Gran Premio de San Sebastian 1926

Race winner winner Jules Goux after the race

Second placed Edmond Bourlier

Jules Goux on the line

The IV Gran Premio de San Sebastián took place on July 18, 1926 on the Circuito Lasarte near San Sebastián .

The race also had the AIACR honorary title Grand Prix of Europe and was a championship run for the second automobile world championship. It was held under the applicable International Grand Prix racing formula (displacement limit 1.5 liters, minimum weight 600 kg, body width at least 80 cm) over 45 laps of 17.75 km, which corresponded to a total distance of 798.75 km.

The winner was Jules Goux in a Bugatti Type 39A .

run

At the annual automobile week in San Sebastián in 1926 there was the novelty that for the first time a European Grand Prix as Grande Épreuve was not also the official Grand Prix of a country, but the Spanish Grand Prix a week later in the same place as a separate formula-free one Race was held. The reason was the already looming crisis in Grand Prix sport, in which fewer and fewer automobile factories took part, so that the organizers hoped for a better field of participants for their National Grand Prix by holding another "open" race.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of the eight teams originally registered for the first World Championship run on Spanish soil had withdrawn, so that ultimately only Bugatti and Delage with three cars each remained. After all, this was already a doubling of the previous French Grand Prix and, in contrast to the farce there, now also an actual competition. Of course, Bugatti returned with the tried and tested Type 39A inline eight-cylinder engines that were well suited for the winding course and were driven by Jules Goux, Bartolomeo Costantini and Ferdinando Minoia . Delage, too, had come so far with the development of the new eight-cylinder Grand Prix model Delage Type 15 S 8 that racing was considered possible. In fact, the racing cars, which had hardly been tested until then, turned out to be significantly faster than the Bugatti on the track, but in the race it should quickly become apparent that they had a serious design flaw. The exhaust was led along the driver's side, which after a short time heated up the cockpit so much that the conditions in it became unbearable for the drivers and some of them even had to be treated with burns. As drivers, Delage had signed Edmond Bourlier , Robert Benoist and André Morel with ex-driver René Thomas as race director. Grand Prix veteran Louis Wagner was nominated as the only substitute driver , which turned out to be another serious mistake.

But under the eyes of King Alfonso XIII , Benoist initially took the lead right away from the rolling start with the seats full, bright sunshine and under great heat and was able to pull away immediately with the superior speed of the Delage. Behind them, Costantini, Goux, Morel and Bourlier stayed even closer together, while Minoia had fallen back to the bottom of the field after an early spark plug change. But the two leaders soon had to go to the pits to refill the cooling water (Costantini) and also to change candles (Benoist), so that after seven laps Morel was leading the field ahead of Goux, Bourlier, Costantini, Benoist and Minoia.

With the prevailing temperatures, the problems of the Delage were slowly becoming noticeable. The first to suffer was Morel, who stopped after the tenth lap with burns on his feet and shortly afterwards collapsed unconscious, so that he was transferred to a nearby hospital. In his place, substitute driver Wagner took over the wheel, who was back in line behind Goux, Bourlier, Benoist and Costantini. But just one lap later, Benoist also came into the pits, completely exhausted and was unable to continue the race. Since Wagner was already in action, it was now discussed whether race director René Thomas could take over the car until after some time the French racing driver Robert Sénéchal, who happened to be present, volunteered. With the approval of Ettore Bugatti and the race management, the latter resumed the race about two laps behind Bourlier, who in the meantime gave Goux an exciting fight in which the lead changed between the two several times.

Wagner and Sénéchal couldn't stand the heat in the cockpit for long either, so their two cars stood in the boxes for a long time and the mechanics tried to cut as many openings as possible in the body. Ultimately, Bourlier was not spared from the problems and handed over to Sénéchal, who had recovered more or less, on lap 18, so that the two Bugatti of Costantini and Goux were now far ahead. Halfway through the race, clouds were gathering and the temperatures cooled down, which the Delage benefited a little. Benoist and Wagner got into the two orphaned cockpits and while Sénéchal and Bourlier took turns at the wheel, Morel, who had returned from the hospital, even sat back in the cockpit of his Delage, so that Benoist could take over his own car from Wagner again. There was also a driver change at Bugatti when Minoia, exasperated by the ongoing ignition problems in his car, handed it over to the unofficial reserve driver Louis Dutilleux. After that, the race remained unchanged for many laps with Costantini several minutes ahead of Goux and about one lap ahead of Bourlier / Sénéchal.

Shortly before the end, the race got even more dramatic when Costantini pitted with severe engine problems. By the time the repair was successful, Sénéchal had passed, who was now also making up time on Goux, but was only able to shorten the gap to just under eight minutes by the end. After more than half an hour, Costantini finally crossed the line in third place, while the remaining participants were flagged and not counted before reaching the full distance. Goux had won the victory and the corresponding world championship points for Bugatti for the second time, the second-placed Delage, however, was subsequently taken out of the ranking again because, contrary to the regulations, a driver who had not previously registered and was therefore neither weighed nor insured had been used with Sénéchal . Delage immediately protested against this decision, which was finally granted at the October AIACR meeting on the grounds that both the race management and Bugatti had expressly agreed to the driver change.

Results

Registration list

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Officine Meccaniche SA	01	Ferdinando Minoia	OM 8C Grand Prix	OM 1.5L I8	P
	09	Renato Balestrero
	18th	Giuseppe Morandi
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti	02	Meo Costantini	Bugatti T39A	Bugatti 1.5L I8 compressor	M.
	10	Jules Goux
	19th	Ferdinando Minoia
Automobiles Talbot	03	Albert Divo	Talbot GPLB	Talbot 1.5L I4 compressor	M.
	11	Henry Segrave
	20th	Jules Moriceau
Établissements Guyot	04th	Albert Guyot	Guyot special	Argyle 1.5L I6
	12
Ernest Eldridge	05	Ernest Eldridge	Eldridge special	Anzani 1.5L I4
Automobiles Violet	06th	Marcel Violet	Sima-Violet 2-stroke	Sima-Violet 1.5L Flat-4
	14th	Marcel Doré
	21st	Maurice Benoist
	23	Max Fourny
Automobiles Delage	07th	Robert Benoist	Delage Type 15 S 8 1926	Delage 1.5L I8	M.
	14th	Edmond Bourlier
	22nd	André Morel
		Louis Wagner
SA of the automobile Jean-Graf	08th	Jean Graf	Jean Count La Perle	CIME 1.5L I6
	14th	William Grover-Williams

Race result

Item	driver	constructor	Round	Stops	time	begin	Fastest lap	Failure reason
01	Jules Goux	Bugatti	45		6: 51: 52,000 h	1
02	Edmond Bourlier Robert Sénéchal 1	Delage	45		+ 7: 50,000 min	6th
03	Meo Costantini	Bugatti	45		+ 36: 26,000 min	5
-	André Morel Louis Wagner Robert Benoist	Delage	41		NC	3
-	Ferdinando Minoia Louis Dutilleux 1	Bugatti	41		NC	4th
-	Robert Benoist Robert Sénéchal 1 Louis Wagner	Delage	33		NC	2	7: 54,000 min (Wagner)

¹ unregistered substitute driver

Web links

Commons : Gran Premio de San Sebastián 1926  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• IV Grand Prix d'Europe. www.teamdan.com, accessed April 5, 2015 . 
• Leif Snellman, Felix Muelas: GRAN PREMIO DE EUROPA. In: www.kolumbus.fi. January 13, 2019, accessed on March 21, 2020 .