1911 French Grand Prix

Race winner Victor Hémery with his mechanic and co-driver Antonio Fagnano

Second placed Ernest Friederich

Third: Fernand Gabriel

The Grand Prix de France (also derogatory Grand Prix des Vieux Tacots ^a ) took place on July 23, 1911 on the 54.6 km long ^b Circuit de la Sarthe near Le Mans in France . The race was held over twelve laps, which corresponded to a race distance of 655.2 km.

The organizer was the Automobile Club de la Sarthe et de l'Ouest (ACSO), the regional automobile club in western France. Contrary to the title, it was therefore not an official French Grand Prix ^c , because that was until 1967 under the name Grand Prix de l' ACF focused exclusively from the parent French national automobile club.

run

After the Grand Prix had not been held in the previous two years due to the lack of interest on the part of the automobile manufacturers , the Automobile Club de France attempted to bring its annual Grand Prix de l'ACF back to life in 1911 . However, the reporting result again fell well short of expectations, so that the ACF threatened an extreme loss of face. To avoid being end up with empty hands, the offer of was ACSO readily accepted, under his direction instead a race for the Grand Prix de France align.

Overall, the line-up of the field remained weak. Six of the 14 cars were so-called Voiturettes , so that in the actual Grand Prix class only eight mostly older models were launched. The Fiat of the eventual winner Victor Hémery was an ordinary touring car that had not been accepted by a Parisian customer and was now sent into the race without the originally intended body.

The start of the race took place on Sunday morning at 7:00 a.m., with the participants being sent individually onto the track as usual at fixed time intervals. At the end of the first lap, Georges Deydier on Cottin & Desgouttes was in the lead ahead of Jacques Fauquet ( Rolland-Pilain ) and Maurice Fournier ( Corre-La Licorne ). In the second round Fournier took the lead. In the fourth lap Arthur Duray took the lead on Lorraine-Dietrich .

Fournier was in second place until the middle of the sixth lap when he had to stop at Pontlieue at around 11:20 a.m. to top up the cooling water. After resuming the race, fourth-placed Victor Hémery caught up with him in the Fiat . Hémery tried to overtake Fournier on the straight in the direction of route d'Arnage . When the two cars took the slight left turn near Ruaudin , about 5 km south of Le Mans, side by side at about 100  km / h, an axle broke on Fournier's Corre-La Licorne. The car overturned, as a result of which Fournier and his co-driver Georges Louvel were thrown out and came to rest in a field called Les Hunaudières . The driver died on the spot, and his co-driver died of head injuries a few hours later in the hospital in Le Mans.

Despite the accident, the race was not interrupted. Hémery took the lead on the seventh lap and, together with his co-driver Antonio Fagnano, won after twelve laps ahead of Ernest Friederich ( Bugatti Voiturette) and Fernand Gabriel (Rolland-Pilain). His average speed after seven hours of racing was 91.2 km / h. Despite the distance of more than 50 km, Friederich and Gabriel were two or three laps behind the winner and did not drive the entire distance, but were also flagged after Hémery had crossed the finish line.

Fournier's crash site years later became part of the Circuit de la Sarthe , where since 1923 the 24-hour race at Le Mans will be held. It lies almost exactly on today's Mulsanne curve at the end of the Hunaudières straight.

Results

Registration list

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Corre-La Licorne	02	Maurice Fournier	Corre-La Licorne
Edmund Gentil	03	Phillipe Barriaux	Alcyon
Automobiles Lorraine-Dietrich	05	Arthur Duray	Lorraine-Dietrich
Automobiles et Moteurs Cote	06th	Paul Leduc	Cote
	16	Jules Olier
	19th	Cyril de Vère
Automobiles Excelsior	09	Paul Rivière	Excelsior
Société Générale des Automobiles Porthos	10	Henri Robert Debray	Porthos
Rolland Pilain	11	Victor Rigal	Rolland Pilain
	15th	Jacques Fauquet
	18th	Fernand Gabriel
Automobiles Cottin et Desgouttes	12	Georges Deydier	Cottin & Desgouttes
Victor Hémery	13	Victor Hémery	Fiat S.61 Corsa or Fiat 90 HP	Fiat 10L I4	C.
Usines Bugatti	14th	Ernest Friederich	Bugatti T13	Bugatti 1.4L I4	M.

Race result

Item	driver	constructor	Round	Stops	time	begin	Fastest lap	Failure reason
01	Victor Hémery	Fiat	12	2	7: 06: 30,000	9	29: 36,000
02	Ernest Friederich	Bugatti	10	2	+ 2 rounds	10	40: 22.800
03	Fernand Gabriel	Rolland Pilain	9	2	+ 3 rounds	13	32: 11,000
04th	Arthur Duray	Lorraine-Dietrich	8th	1	DNF	3	31: 50,000	Power transmission
-	Paul Leduc	Cote	8th		DSQ	14th	29: 56,000
-	Phillipe Barriaux	Alcyon	6th		DNF	2	34: 12,000	failure
-	Maurice Fournier	Corre-La Licorne	5		DNF	1	30: 29,000	fatal accident by Fournier
-	Victor Rigal	Rolland Pilain	5		DNF	7th	31: 01.600	accident
-	Jacques Fauquet	Rolland Pilain	2		DNF	11	30: 05,000	Chassis broken
-	Paul Rivière	Excelsior	2		DNF	5	42: 00,000	Engine failure
-	Georges Deydier	Cottin & Desgouttes	1		DNF	8th	29: 45,600	Chassis broken
-	Henri Robert Debray	Prothos	1		DNF	6th	43: 00,000	Engine failure
-	Jules Olier	Cote	1		DNF	12	44: 00,000	Engine failure
-	Cyril de Vère	Cote	1		DNF	4th		failure

Web links

Commons : 1911 French Grand Prix  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Grand Prix de France / Grand Prix des Vieux Tacots. (No longer available online.) Www.teamdan.com, archived from the original on July 4, 2017 ; accessed on March 8, 2020 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Robert Dick: Mercedes and Auto Racing in the Belle Epoque 1895–1915 (English), p. 251
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Maurice Fournier. www.motorsportmemorial.org, accessed on March 8, 2020 (English). 
3. ↑ About the Fiat, p.61
4. ↑ Start list with Fiat p.61
5. ^ Grand Prix de France. In:  Prager Tagblatt , July 24, 1911, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).
6. ↑ The Grand Prix of the Sarthe. In:  Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Democratic organ / Neues Wiener Abendblatt. Evening edition of the (") Neue Wiener Tagblatt (") / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Evening edition of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt / Wiener Mittagsausgabe with Sportblatt / 6 o'clock evening paper / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Neue Freie Presse - Neues Wiener Journal / Neues Wiener Tagblatt , July 24, 1911, p. 14 (online at ANNO ).

Remarks

^a "Grand price of the old boxes"

^baccording to other information 54.006 km or 54.313 km long (see Le Mans Grand Prix de l'ACF Circuit (1911–1913) ) (English)

^cThe same applies to the Grands Prix de France of 1912 , 1913 and 1949 , as well as the series of eight races under this title in 1952 .