Great Britain Grand Prix 1926

Race winner Louis Wagner

The 1st RAC Grand Prix  - as the race was officially called - took place on August 7, 1926 on a 4.21 km long track variant of the English Brooklands racecourse. The race was a valuation run for the second automobile world championship and was held according to the provisions of the International Grand Prix racing formula (racing cars up to 1.5 liters displacement; minimum weight 600 kg, body width at least 80 cm) over 110 laps, which corresponds to a total distance of 463.10 km corresponded.

The winners were Robert Sénéchal and Louis Wagner , who had replaced each other at the wheel of a Delage Type 15 S 8 . Malcolm Campbell's second place secured the Bugatti brand the world championship title this season early.

run

With this run on the English Brooklands-Bahn - the first permanent race track in the world built specially for this purpose - a Grand Prix race took place on British soil for the first time in 1926, which was also counted for the then World Championship for automobile brands. In order to be able to offer a somewhat demanding course for this occasion, chicanes made of sandbags were built on the route .

Although some registered participants did not take part in the race again, the field of nine cars was able to clearly surpass the two previous races in France and Spain, which were very disappointing in this regard . For the first time in the season, the new eight-cylinder racing cars, which had actually been developed and built as Talbots in France, due to the somewhat opaque branding policy of the British-French STD group, but officially under the group brand Darracq as a British team with the Driver trio Henry Segrave , Albert Divo and Jules Moriceau were sent into the race. Even during training, the cars that were not yet fully developed began to experience strong vibrations on the front axle when braking, which made the drivers very insecure about the race.

The main competitor Delage was also worried with the new Type 15 S 8 eight- cylinder, although attempts had been made since the race in San Sebastián to get a grip on the overheating of the cockpit caused by the exhaust duct. It was also hoped that the cooler British climate would make this problem even easier. After making a spontaneous decision to make himself available for the team as a substitute driver in Spain, Robert Sénéchal was rewarded with the fact that Delage officially provided him with the third car for the race in England, alongside Robert Benoist and Louis Wagner . Bugatti , on the other hand, did not come with the actual regular line-up, but was represented by the local driver Malcolm Campbell , who had previously been the holder of the absolute world speed record for automobiles and who had acquired one of the current Type 39A Grand Prix cars. The other two participants were, on the one hand, an older model from Aston Martin with George Eyston at the wheel, and the Halford Special was a similar chassis, in which Frank Halford had implanted a six-cylinder engine he had developed himself in the best British tradition of self-build which he originally even planned to have a turbocharger .

Surprisingly, Divo and Segrave's Talbots took the lead right from the start, while their team-mate Moriceau was eliminated after half a lap with a broken front axle. After a few laps, however, Divo had to pit to change the spark plugs, so that Segrave alone had to keep the competition in check. But even Wagner soon had to park his Delage on board because of the acute risk of fire, a clear indication that the problems with the exhaust had not really been brought under control. A little later, Segrave finally lost two laps due to a puncture and with it his lead to Benoist, who until then had driven a rather wait-and-see race with his Delage. His brand mate Sénéchal had meanwhile reached third place with spectacular drifts through the chicanes, followed by the three locals, Halford, Campbell and Eyston, ahead of Divo, who was already a little behind at the end of the field.

In this formation it went through the first third of the race until Segrave gave up because of increasing problems with his car. For Talbot, only Divo, who was far behind, was in the race, who was now led by Benoist by a wide margin over his stable colleague Sénéchal. In both cases, however, the heat problem slowly became acute again in the last third of the race, so that the team even had to set up water buckets in the pits, in which they could regularly cool their feet. In this way, the still misfiring Divo came up again and for a while it even seemed as if Halford would now have serious chances of victory in view of the problems with the leading trio, but the hopes of the two were dashed shortly after by technical defects. Besides the two limping Delage, who had in the meantime been taken over by Wagner and André Dubonnet , who was registered as a substitute driver , only Campbell with his Bugatti was still in the race. After an early repair stop, it drove through slowly but without major problems and was even able to pass Dubonnet shortly before the end, when real flames now licked from the engine compartment into the cockpit. Wagner was too far ahead to be caught up and after an eventful race he was able to save the first victory for the new Delage over the line.

Results

Registration list

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Louis Coatelen	01	Albert Divo	Talbot GPLB	Talbot 1.5L I4 compressor	M.
	06th	Jules Moriceau
	09	Henry Segrave
Automobiles Delage	02	Robert Benoist	Delage Type 15 S 8 1926	Delage 1.5L I8	M.
	10	Louis Wagner
	14th	Robert Sénéchal
	-	André Dubonnet
Captain George Eyston	03	George Eyston	Aston Martin GP	Anzani 1.5L I4
John Godfrey Parry-Thomas	04th	Clive Gallop	Thomas Special
	12	Scrap Thistlethwayte
Major Frank Halford	05	Frank Halford	Halford special	Halford 1.5L I6
Captain Malcolm Campbell	07th	Malcolm Campbell	Bugatti T39	Bugatti 1.5L I8
	11	Malcolm Campbell	Talbot	Talbot 1.5L I4
Thomas George John	08th	Maurice Harvey	Alvis GP	Alvis 1.5L I8
Captain Alastair Miller	15th	Alastair Miller	Bugatti T39	Bugatti 1.5L I8

Race result

Item	driver	constructor	Round	Stops	time	begin	Fastest lap	Failure reason
01	Robert Sénéchal Louis Wagner	Delage	110		4:00: 56.6 h	9
02	Malcolm Campbell	Bugatti	110		+ 9: 47.6 min	6th
03	Robert Benoist André Dubonnet	Delage	110		+ 12: 11.8 min	2
-	Albert Divo	Talbot	87		DNF	1		Compressor damage
-	Frank Halford	Halford	82		DNF	4th		defective universal joint of the cardan shaft
-	Henry Segrave	Talbot	62		DNF	7th	1: 50.8 min	Compressor damage
-	George Eyston	Aston Martin	44		DNF	3		defective cylinder head gasket
-	Louis Wagner	Delage	6th		DNF	8th		persistent misfires
-	Jules Moriceau	Talbot	1		DNF	5		Axle break

literature

• Adriano Cimarosti: Car races - The great prices of the world, cars, tracks and pilots from 1894 to today , Hallwag AG, Bern, 1986, ISBN 3-444-10326-3
• Paul Sheldon with Yves de la Gorce & Duncan Rabagliati: A Record of Grand Prix and Voiturette Racing, Volume 2 1926–1931 , St. Leonard's Press, Bradford, 1990, ISBN 0-9512433-3-0 (English)
• Karl Ludvigsen: Classic Grand Prix Cars - The front-engined Formula 1 Era 1906–1960 , Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2000, ISBN 0-7509-2189-7
• Hodges, David: A – Z of Grand Prix Cars , The Crowood Press, Ramsbury, 2001, ISBN 1-86126-339-2

Web links

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

• Leif Snellman, Felix Muelas: BRITISH GRAND PRIX. In: www.kolumbus.fi. February 21, 2019, accessed on March 21, 2020 .