Grand Prix season 1921
In the 1921 Grand Prix season , a Grand Prix de l'ACF took place for the first time after the end of the First World War, and this year it was held on the Circuit de la Sarthe near Le Mans .
For the first time ever, a second International Grand Prix was held this year with the Italian Grand Prix at the Circuito di Montichiari near Brescia .
In addition, other races were held - mostly in Italy , including the Targa Florio in Sicily and the Coppa Montenero in Livorno . The prestigious Indianapolis 500 in the USA also took place.
Season description
As was the case between 1909 and 1911, immediately after the First World War, a cartel of French and British automobile companies prevented Grand Prix races in Europe. However, some European companies, including the French manufacturer Ballot, a newcomer to the industry - who had switched its engine production to the construction of automobiles after the arms contracts ceased to exist - did not want to forego participating in races for the marketing of their products and sent their products as early as 1919 teams again to participate in the Indianapolis 500 mile race . As the new spearhead of the French automotive industry, Ballot had engaged Ernest Henry , the designer of the Peugeot , which won the 1912 and 1913 Grand Prix , but fell out of favor there after the defeat in 1914 . With experience from aircraft engine construction during the war, the path clearly pointed towards the high-speed, short-stroke eight-cylinder in-line cylinder, which in the following years practically became the standard for racing engines well beyond the 1920s. The US company Duesenberg , which was also inspired by aircraft engine construction and whose eight-cylinder even allowed speeds of up to 5000 revolutions per minute, came to the same conclusion , as did Fiat and the Sunbeam - Talbot - Darracq group ( STD Motors ).
When the racing formulas for Indianapolis and Grand Prix races were standardized to 3 liters displacement and 800 kg minimum weight in 1920, the manufacturers on both continents were given the opportunity to compete against each other, and in 1921 Duesenberg took part in the first Grand Prix de l 'ACF after the war - apart from Walter Christie's lonely appearance at the 1907 Grand Prix - for the first time since the time of the Gordon Bennett Races an American team competed in a European Grande Épreuve . Fiat, on the other hand, had not finished building the racing cars in time because of workers' unrest, just as the new designs of the French-British STD group proved to be not yet fully developed.
The race on the new Circuit de La Sarthe near Le Mans , the course of which is essentially used for the 24-hour race of Le Mans to this day, became a clear affair for Jimmy Murphy , not least thanks to the technological advantage of the Americans , which, in addition to the greater maneuverability of its Duesenberg engine, owed its approximately 15-minute lead over the two subsequent ballots to the hydraulic brakes used for the first time in a Grand Prix race.
Unlike before, the Grand Prix season was not over yet. For the first time ever, another international Grand Prix was held in 1921 with the Italian Grand Prix. The Italian automobile club took up the idea of a racing week and organized a total of four automobile races on a 17.3 km long Circuito di Montichiari road circuit near Brescia - two each for Grand Prix cars and voiturettes , which in turn were divided into works teams and privately competing men's drivers ( Gran Premio Gentlemen ). There were also two runs for planes and motorcycles on the program.
Of course, the main race, the actual Gran Premio d'Italia, was only reserved for participants in the Grand Prix class, and because the Duesenberg team had traveled back to the United States after their success at Le Mans, and so did the STD group Afraid of taking the risk of traveling to Italy, Ballot and Fiat were only two companies with three cars each. On top of that, the Fiat proved to be quick, but due to a lack of sufficient development time - a workers strike had paralyzed the plant for some time - not really stable, so that Ballot and Jules Goux were finally able to score his long-awaited victory in front of his stable mate Jean Chassagne . Edouard Ballot then withdrew his team from international Grand Prix racing and chief designer Ernest Henry moved to Sunbeam in 1922.
In addition to these two major European events, a number of other races with the title Grand Prix also took place (e.g. the Grand Prix de Boulogne , the Gran Premio delle Vetturette as part of the race week in Brescia, or the Grand Prix de Penya Rhin in Spain). This increasing softening of the concept of Grand Prix should ultimately lead to the introduction of the Grande Épreuves category by the AIACR in the near future for the internationally most important “official” Grand Prix.
With its participation in the Targa Florio , Mercedes finally returned to the international racing stage, but German manufacturers were initially excluded from the two subsequent "official" Grands Prix as a result of the defeat in the First World War .
Racing calendar
Grandes Épreuves
| date | run | route | winner | statistics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25.07. |
 ACF Grand Prix
|
Circuit de la Sarthe |
 Jimmy Murphy ( Duesenberg ) |
statistics |
| 2 | 04.09. |
 Italian Grand Prix
|
Circuito di Montichiari |
Jules Goux ( Ballot ) |
statistics |
More races
| date | run | route | winner | statistics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 22nd |
Circuito del Garda
|
Salò |
Eugenio Silvani ( Bugatti ) |
|
| 05/29 |
Targa Florio
|
Medio circuito delle Madonie |
Giulio Masetti ( Fiat ) |
statistics |
| 05/30 |
Indianapolis 500
|
Indianapolis Motor Speedway |
Tommy Milton ( Frontenac ) |
statistics |
| 06.06. |
Coppa della Cascine
|
Florence |
"Deodorant" ( Chiribiri ) |
|
| 07/24 |
Circuito del Mugello
|
Circuito stradale del Mugello |
Giuseppe Campari ( Alfa Romeo ) |
|
| 04.09. |
Coppa Florio
|
Circuito di Montichiari |
Jules Goux ( Ballot ) |
|
| 11.09. |
Gran Premio Gentlemen
|
Circuito di Montichiari |
Giulio Masetti ( Mercedes ) |
|
| 25.09. |
Coppa Montenero
|
Circuito di Montenero |
Corrado Lotti ( Ansaldo ) |
Web links
- Hans Etzrodt: GRAND PRIX WINNERS 1895–1949. www.kolumbus.fi, January 5, 2014, accessed April 6, 2015 .
- 1921 Grand Prix. (No longer available online.) Www.teamdan.com, archived from the original on January 29, 2019 ; accessed on June 24, 2020 (English).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Several races for the American Grand Prize had already taken place between 1908 and 1916 , but at most the first editions had the character of a really important international racing event