Grand Prix season 1926
As in the previous year was the International Automobile Federation AIACR for the 1926 Grand Prix season one automotive world championship again advertised for which the results of the five-aligned this year Grandes Épreuves counted.
This main event was the Indianapolis 500 in the United States , the French Grand Prix , officially Grand Prix de l' ACF at the Circuit de Miramas in Miramas , the Grand Prix of San Sebastián on the Circuito Lasarte , who this year the honorary title Big European Prize , the Great Britain Grand Prix on the Brooklands high-speed train in Weybridge , Surrey, and the Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo di Monza north of Milan . All races had to be carried out according to the official International Grand Prix formula , which was changed as follows for 1926: displacement limit 1.5 liters (1925: 2.0 liters), minimum weight 600 kg (1925: 650 kg); The minimum width of the trolleys remains 80 cm; Rearview mirror mandatory; apparently no longer a given race distance (1925: 800 km), only the driver and a mechanic are allowed to work on the car during the race.
With victories in France, Spain and Italy, the French automobile company Bugatti secured the world championship title.
In addition - mostly in Italy and France - other important races were held, including in particular the Targa Florio in Sicily , the Coppa Montenero in Livorno , the Coppa Acerbo in Pescara and the Premio Reale di Roma . The Spanish Grand Prix was also of international importance.
The Grand Prix of Germany , which was held for the first time in 1926 at the AVUS in Berlin, was nominally announced as a sports car race .
Season description
The 1926 season led the Grand Prix sport into a deep crisis because fewer and fewer manufacturers were prepared to go to the extremely high cost of successfully participating in Grand Prix sport. As a result, the races were often characterized by extremely small fields of participants.
The main trigger for this was the change in the international racing formula from 2 to 1.5 liter displacement while reducing the minimum weight from 650 to 600 kg. The specification of two-seater racing cars was somewhat unclear, although single- seaters were permitted as an exception if they met the specified minimum width of 80 cm in the cockpit area. In principle, the Grand Prix racing cars corresponded to the previously very successful Voiturette category - a kind of "second league" in automobile racing - even if, depending on the specifications of the respective organizer, a second person was on board as a mechanic. In this class, the Talbot racing cars had previously set the tone, unless Fiat made one of its few appearances at a race. However, in view of the developments in the previous 2-liter formula, it was already foreseeable that enormous increases in engine speed were to be expected to compensate for the reduced displacement and that the manufacturers had to decide whether they were ready to get involved in the upcoming arms race in order to be competitive stay. For example, after winning the title in the previous year , Alfa Romeo completely stopped its Grand Prix involvement in 1926, also because the plant had meanwhile got into financial difficulties.
Talbot, who now took over the representation of the British-French STD group in the Grand Prix races instead of Sunbeam , and Delage , on the other hand, immediately began developing new racing cars with extremely sophisticated eight-cylinder engines. With 165 HP at 6500 revolutions per minute of the Delage Type 15 S 8 developed by Albert Lory , a liter output of 100 HP was exceeded for the first time, while the unit of the Talbot designed by the former Fiat engineer Vincenzo Bertariore still had 140 HP was able to come up with the performance of the previous year's 2-liter model from Sunbeam. Both companies went very similar otherwise, for example by taking advantage of the lack of a mechanic on board the racing car to run the drive train on the passenger side, so that the chassis could be significantly lower overall. This in turn led to an improvement in road holding and also to a significant reduction in the frontal area, so that the reduction in speeds aimed at with the new formula quickly turned out to be an illusion. However, the development of such extremely sophisticated racing cars brought both manufacturers to the limits of their financial and structural possibilities, so that the cars never reached full racing maturity by the end of the season. At Delage in particular, the drivers suffered from burns and symptoms of poisoning due to a fundamental design flaw - the exhaust was too close to the cockpit - so that they only had to endure short racing sections at the wheel and had to come to the pits again and again to change drivers.
Bugatti , on the other hand, was not prepared to go along such a path and proposed a comparatively simple but immediately operational solution against it. The range of versions derived from the Bugatti Type 35 was expanded to include a version with reduced displacement, which had already been used in Monza the previous year , and it was now the last team to also have a compressor . For this purpose, Edmond Moglia, a specially specialized engineer, was under contract, but the output of 110 hp remained rather modest.
Nevertheless, Bugatti consistently used its lead at the beginning of the season. Even at the Targa Florio , which was in no way inferior to the Grand Prix at that time, but was held according to the free formula , the team was able to use another version of the Type 35 , this time enlarged in displacement, in the order of Bartolomeo Costantini , Ferdinando Minoia and Jules Goux achieve a one-two-three victory over last year's Delage Grand Prix cars. At the subsequent Grand Prix de l'ACF at the Miramas racetrack in the south of France , an undemanding oval course, the Bugatti team was completely among themselves in the race after all competitors whose new models were not yet ready to race had been canceled. This ensured the maximum number of points in the world championship for this race. For spectators and organizers, as well as for the sport as a whole, the race was probably the most unworthy of the entire Grand Prix history.
The course of the European Grand Prix on the Lasarte circuit near San Sebastián was only slightly better . The organizers had wisely separated the European Grand Prix as a world championship run from the actual Grand Prix of Spain and, out of concern about a repetition of the events of Miramas, scheduled the latter as a formula-free race that was held a week later. For the world championship run, in which the International Formula had to be used, with three cars each from Bugatti and Delage, at least twice as many participants and teams appeared as at the previous run. However, the high Spanish temperatures increased the heat problems in the Delage's cockpits, so that their drivers could only endure a few laps at the wheel. Because too few substitute drivers had been nominated, some of the cars stood in the pits without a driver for minutes, whereupon Robert Sénéchal, who happened to be a spectator, was unceremoniously hired as a pilot. So Bugatti came here again to a practically safe victory, just as the subsequent formula-free Spanish Grand Prix ended with a Bugatti success.
The winning streak was interrupted at the British Grand Prix , which was held for the first time in 1926 . On the one hand, under the significantly cooler climatic conditions, the heat problem of the Delages was not quite as noticeable, on the other hand, Malcolm Campbell was only a local driver with his own car for Bugatti. Instead, the Talbot team made an appearance for the first time on the fast Brooklands racecourse, which had been made a little more demanding in terms of driving due to chicanes made from sandbags. However, the cars still had to suffer from considerable initial difficulties, in particular axle breakages due to strong vibrations, so that none of them survived the race distance. The Delage drivers were not completely spared from overheating problems either, but in the end the victory of Sénéchal and Louis Wagner on Delage was ten minutes ahead of second placed Campbell on Bugatti and the Delage of Benoist / Dubonnet in 3rd place, although none other participants came into the ranking, it was the best race of the new racing formula to date.
According to the past season results, Bugatti only had to compete in the final Italian Grand Prix to finally secure the world championship title. This is probably one of the reasons why Delage and Talbot decided not to take part in this compulsory race, instead devoting themselves to eliminating the design flaws in their cars for the coming season at home. After all entered in Monza with Maserati , another big name in the future, the Grand Prix stage, so in addition to the Bugatti team and a completely hapless Chiribiri least another six participants appeared to start. But the new Italian eight-cylinder failed after just a few laps, which made most of the race with only two Bugattis left on the track as bleak as the French Grand Prix.
In 1926 a race for the German Grand Prix took place for the first time on the Berlin Avus . This had become possible because the automobile club of Germany had been approved as a member of the international automobile association AIACR again last year . In view of the fact that none of the domestic manufacturers had a competitive Grand Prix model, the organizer of the race tried to avoid international competition as much as possible. The Grand Prix was ultimately advertised as a sports car race , with a rather loose interpretation of this rule. Mercedes-Benz appeared with two nominally privately registered pure-bred Grand Prix eight-cylinders from 1924, which had been provided with two additional emergency seats in the rear. Rudolf Caracciola won in the pouring rain ahead of Christien Riecken on NAG and Willy Cleer on an Alfa Romeo sports model. There were several serious accidents during the race. The Italian Carlo Cattaneo had a fatal accident as Luigi Platé's co-driver during training and Adolf Rosenberger drove his Mercedes off the track during the race and - depending on the source - killed one or two timekeepers and the operator of the display panel. In another accident involving Talbot driver Hugo Urban-Emmerich , several spectators were injured.
Racing calendar
Grandes Épreuves
| date | run | route | winner | statistics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 05/31 |
 Indianapolis 500
|
Indianapolis Motor Speedway |
Frank Lockhart ( Miller ) |
statistics |
| 2 | 06/27 |
 ACF Grand Prix
|
Circuit de Miramas |
Jules Goux ( Bugatti ) |
statistics |
| 3 | 07/18 |
.svg){kind=small} Gran Premio de San Sebastián( European Grand Prix ) |
Circuito Lasarte |
Jules Goux ( Bugatti ) |
statistics |
| 4th | 07.08. |
 Great Britain Grand Prix
|
Brooklands |
Robert Sénéchal / Louis Wagner ( Delage ) |
statistics |
| 5 | 05.09. |
 Italian Grand Prix
|
Autodromo di Monza |
Louis Charavel ( Bugatti ) |
statistics |
More races
.svg){kind=small}
Web links
- Hans Etzrodt: GRAND PRIX WINNERS 1895-1949. www.kolumbus.fi, January 5, 2014, accessed on February 17, 2020 .
- 1926 Grand Prix. (No longer available online.) Www.teamdan.com, archived from the original on February 7, 2019 ; accessed on February 17, 2020 (English).
- Hans Etzrodt: The 1926 Automobile World Championship. www.kolumbus.fi, April 30, 2013, accessed on February 17, 2020 (English).
- Leif Snellman, Felix Muelas: Detailed history of the 1926 Grand Prix season . In: www.kolumbus.fi. February 21, 2019, accessed on March 21, 2020 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Based on the sources, it is also not possible to understand whether a certain minimum distance had been set for the races this season - unlike before.