1936 Monaco Grand Prix

Start of the Monaco Grand Prix on a wet road

Louis Chiron's accident on the second lap in the chicane at the harbor

The subsequent pile-up

Race winner Rudolf Caracciola

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

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Auto Union AG	02	Hans Stuck	Auto Union C	Auto Union 6.0L V16 compressor	C.
	03	Ernst von Delius
	04th	Achille Varzi
	06th	Bernd Rosemeyer
		Rudolf Hasse
Daimler-Benz AG	08th	Rudolf Caracciola	Mercedes-Benz W25K	Mercedes-Benz M 25 C 4.7L I8 compressor	C.
	10	Louis Chiron
	09		Mercedes-Benz W 25	Mercedes-Benz M 25 C 4.3L I8 compressor
	12	Luigi Fagioli
	14th	Manfred von Brauchitsch
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti	16	Jean-Pierre Wimille	Bugatti T59	Bugatti 3.3L I8 compressor	M.
	18th	William Grover-Williams
	16T	Jean-Pierre Wimille	Bugatti T59 / 50	Maserati 5.0L I6 compressor
Philippe Étancelin	20th	Philippe Étancelin	Maserati V8-RI	Maserati 4.8L V8 supercharger	P
Raymond Summers	22nd	Raymond Summers	Alfa Romeo Tipo B / P3	Alfa Romeo 3.2L I8 compressor	M.
Scuderia Ferrari	24	Tazio Nuvolari	Alfa Romeo 8C-35	Alfa Romeo 3.8L I8 compressor	E.
	26th	Antonio Brivio
	28	Mario Tadini
	30th	Giuseppe Farina
Scuderia Torino	32	Carlo Felice Trossi	Maserati V8-RI	Maserati 4.8L V8 supercharger	P
	36	Eugenio Siena	Maserati 6C-34	Maserati 3.7L I6 compressor
	38	Pietro Ghersi
László Hartmann	34	László Hartmann	Maserati V8-RI	Maserati 4.8L V8 supercharger
Carlo Felice Trossi	40	Giulio Aymini	Monaco-Trossi	Monaco-Trossi 4.0L I16 compressor

Qualifying

Item	driver	constructor	Qualification training		begin
			time	Ø speed
01	Louis Chiron	Mercedes Benz	1: 53.200	101.130 km / h	01
02	Tazio Nuvolari	Alfa Romeo	1: 53.700	100.690 km / h	02
03	Rudolf Caracciola	Mercedes Benz	1: 54,000	100.420 km / h	03
04th	Hans Stuck	Auto Union	1: 54,300	100.160 km / h	04th
05	Bernd Rosemeyer	Auto Union	1: 55.200	99.380 km / h	05
06th	Giuseppe Farina	Alfa Romeo	1: 55,600	99.030 km / h	06th
07th	Achille Varzi	Auto Union	1: 56.100	98.600 km / h	07th
08th	Jean-Pierre Wimille	Bugatti	1: 56,500	98.180 km / h	08th
09	Manfred von Brauchitsch	Mercedes Benz	1: 56.700	98.100 km / h	09
10	Luigi Fagioli	Mercedes Benz	1: 57,400	97.510 km / h	10
11	Mario Tadini	Alfa Romeo	1: 58,000	97.020 km / h	11
12	Carlo Felice Trossi	Maserati	1: 59,000	96.200 km / h	12
13	Antonio Brivio	Alfa Romeo	2: 00,000	95.400 km / h	13
14th	Raymond Summers	Alfa Romeo	2: 03,200	92.920 km / h	14th
15th	Philippe Étancelin	Maserati	2: 04,000	92.320 km / h	15th
16	William Grover-Williams	Bugatti	2: 05,000	91.580 km / h	16
17th	Pietro Ghersi	Maserati	2: 08.700	88.950 km / h	17th
18th	Eugenio Siena	Maserati	2: 11,200	87.260 km / h	18th

Race result

Item	driver	constructor	Round	Stops	time	begin	Fastest lap	Failure reason
01	Rudolf Caracciola	Mercedes Benz	100		3: 49: 20,400	3
02	Achille Varzi	Auto Union	100		+1: 48.900	7th
03	Hans Stuck	Auto Union	99		+ 1 lap	4th	2: 07.400
04th	Tazio Nuvolari	Alfa Romeo	99		+ 1 lap	2
05	Antonio Brivio Giuseppe Farina	Alfa Romeo	97		+ 3 rounds	13
06th	Jean-Pierre Wimille	Bugatti	97		+ 3 rounds	8th
07th	Raymond Summers	Alfa Romeo	94		+ 6 rounds	14th
08th	Pietro Ghersi	Maserati	87		+ 13 rounds	17th
09	William Grover-Williams	Bugatti	84		+ 14 rounds	16
-	Philippe Étancelin	Maserati	36		DNF	15th		Crack in the fuel tank
-	Carlo Felice Trossi	Maserati	28		DNF	12		defective distributor
-	Bernd Rosemeyer	Auto Union	12		DNF	5		accident
-	Luigi Fagioli	Mercedes Benz	8th		DNF	10		accident
-	Eugenio Siena	Maserati	1		DNF	18th		mechanics
-	Manfred von Brauchitsch	Mercedes Benz	1		DNF	9		accident
-	Giuseppe Farina	Alfa Romeo	1		DNF	6th		accident
-	Louis Chiron	Mercedes Benz	1		DNF	1		accident
-	Mario Tadini	Alfa Romeo	1		DNF	11		Oil leak

Web links

Commons : Monaco Grand Prix 1936  - Album containing pictures, videos and audio files

• 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).