1926 French Grand Prix

Starting grid for the Grand Prix. Only three vehicles at the start

The winner Jules Goux , here at the Gran Premio de San Sebastián 1926

Second place Bartolomeo Costantini

The XX. The French Grand Prix ( XX Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France ) took place on June 27, 1926 on the Circuit de Miramas in Miramas and was a race for the second World Automobile Championship . It was also the first race under the changed regulations of the International Grand Prix racing formula (displacement limit 1.5 liters, minimum weight 600 kg, body width at least 80 cm). It was held over 100 laps of 5.0956 km, which corresponded to a total distance of 509.6 km.

Only three racing cars from the Bugatti team appeared at the start , of which only Jules Goux made it over the specified distance. The race is generally considered to be one of the absolute low points in Grand Prix history.

run

To host the Grand Prix of 1926, the ACF had for the first time awarded the contract to the Marseille Automobile Club with its Miramas racetrack. It was a 5 km long oval course with slightly elevated curves. In order to make the route at least a little more varied, two chicanes were built in front of the two slightly elevated curves, which also increased the length of the lap. The Grand Prix des Voiturettes for racing cars up to 1.1 liter displacement should also provide a little more variety as a supporting program, which was won by a Salmson with driver Casse at the wheel.

Originally, four French manufacturers announced their participation in the 1926 Grand Prix: Delage , Talbot , Bugatti and Sima-Violet , for which, however, new models had to be constructed due to the changed racing formula. Bugatti had taken the safe route and, with the Type 39A, launched a 1.5-liter version of the successful Type 35 model now also equipped with a compressor . Delage and Talbot, on the other hand, pushed the technological competition to the extreme with their new eight-cylinder models, which, however, led to considerable delays in their development. Finally, both companies withdrew their reports a few days before the race, as did Sima-Violet, where the money had run out of money for the development of an unusual “flat” 180 ° four- cylinder two-stroke engine . On race day, therefore, only three lone racing cars from the Bugatti team appeared at the start. However, the race had to be held because the organizers had forgotten a corresponding passage in the entry conditions and so the prize money would otherwise have had to be paid to Bugatti "without a fight". If this nipped practically any tension in the bud, there was also the fact that the cars of Bartolomeo Costantini and Pierre de Vizcaya were at a considerable disadvantage compared to their team mate Jules Goux, because they did not use the usual racing gasoline from BP due to an alleged logistics error , but only poorer fuel with a higher benzene content was available.

So the race became an extremely monotonous affair. While Goux tried to offer the spectators at least some entertainment through a spectacular driving style, Costantini and de Vizcaya had to drive very cautiously for fear of overheating their engines and lost additional time during their pit stops because the engines were difficult to get back into motion afterwards . When de Vizcaya finally had to give up about halfway through the race with engine failure, Goux had already gained half an hour ahead of Costantini, who now stopped every couple of laps to allow the engine to cool down. Allegedly, he is said to have acted to the audience that he was suffering too much from the heat and that he poured water into his hat to distract attention from the critical condition of his car. After more than four and a half hours of solitary driving, Goux was finally flagged as the winner, while Costantini, 15 laps behind, was already too far behind to be classified. 150,000 francs, which went to Bugatti as prize money, has seldom been earned more easily. Another legend of this anecdotal race says that Ettore Bugatti is said to have sworn before the subsequent run of the Voiturettes Salmson race director Émile Petit that under no circumstances could his “small cars” come off faster than Goux's winning time.

Results

Registration list

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Automobiles Talbot	02	Henry Segrave	Talbot GPLB	Talbot 1.5L I4 compressor	M.
	10	Albert Divo
	18th	Jules Moriceau
Automobiles Violet	04th	Marcel Violet	Sima-Violet 2-stroke	Sima-Violet 1.5L Flat-4
	12
	20th
Automobiles Delage	06th	Robert Benoist	Delage Type 15 S 8 1926	Delage 1.5L I8	M.
	14th	Edmond Bourlier
	22nd
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti	08th	Meo Costantini	Bugatti T39A	Bugatti 1.5L I8	M.
	16	Pierre de Vizcaya
	24	Jules Goux

Race result

Item	driver	constructor	Round	Stops	time	begin	Fastest lap	Failure reason
01	Jules Goux	Bugatti	100		4: 38: 43.800 h	3	2: 24.0 min
-	Meo Costantini	Bugatti	85		NC	1
-	Pierre de Vizcaya	Bugatti	45		DNF	2		Engine failure

Web links

Commons : French Grand Prix 1926  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• XX Grand Prix de l'ACF www.teamdan.com, archived from the original on February 7, 2019 (English). 
• Leif Snellman, Felix Muelas: GRAND PRIX DE L'AUTOMOBILE CLUB DE FRANCE. In: www.kolumbus.fi. November 7, 2018 (English). 

Remarks

1. ↑ The first race organized as the Grand Prix de l'ACF took place in 1906. In the 1920s, however, the “big” city-to-city races of the early years between 1895 and 1903 were also awarded these titles, although the ACF was founded after the Paris-Bordeaux-Paris 1895 race. This counting method made the event from 1906 the official ninth Grand Prix de l'ACF. This numbering was after the 1968 renaming of the Grand Prix de l'ACF for Grand Prix de France continued further throughout.