIAT in tow, held sway in the Indianapolis 500 through the early years up to the First World War. From 1920 onwards the tide turned as Duesenberg and Miller, names inextricably linked with American motor sport, took a stranglehold on the great race.
Back to Grand Prix racing, and the French had, as mentioned earlier, abandoned the race following the lack of home success in the 1908 event. For 1912, however, Peugeot had employed a Swiss engineer by the name of Ernest Henry, a man who could be considered the Adrian Newey of his day, who designed a machine that was very advanced for the day with the specific intention of defeating the German and Italian entries.
The unique, and inspirational, feature of the car was the presence of two overhead camshafts, making this the first appearance of a format that would continue for decades to come. In his work Henry was aided by three men, all drivers, who would bring their knowledge of driving these machines to bear in the success of the new machine – they were Paolo Zucarelli, Jules Goux and, many say the fastest driver of the era, Georges Boillot.
Goux would take Peugeot to previously unattained heights with a magnificent victory in the Indianapolis 500 in 1913, Zucarelli would win many races for the marque, most notably the ‘Grand Prix de Voiturettes’ in 1912, and Boillot would triumph twice in the French Grand Prix, in 1912 and 1913, before Lautenschlager took the spoils for Mercedes, again, in 1914, and would also dominate the Indianapolis race of that year before his tyres put paid to victory. With the outbreak of the World War motor sport came to an abrupt stop soon after, and the motor industry in Europe entered a prolonged hibernation that it would not emerge from until the early 1920’s.
At this stage, a visit to the list of ‘fatal’ accidents’ that Monkhouse provides, the one that we briefly attended in part one is essential, as it sheds some necessary, if unwanted, light upon the fate of our heroes to date. I believe we left it at 1904, so let’s bring things up to date:
1907 A Clement (Clement-Bayard), French Grand Prix
1907 V Hermon (Minerva), Brooklands
1908 Cissac (Panhard), French Grand Prix
1910 C Guippone (Peugeot), Coupe des Voiturettes
1911 M Fournier (Corre-la-Licorne), Le Mans
1912 D Bruce-Brown (FIAT), Milwaukee, USA
1913 P Lambert (Talbot), Brooklands
1913 P Zuccarelli (Peugeot), Nonancourt-Evreux Road
1914 S Wishart (Mercer), Elgin Trophy, USA
1916 G Boillot On flying patrol, France.
A list, then, that includes some veritable greats of early motor racing – Clement had been there ‘at the beginning, as had Hermon; Guippones death, in a practice session, led to Zuccarelli taking his place; Fournier, a veteran of many years; David Bruce Brown the first casualty of the American scene, and poor Boillot, the rising star of the era. Notable, too, is that Brooklands had seen its first fatality in the year it opened.
A few words about Boillot are worthy of the closing chapter of this era of the sport, an era described y William Court, in ‘Grand Prix Requiem’, when writing of this very man as ‘The End of the Beginning’.
At the outbreak of War Boillot was appointed driver to the French General Joseph Jacques-Cesare Joffre, and it was written that ‘with Boillot at the wheel Gen. Joffre frequently covers 70 mile an hour over the roads of France….’
Or did he? Like many stories from those troubled times the truth is somewhat clouded, and correspondence after his death insisted that Boillot had never been the driver of the General, but had been a member of a team driving urgent despatches from and to the front. What is known is that he soon transferred to the Air Force.
In the early morning of May 20th, 1916, Boillot found his Nieuport fighter up against five enemy Fokkers and, having been shot through the heart at 9000ft, this brave man, already a recipient of the Legion d’Honneur for an earlier act of typical bravery, crash landed helplessly in trees. He was buried the next day at Vadelaincourt not far from where he fell.
So came the end of ‘the beginning’, and five years of terrible plight that would bring the world to its knees.
In part three we return following the war, with the resurrection of the French Grand Prix in 1921, and an era that would see the emergence of some of the most evocative and legendary names in the history of Motor Sport.
Written by Steve Turnbull on Tue, 26 Dec 2006 16:51:37
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