1936 Monaco Grand Prix
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The VIII Monaco Grand Prix ( VIII Grand Prix de Monaco ) took place on April 13, 1936 at the Circuit de Monaco in Monaco . As Grande Épreuve , the race was part of the European Grand Prix Championship in 1936 , but, in deviation from 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), due to an exemption, it was only granted via the traditional distance of 100 laps of 3.180 km each, which corresponded to a total distance of 318.0 km.
The winner was Rudolf Caracciola in a Mercedes-Benz W 25 K .
run
In order to further emphasize the importance of its event, the Monaco Automobile Club followed the Swiss example and with the Coupe de Prince Rainier added a separate race for the Voiturette class to its Grand Prix program. This racing category enjoyed great popularity among private drivers and was often able to come up with particularly colorful fields of participants. The race in Monaco ended for the young British racing car brand ERA with a triple victory by the Siamese prince “B. Bira ” ahead of the Frenchman Marcel Lehoux from Algeria and the Greek racing driver Nicholas Embiricos .
The actual Grand Prix also featured a little less international diversity, but an absolutely top line-up. All five factory racing teams and a few selected private drivers had accepted the invitation. Of course, the favorite was the Mercedes team, which dominated the races almost at will in the preseason and with Rudolf Caracciola , Luigi Fagioli and Manfred von Brauchitsch also took the first three places in the European championship . In 1936, Louis Chiron , a fourth top international pilot, was hired, even if his form curve had flattened a little at the end of 1935. For this purpose, the plant had developed a new model with an extremely short wheelbase, the Mercedes-Benz W 25 K (“K” for “short”), which was actually intended for the installation of a powerful V12 engine with a displacement of 5.6 liters. Due to the unsatisfactory driving behavior of this combination, a 4.7-liter in-line eight-cylinder was used in the cars for Chiron and Caracciola instead, with which both promptly secured the first and third starting positions in training. Fagioli and von Brauchitsch, on the other hand, had last year's models with a longer chassis and 4.3-liter engine.
The Auto Union had refilled over the winter and the V16 engine raised in compliance with the weight limits in its final stage of development in an impressive 6-liter displacement, which for the first time even the power values of the souped Mercedes engines were exceeded. Even with the driver line-up, the team did not have to hide from the competition from their own country. In addition to the two experienced drivers Achille Varzi and Hans Stuck , who also won the traditional La Turbie hill climb on the first day of training , the young Bernd Rosemeyer had developed from a Grand Prix newcomer to a real top driver in just one season in 1935 .
At Scuderia Ferrari , which, as usual, was responsible for the works outings for Alfa Romeo's racing cars , only Tazio Nuvolari remained as the only world-class driver after major upheaval , accompanied by the experienced Antonio Brivio , the co-founder of the racing team, Mario Tadini , and the promising young talent Giuseppe Farina , who has just moved over from Maserati , has been reinforced. The team's fleet in Monaco consisted of four copies of the previous year's Alfa Romeo 8C-35 with an eight-cylinder in-line engine, which, given the nature of the route, was given preference over the new, more powerful, but also heavier V12 engine.
While Maserati, represented by Scuderia Torino , continued to struggle with the inadequacies of the previous year's Maserati V8-RI model , Bugatti presented a fully-fledged monoposto for the first time for training - in principle five years late - which is a derivative of the two-seater Bugatti Type 59 with 4.7-liter engine made of light metal. For the race, the drivers, Jean-Pierre Wimille and William Grover-Williams ( pseudonym W. Williams ), who had been reactivated after a long break, gave preference to the older model again.
On race day it had rained heavily until shortly before the start and for the first time in its history the Monaco Grand Prix took place in the wet. In extremely poor visibility conditions, Nuvolari used his starting position in the front row to take the lead in his Alfa Romeo in front of the two Mercedes drivers Caracciola and Chiron, who also started from the front row, followed by the Auto Union trio Stuck, Rosemeyer and Varzi. Before the end of the first lap, however, Caracciola had already passed the Italian and both had already set themselves apart from their pursuers in their duel. At the end of the field, on the other hand, Tadini crawled slowly around the course, although a massive oil loss in the engine of his Alfa Romeo had already been detected before the start. Nevertheless, he was sent into the race with it, allegedly with the assignment to complete a lap and then park the car at the pits to secure the team the entry fee.
On their second lap, Caracciola and Nuvolari were lucky enough to overtake the Alfa Romeo, which was slowly crawling around the track, before the chicane was passed, before the track conditions there became even more slippery than ever due to the oil spread around the entire track. Behind it, however, there was one of the largest pile-ups in Grand Prix history to date, when five drivers - including the two Mercedes from Chrion and von Brauchitsch - missed the curve and slipped into the barrier. While the rescue work was in progress, one lap later Rosemeyer also spun in the same location, but was able to continue the race, only to be eliminated from the race a few laps later due to an accident elsewhere. A late victim of the scene from the second round was finally Fagioli, when he got sand in his face while passing the place with which a worker wanted to bind the oil on the route. This meant that three participants from the Mercedes team were out of the race, while the fourth at the top was under increasing pressure from Nuvolari. On the tenth lap the Italian was finally back in front, but when heavy rain set in again after about a quarter of the race distance, Caracciola lived up to his nickname as rain champion and irresistibly pulled away from his opponent on lap 27, who soon afterwards with fading brakes also fell behind the two remaining Auto Union von Stuck and Varzi. The positions seemed practically taken shortly after half of the race, but shortly before the end Varzi overtook his team-mate, disregarding the stable order , so that he finished the race in second place behind Caracciola and with Stuck in third place.
With six victories in an official International Grand Prix so far - plus the first place together with Luigi Fagioli at the Italian Grand Prix in 1934 - Caracciola had achieved more successes in his career than any other Grand Prix driver up until then.
Results
Registration list
Qualifying
Item | driver | constructor | Qualification training | begin | |
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time | Ø speed | ||||
1 |
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1: 53.200 | 101.130 km / h | 1 |
2 |
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1: 53.700 | 100.690 km / h | 2 |
3 |
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1: 54,000 | 100.420 km / h | 3 |
4th |
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1: 54,300 | 100.160 km / h | 4th |
5 |
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1: 55.200 | 99.380 km / h | 5 |
6th |
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1: 55,600 | 99.030 km / h | 6th |
7th |
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1: 56.100 | 98.600 km / h | 7th |
8th |
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1: 56,500 | 98.180 km / h | 8th |
9 |
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1: 56.700 | 98.100 km / h | 9 |
10 |
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1: 57,400 | 97.510 km / h | 10 |
11 |
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1: 58,000 | 97.020 km / h | 11 |
12 |
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1: 59,000 | 96.200 km / h | 12 |
13 |
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2: 00,000 | 95.400 km / h | 13 |
14th |
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2: 03,200 | 92.920 km / h | 14th |
15th |
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2: 04,000 | 92.320 km / h | 15th |
16 |
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2: 05,000 | 91.580 km / h | 16 |
17th |
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2: 08.700 | 88.950 km / h | 17th |
18th |
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2: 11,200 | 87.260 km / h | 18th |
Race result
Item | driver | constructor | Round | Stops | time | begin | Fastest lap | Failure reason |
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1 |
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100 | 3: 49: 20,400 | 3 | |||
2 |
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100 | +1: 48.900 | 7th | |||
3 |
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99 | + 1 lap | 4th | 2: 07.400 | ||
4th |
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99 | + 1 lap | 2 | |||
5 |
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97 | + 3 rounds | 13 | |||
6th |
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97 | + 3 rounds | 8th | |||
7th |
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94 | + 6 rounds | 14th | |||
8th |
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87 | + 13 rounds | 17th | |||
9 |
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84 | + 14 rounds | 16 | |||
- |
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36 | DNF | 15th | Crack in the fuel tank | ||
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28 | DNF | 12 | defective distributor | ||
- |
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12 | DNF | 5 | accident | ||
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8th | DNF | 10 | accident | ||
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1 | DNF | 18th | mechanics | ||
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1 | DNF | 9 | accident | ||
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1 | DNF | 6th | accident | ||
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1 | DNF | 1 | accident | ||
- |
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1 | DNF | 11 | Oil leak |
Web links
- VIII Grand Prix de Monaco. www.teamdan.com, accessed on September 13, 2014 (English).
- VIII GRAND PRIX DE MONACO. www.kolumbus.fi, July 4, 2014, accessed September 13, 2014 (English).