1935 French Grand Prix

Race winner Rudolf Caracciola in a Mercedes-Benz W 25

Start of the French Grand Prix

Rudolf Caracciola crossing the finish line in front of the grandstand filled with spectators

The XXI. The French Grand Prix ( XXI Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France ) took place on June 23, 1935 at the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry in France . As Grande Épreuve he was part of the European Grand Prix Championship in 1935 and was carried out over 40 laps of 12.504 km each according to the provisions of the International Grand Prix Formula (racing cars up to a maximum of 750 kg empty weight; 85 cm minimum width; race distance at least 500 km) corresponded to a total distance of 500.160 km.

The winner was Rudolf Caracciola in a Mercedes-Benz W 25 , who laid the foundation for winning the European championship title that year.

run

According to the tender conditions, up to four cars were allowed per manufacturer, but with a total of twelve entries from six teams, none of them had fully used the permitted number. Above all, the Mercedes-Benz team, in view of the sustained streak of success at the previous races in Monaco , Tripoli , as well as at the AVUS and the Nürburgring  , was absolutely determined to make up for the gap it suffered in the previous year and had already arrived weeks earlier to to optimally prepare for the race with an extensive training and test program. With the proven team of Rudolf Caracciola , Luigi Fagioli and Manfred von Brauchitsch , the team went into the official training as the clear favorite, which was now also evaluated for the first time at the French Grand Prix to determine the starting grid.

Nevertheless, it was the Auto Union team that initially dominated the event and, with Achille Varzi , who was fastest in training, was able to achieve two of the three positions on the front row together with Hans Stuck . The third driver in the team was Bernd Rosemeyer , who after his first ever automobile race on the Avus and his second place at the Eifelrennen had already secured Hermann zu Leiningen's place in the team, but again in Montlhéry with a slightly older model the Auto Union racing car had to be satisfied.

Surprisingly, the remaining position in the middle of the first row did not go to a Mercedes Silver Arrow , but to Tazio Nuvolari , who, together with Louis Chiron, represented Scuderia Ferrari as the official factory representative for Alfa Romeo . As expected, however, the positions at the end of the field for the two Maserati of Scuderia Subalpina , where the new Maserati V8-RI Grand Prix model registered for Philippe Étancelin had not yet become ready to race, so that finally Goffredo Zehender and Raymond Sommer competed for the team with two older Maserati 6C-34s . And Robert Benoist , who was the only one to represent the colors of the troubled Bugatti team at the home race, was not able to get past a lower position in the field with his lap times. In the training sessions, however, he still used his normal Bugatti Type 59 with 3.3 liter displacement, on which the car weight was then determined for the technical acceptance. On the night of the race, however, another racing car from Molsheim arrived, in which a voluminous 4.9-liter model from the former Bugatti Type 54 track car was installed.

The only other French representative did not even start. The SEFAC, registered as a driver for Marcel Lehoux, was the first project of a national racing car, which was launched after the recent disappointing results of French racing cars, especially as a response to the all-dominating Silver Arrows of arch-rival Germany. For this purpose, the Société d'Etude et de Fabrication d'Automobiles de Course ("Society for the Research and Manufacture of Racing Cars"; SEFAC for short ) was founded in 1934 on the initiative of the state and financed with donations . After most of the money, however, was already seeped into other channels, is needed Emile Petit , who as a designer of Salmson - Voiturette had already successfully created racing cars in the 1920s a name for the development with an almost vanishingly small budget to be satisfied. The result was finally an extremely overweight racing cars, with a counter-rotating two and coupled on the crankshaft four-cylinder engines with desmodromic valve control composite à la Salmson eight cylinder of together 2.8 liters capacity, and only about 250 hp output power, which after some disappointingly slow training rounds and - with the permissible weight limit being exceeded by almost 200 kg - with no prospect of being admitted to the race without having achieved anything.

Out of the rather naive idea of ​​slowing down the superior speed of the German racing cars, a total of three artificial chicanes were set up around the circuit in the fast passages. Unique in Grand Prix history was that one of them, whose position was a short distance behind the start and finish, was only set up during the race, after the cars had passed the spot for the first time immediately after the start.

Nuvolari - additionally motivated by his position on the front row of the grid - with his Alfa Romeo was able to accelerate the two Auto Union cars right from the start and finish the first lap as the leader ahead of Stuck and Varzi. The hopes associated with the establishment of the chicanes even seemed to work, because while Varzi had to stop at the pits for a long time on the second lap due to misfires on his Auto Union and Stuck was also out of the race a little later due to increasingly frozen brakes Nuvorlari continued to maintain his lead in front of the two Mercedes from Caracciola and Fagioli. Although the German had briefly checked that he was able to take the lead at any time, he soon took a wait-and-see position behind the Italian.

In the meantime, the bonnet of Benoist's Bugatti had come off, revealing the secret of his non-compliant engine for everyone to see. However, since he regularly spent most of the race in the pits to repair defects, the matter was apparently not pursued further. From then on, Varzi also had to constantly stop to replace the spark plugs that were always oily and after Rosemeyer had to park his car because of symptoms similar to those of his two teammates, the ambitions of the Auto Union team had finally failed.

When Nuvolari finally had to retire on the 14th lap, well before half-time of the race, with differential damage - a notorious weak point of Tipo B that had long been believed to have been overcome  - only the three leading Mercedes remained together on one lap and could now afford it to finish the race in formation. Towards the end of the race, however, Fagioli's car was plagued by technical problems, so that he was thrown back to fourth place behind Zehender on the Maserati, while Carraciola crossed the finish line with half a second ahead of von Brauchitsch as the winner.

Race to the European Championship

With his success in the Grand Prix de l'ACF , the triumphant advance of Rudolf Caracciola began, which would eventually bring him the European title for 1935. For a long time it was controversial whether the race was even counted as a championship run.

There had already been discussion at the AIACR congress in 1934 when the French automobile club ACF insisted on its position not to allow private drivers to participate in its Grand Prix. Although at the end of the race the status was still granted - as was the case for the Belgian and Italian Grand Prix , where only works teams were allowed to compete - a British journalist apparently already had the false report of being excluded from the ranking given the poor information policy of the AIACR rumored, albeit on the grounds that the French had refused in protest against the “German idea” of reintroducing a championship. In the aftermath, this representation found some distribution in British motorsport literature for a long time, but based on the published scores and other sources it can now be proven that the French Grand Prix of 1935 was actually included in the championship.

Results

Registration list

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Daimler-Benz AG	02	Rudolf Caracciola	Mercedes-Benz W 25B	Mercedes-Benz M 25 B 4.0L I8 compressor	C.
	04th	Luigi Fagioli
	06th	Manfred von Brauchitsch
Auto Union AG	08th	Achille Varzi	Auto Union B	Auto Union 5.6L V16 compressor	C.
	10	Hans Stuck
		Hermann zu Leiningen
	12	Bernd Rosemeyer	Auto Union B	Auto Union 5.0L V16 compressor
Scuderia Ferrari	14th	Tazio Nuvolari	Alfa Romeo Tipo B / P3	Alfa Romeo 3.2L I8 compressor	E.
	16	Louis Chiron
Scuderia Subalpina	18th	Goffredo Zehender	Maserati 6C-34	Maserati 3.7L I6 compressor	P
	20th	Raymond Summers
		Piero Dusio
	20th	Philippe Étancelin	Maserati V8-RI	Maserati 4.8L V8 supercharger
Société d'Etude et de Fabrication d'Automobiles de Course	22nd	Marcel Lehoux	SEFAC	SEFAC 2.8L 2 x V4	M.
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti	24	Robert Benoist	Bugatti T59 / 50S	Bugatti 4.9L I8 compressor	M.

Qualifying

Item	driver	constructor	Qualification training		begin
			time	Ø speed
01	Achille Varzi	Auto Union	5: 20.1 min	140.670 km / h	01
02	Tazio Nuvolari	Alfa Romeo	5: 23.6 min	139.110 km / h	02
03	Hans Stuck	Auto Union	5: 28.8 min	136.910 km / h	03
04th	Rudolf Caracciola	Mercedes Benz	5: 31.6 min	137.750 km / h	04th
05	Louis Chiron	Alfa Romeo	5: 31.9 min	135.630 km / h	05
06th	Bernd Rosemeyer	Auto Union	5: 36.6 min	133.730 km / h	06th
07th	Luigi Fagioli	Mercedes Benz	5: 37.9 min	133,200 km / h	07th
08th	Manfred von Brauchitsch	Mercedes Benz	5: 46.6 min	129.870 km / h	08th
09	Goffredo Zehender	Maserati	6: 10.8 min	121.400 km / h	09
10	Robert Benoist	Bugatti	no time		10
11	Raymond Summers	Maserati	no time		11

Race result

Item	driver	constructor	Round	Stops	time	begin	Fastest lap	Failure reason
01	Rudolf Caracciola	Mercedes Benz	40		4:00: 54.6 h	4th
02	Manfred von Brauchitsch	Mercedes Benz	40		+ 0.5 s	8th
03	Goffredo Zehender	Maserati	38		+ 2 rounds	9
04th	Luigi Fagioli	Mercedes Benz	37		+ 3 rounds	7th
05	Achille Varzi Bernd Rosemeyer	Auto Union	36		+ 4 rounds	1
06th	Raymond Summers	Maserati	35		+ 5 rounds	11
-	Robert Benoist	Bugatti	16		DNF	10		Axle break
-	Tazio Nuvolari	Alfa Romeo	14th		DNF	2	5: 29.1 min	Differential damage
-	Bernd Rosemeyer	Auto Union	11		DNF	6th		Brake defect
-	Louis Chiron	Alfa Romeo	8th		DNF	5		Differential damage
-	Hans Stuck	Auto Union	7th		DNF	3		Brake defect

Web links

Commons : French Grand Prix 1935  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• XXIX Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France. www.teamdan.com, accessed on March 22, 2015 (English). 
• Leif Snellman, Felix Muelas: XXI GRAND PRIX DE L'AUTOMOBILE CLUB DE FRANCE. www.kolumbus.fi, October 8, 2014, accessed April 23, 2020 (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.