Henri Béconnais

Henri Béconnais at the 1903 French Grand Prix

Henri François Béconnais (March 7, 1869 - July 2, 1904 ) was a French automobile , motorcycle and cyclist .

Career

Henri Béconnais was very small for a 19th century racing driver and looked more like a jockey than an automobile pioneer. Béconnais began his racing career and became French champion in 1890. He then switched to motorcycles and in 1899 won the overall classification of the Carrera en Cuesta de Chanteloup. This race was held as a mixed event of motorcycles and automobiles and Béconnais won against 106 other participants.

In 1899, he was sixth in the three-wheeled vehicle class in the first Tour de France for automobiles . On May 30, 1900, he set a new world speed record for motorcycles at the Nice Racing Week.

At the 1903 French Grand Prix he had a serious accident on his Darracq and had to retire. The race - which led from Paris to Madrid - had to be stopped after several fatal accidents.

During training for the Gordon Bennett race in 1904, Béconnais had a fatal accident on July 2, 1904. After a punctured tire on his Darracq 100HP , he could no longer brake the erupting car and crashed into a tree. In addition to Béconnais, his mechanic and co-driver Lucien Bernard was also killed in this accident.

Web links

Commons : Henri Béconnais  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Henri Béconnais in the Radsportseiten.net database