1931 French Grand Prix
The XVII. French Grand Prix (nominally XXV Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France ) took place on June 21, 1931 at the 12.5 km long Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry in France . As Grande Épreuve , it was a valuation run for the European Grand Prix Championship in 1931 and was held in accordance with the applicable regulations without a predetermined racing formula for the cars (only a minimum width of 100 cm had to be adhered to) over a duration of 10 hours, with two pilots at each Took turns driving a car.
The winner was the driver pairing Louis Chiron / Achille Varzi in a Bugatti Type 51 .
run
The second Grande Épreuve of the season even achieved a significant increase compared to the Italian Grand Prix with a field of 23 cars. However, an even stronger sign of the beginning of the recovery of the official Grand Prix races after the abolition of almost all technical restrictions for the cars was the participation of all three official works teams from Bugatti , Alfa Romeo and Maserati with three cars each - a comparable line-up had been since 1914 no more French Grand Prix seen.
For the home race with Louis Chiron and Achille Varzi, Bugatti used what is probably the strongest driver pairing of the season on the new successful Bugatti Type 51 with a DOHC series eight cylinder with a displacement of 2.3 liters. Two other identical cars were occupied by Albert Divo and Guy Bouriat as well as William Grover-Williams (under the pseudonym "W. Williams") and Caberto Conelli . "Williams" is likely to owe its commitment as the official works driver to the establishment of contact with the British tire manufacturer Dunlop after another debacle had emerged during training with the Michelin tires used .
Alfa Romeo also competed with three of its latest Grand Prix racing cars, also with a displacement of 2.3 liters, which, following their previous success at the Italian Grand Prix, went down in history as the Alfa Romeo "Monza" . The driver pairings this time were Giuseppe Campari / Baconin Borzacchini , Tazio Nuvolari / Giovanni Minozzi and finally Ferdinando Minoia / Goffredo Zehender . The only real novelty this time came from Maserati, where, after the disappointing results at the start of the season, the engine of one of the three Tipo 26Ms had in the meantime been bored out to 2.8 liters of displacement. This car was made available in Montlhéry Luigi Fagioli and Ernesto Maserati , while the pairings René Dreyfus / Pietro Ghersi and Clemente Biondetti / Luigi Parenti had to make do with the 2.5-liter version of the 26M , which had remained virtually unchanged since the previous year .
With Rudolf Caracciola and Otto Merz with her from the Mercedes-Benz managed -Werksmannschaft powerful Mercedes SSKL - racing cars with 7.1-liter straight-six was next for the first time since the First World War, again a German team in a French Grand Prix at the start . The rest of the field was ultimately made up of private drivers who, despite the length of the race, mostly had to get along without a larger pit crew and for that reason alone had little chance of success.
In front of a record crowd of over 100,000 spectators, Fagioli started the best on the new Maserati and led the crowd through the first lap. Soon he and Chiron (Bugatti) were able to pull away a bit and as a result the two of them held a gripping battle for the lead for about an hour, during which the lead changed several times. The Maserati from Dreyfus / Ghersi with the other two factory Bugattis from Divo / Bouriat and "Williams" / Conelli were still close behind, while the Alfa Romeo could not or did not quite follow the high initial pace.
As the duration of the race increased, however, the brakes became more and more an issue, the first victim of which was the Maserati by Fagioli / Ernesto Maserati. Now the great advantage of the Bugattis came to light, where the brake drums were firmly integrated into the light alloy rims of the wheels, so that they were automatically replaced with every tire change. With Maserati and Alfa Romeo, on the other hand, just renewing the pads took several minutes, not to mention a complete change of the brake drum. In the Maserati from Dreyfus / Ghersi, parts of the braking system from the decommissioned Fagioli / Maserati car had to be installed, but this car also fell back further and further.
At the end of the sixth hour of racing, the three Bugattis were one lap ahead of the Nuvolari / Minozzi Alfa Romeo, which soon afterwards moved up to third due to the retirement of “Williams” / Conelli. But the braking situation in Alfa Romeo's warehouse was also becoming increasingly critical, so that soon only Campari / Borzacchini were several laps behind the two Bugattis, while Nuvolari / Minozzi's car was now even behind the two privately used Maserati British "Tim" Birkin and George Eyston fell behind.
As in the previous race in Monza, the audience had long since begun to leave when, 40 minutes before the end of the race, the second-placed Bugatti from Divo / Bouriat could no longer continue the journey with a cracked engine mount. In order not to jeopardize the sure win, Varzi was then ordered to take the overdrive in the last remaining car of the team, but at the end of the ten hours he was still able to cross the line with three laps ahead of the Alfa Romeo from Campari / Borzacchini . Third place went to Biondetti / Parenti in a Maserati, who managed to catch their British brand colleagues Birkin / Eyston shortly before the end. In fifth place was Robert Sénéchal on his former Grand Prix Delage from 1927 , who had driven through the race all by himself and, as usual, was particularly noticeable due to his well-known spectacular driving style - which he himself always had great fun.
Results
Registration list
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Race result
1 Luigi Fagioli
Web links
- Leif Snellman, Felix Muelas: XVII GRAND PRIX DE L'AUTOMOBILE CLUB DE FRANCE. www.kolumbus.fi, June 4, 2014, accessed on March 27, 2015 .
- XXV Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France. www.teamdan.com, accessed March 27, 2015 (English).
Remarks
- ↑ The first race organized as the Grand Prix de l'ACF took place in 1906. In the 1920s, however, the "great" 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.