Rouen-les-Essarts
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 Grand-Couronne and Orival , Seine-Maritime department , Normandy , France
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| Route type: | temporary racetrack | ||
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| Start of building: | 1950 | ||
| Opening: | July 30, 1950 | ||
Formula 1 venue : |
1952-1968 | ||
| Decommissioned: | 1993 | ||
| Demolition: | 1999 | ||
| Variant from 1972-1993 | |||
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| Route data | |||
| Important events: |
Formula 2 , motorcycle world championship | ||
| Route length: | 5.543 km (3.44 mi ) | ||
| Curves: | 13 | ||
| Variant 1964 | |||
| Route data | |||
| Route length: | 6.542 km (4.07 mi ) | ||
| Records | |||
| Track record: ( Formula 1 ) |
2: 11.4 min. (Jack Brabham, Brabham BT7, 1964) |
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Coordinates: 49 ° 20 ′ 1 ″ N , 1 ° 0 ′ 18 ″ E
Between 1950 and 1993, Rouen-les-Essarts was a motorsport racetrack in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in north-western France . It consisted largely of public roads, was driven clockwise and was the venue for numerous car and motorcycle races , including Formula 1 , Formula 2 and the motorcycle world championship . Its name was derived from the names of the nearby city of Rouen and the town of Grand Couronne belonging to Les Essarts , through whose territory it passed.
Emergence
After the world's first automobile competition “Paris – Rouen” in the region ended on July 22nd, 1894, thus establishing the French motorsport tradition, passionate racing drivers built a small race track in the forest of Les Essarts in the first half of the 20th century. Details and plans of this route are no longer known; apparently the traces were erased in World War II . In 1949 it was planned to build a straight road connecting Les Essarts and Orival through the forest. The Normandy Automobile Club in Rouen successfully applied to the département administration for temporary use of the road for motorsport purposes and in 1950 put together a 5.1 km long course from this now completed road, other départemental roads and Route nationale 840 .
Start and finish were on the top of a hill, the route therefore consisted of a spectacular downhill section with a fast combination of curves , a specially built narrow hairpin bend called Nouveau Monde with cobblestones , the beginning of which can only be seen shortly before due to the difference in altitude and therefore largely "blind" was to be approached, as well as from an ascent with some medium-fast bends and the long forest straight Chemin de l'Étoile to a sharp right bend before the goal. There were pit facilities with starter tower and paddock built and stands, but even at first hardly changed the narrow roadway. In places, two racing cars only just fit next to each other on the track, so overtaking maneuvers were mainly possible on the slightly wider, newly built straight. Except for a few fences, in places guard rails and occasionally laid bales of straw, no safety measures were recorded, and there were no run-off zones either, although the route was one of the fastest in the country.
The first races
On July 30, 1950, Jean Savale, President of the Normandy Automobile Club, opened the route. The main race on that day was the first Grand Prix de Rouen , won by Frenchman Louis Rosier with a Talbot lagoon. On the same day, the Briton Bill Whitehouse ( Cooper ) won a Formula 3 race . No other international events took place in the first year. On July 8, 1951 there was a Grand Prix de Rouen-les-Essarts of Formula 2 (winner was the Italian Count Gianni Marzotto with a Ferrari 166F2 / 50 ) and Formula 3 (winner was the British John Cooper in a Cooper T16 with a Norton - motorcycle engine ). In the following months, the route was partially widened and the infrastructure improved. Pit facilities, paddocks, parking spaces and grandstands were expanded or enlarged, as Formula 1 was expected for the first time in Rouen-les-Essarts the following year.
This Formula 1 World Championship race on July 6, 1952 led over 77 laps in rainy weather and after three hours brought a Ferrari triple triumph: the Italian Alberto Ascari was the start-finish winner ahead of his teammates and compatriots Giuseppe Farina and Piero Taruffi with a racing average of 129.2 km / h and a fastest race lap of 2: 17.3 min. The drivers and experts talked about the most challenging and beautiful circuit in France at the time and felt reminded of the Nürburgring-Nordschleife by the route characteristics with narrow lanes, steep inclines and climbs and the surrounding forest .
The motorcycle world championship races
On August 2, 1953 , the motorcycle world championship premiered for Rouen-les-Essarts with three British victories. The cubic capacity classes up to 350 cm³ (winner Fergus Anderson on Moto Guzzi ) and 500 cm³ (winner Geoff Duke on Gilera ) as well as the sidecar class (winner Eric Oliver / Stanley Dibben on Norton ) were driven. There were further world championship runs in 1954 (only 350 cm³) and 1965 (50, 125 and 250 cm³). The last winner of a motorcycle world championship run on this route was the 250 cc world champion 1965 Phil Read on a Yamaha . After that, the French World Championship races first took place on the Circuit de Charade , which was one of the venues between 1955 and 1964 with the Circuit de Reims-Gueux .
First renovation and first deaths
On July 11, 1954, the last Formula 1 race that was not part of the World Cup was held in Rouen-les-Essarts. Then the operators decided to extend the route. They removed the Chemin de l'Etoile forest straight from the route and added a new section instead. Those public roads behind the start and finish area included the corners of Grésil and La Scierie . There was longer time for the renovation work than planned: in 1955 there were no races in Rouen-les-Essarts due to the catastrophic accident at the Le Mans 24-hour race . The now 6.542 km long route was only used from 1956, primarily by Formula 2, for sports car races and from 1957 four times by Formula 1.
The first fatal accident occurred on July 9, 1967. The French racing driver Jean-Claude Bernasconi came off the track at the national Renault - Gordini Cup in the fast downhill curve Virage des Six Frères, rolled over several times and was thrown out of the car and so badly injured that he died ten days later in a Paris hospital. This did not have any consequences for the organizers. Much more momentous, however, was the death of the prominent Frenchman Jo Schlesser in the Formula 1 race on July 7, 1968 in the same section of the route. After only two laps on the wet road, Schlesser lost control of his new Honda RA302 , which had hardly been tested before , hit an embankment and rolled over. The car immediately caught fire. Since the Honda was mainly made of light, but also easily flammable magnesium and the burst tank was still almost full, the marshals had no chance to extinguish the burning wreck in time and to rescue Schlesser. He died after a short time from serious burn injuries. The race ended with a win for Belgian Jacky Ickx in a Ferrari, but it was the last Formula 1 appearance in Rouen-les-Essarts. Honda also withdrew from Formula 1 because of this accident at the end of the season.
From 1969 onwards, only Formula 2 met here as the highest motor sport class for the annual French European Championship run . There was a "black Sunday" with two further fatal accidents on June 28, 1970 in a Formula 3 framework race for this Grand Prix de Rouen : Jean-Luc Salomon collided in the last third of the route between the corners of La Scierie and Paradis while fighting with four Competitors (including Bob Wollek , who slipped into the forest after the collision and was seriously injured), Salomon's Martini MW 5 landed with the cockpit down and the driver died of serious head injuries. Five laps earlier, the Frenchman Denis Dayan had gone off the track, presumably due to a tire damage or a mechanical defect in the Virage des Six Frères, and was trapped between the upper and lower crash barriers . Dayan died from his injuries on July 2 in a hospital in Rouen.
Further modifications
On June 27, 1971, the last Formula 2 race took place on the 6.5 km long track variant. It had recently been slightly defused by two temporary chicanes in the corners of Grésil and Paradis (shortly before the start and finish). The new Normandy A13 motorway then intersected this route in the last third; the part added in 1956 was therefore dropped again after construction work began. However, the Chemin de l'Etoile tangent, which was used until 1954, could not be reintegrated into the route because it was now partly used as an access route to the paddock and the parking lots. For this reason, a permanent stretch of track was built for the first time, which was only used for racing events and not as a public road.
This section, called Forêt , ran in the forest between the old Chemin de l'Etoile and the new motorway, consisted of an S-curve combination and a long straight and ended at the Paradis right-hand bend back into the previous route. The lap length was now 5.543 km. The road surfaces and guardrails were partially renewed, and the timekeeping tower, boxes and paddock were rebuilt and expanded for 1.7 million francs . These measures were financed by the General Council of the Seine-Maritime Department and the Normandy Automobile Club. On July 25, 1972, the first Formula 2 race took place on the new circuit, which the Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi won in the Lotus 69 .
Security flaws
The Formula 2 participant lists of the 1970s were similar to those of Formula 1 in the same decade: Drivers like Niki Lauda , Jody Scheckter , Graham Hill and François Cevert used Formula 2 as a preliminary stage or even drove in both formula classes. The problem was, however, in some cases the routes still used by Formula 2, which no longer met the current safety standards of Formula 1. This became clear at the Grand Prix de Rouen-les-Essarts , the ninth round of the European Formula 2 Championship on June 24, 1973: The double guard rails in the area of the Virage des Six Frères curve again became a death trap; as was the case with Denis Dayan's accident in 1970. This time the Scottish racing driver Gerry Birrell with his Chevron Ford BDA / Hart was affected. During training, his bike hit the shoulder next to the road at about 250 km / h (according to other reports he had a puncture), lost control of the car and drove straight into the crash barriers. The metal rails bent up on impact, the car slipped underneath and Birrell was beheaded off the guardrail.
Even before the race, drivers had complained that the guardrails, some of which were newly installed, had to be moved several centimeters by hand in all directions. After the fatal training accident, they therefore demanded further safety measures. However, the organizers limited themselves to building a provisional chicane made of four polystyrene cuboids in front of the bend , which were, however, displaced and destroyed more and more during the course of the race, so that at the end of the day the usual route was almost driven again without reducing the speed could. This led to another serious accident, which the Swede Ronnie Peterson survived. Before the race the following year, a permanent chicane was built between turns 1 and 2; the section was now called Virage des Roches . Although there were no other notable improvements in route safety, no further deaths were recorded for four years.
On June 25, 1977 there was the fifth and last fatal accident on this route. In a Formula Renault race in the run-up to the Grand Prix de Rouen-les-Essarts , the Frenchman François Burdet lost control of his monoposto while accelerating on the uphill section after the Nouveau Monde hairpin bend ; apparently due to a technical defect. Again the guardrails did not work as intended, the car was thrown upwards as if from a launch pad and crashed into the trees. Burdet, who was brought to a hospital in Rouen, died from his serious injuries on the same day.
The decline
Meanwhile, there were much safer tracks in France such as the Circuit Paul Ricard or the Circuit de Dijon-Prenois , which were permanent courses fully geared towards the needs of motorsport. Here no consideration had to be given to the needs of public road traffic and only little attention had to be paid to the interests of nature and landscape protection. These systems, sometimes pejoratively referred to as " retort routes ", gradually replaced the previous street circuits, which, with their narrow lanes and lack of run-off zones, became increasingly dangerous for the ever faster racing cars. In addition, the coefficients of friction of the asphalt used on public roads are generally lower than those of pure motorsport tracks, which are built with special compounds and mostly surfaces with very good grip. Further risk factors for non-permanent or semi-permanent courses are liquid residues from road traffic (oil or cooling water traces) and road markings, which are very slippery, especially when wet .
1978 was the last time Formula 2 was in Rouen-les-Essarts; this ended the international importance of the route. From 1980 onwards, the French Formula 3 championship took place once a year, along with other national racing series. But even these smaller and weaker racing classes have proven to be too fast for the track over the years; the organizing Automobile Club of Normandy (ACN) ran into financial difficulties and could no longer pay for further maintenance work or even extensions. The last races took place in 1993, after which the facilities gradually fell into disrepair until they were almost completely removed in autumn 1999. In 1996 the ACN had turned down an offer from the public sector to at least keep the timekeeping tower as a historical monument; but the club did not have the funds. Apart from a few fences and remnants of the formerly permanent part of the route, nothing has been preserved; however, the non-permanent part can still be used as public road space.
The records
Various figures are circulating about the official lap record, as the route has been changed several times and in some cases drastically during its existence. In the Formula 2 race on June 26, 1977, the Brazilian Ingo Hoffmann in the Ralt RT1 BMW drove the officially fastest lap of the last layout with 5.543 km with 1: 45.05 min; corresponding to an average lap of 189.95 km / h. The Formula 1 lap record was set in 1964 by Australian Jack Brabham with a Brabham BT7 on the 6.542 km long track variant with 2: 11.4 minutes, which corresponded to an average speed of 179.23 km / h. The lap record for the first track layout with 5.1 km was set on July 6, 1952 by Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari with 2: 17.3 min; an average of 133.7 km / h. Some of the best qualifying times were several seconds shorter, but do not count as official lap records. A motorcycle lap record has not been handed down, but it is likely that it was set in 1965 by the 250 cc Grand Prix winner Phil Read.
The stages of the Tour de France
Rouen-les-Essarts has twice hosted the 4th stage of the Tour de France cycling event . On July 11, 1954 , the Frenchman and later overall winner Louison Bobet was fastest in the team time trial over 10.4 km (about two laps). This half-stage took place - unimaginable these days - as part of the supporting program of a Formula 1 race on the same day. On July 8, 1956 , Charly Gaul from Luxembourg won the individual time trial over 15.1 km (a little more than two laps on the now extended route). Here, too, the cycling stage was part of a motorsport day; this time with two races without championship status for the “Grand Prix of Rouen”.
statistics
All winners of the Formula 1 World Championship races in Rouen-les-Essarts
| year | driver | constructor | engine | tires | time | Route length | Round | Ø pace | date | GP de / from |
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| 1952 |
 Alberto Ascari
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Ferrari | Ferrari | P | 3: 00: 00,000 h | 5,100 km | 76 | 129.200 km / h | July 6th |
l'ACF
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| 1957 |
 Juan Manuel Fangio
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Maserati | Maserati | P | 3: 07: 46,400 h | 6.542 km | 77 | 160.960 km / h | 7th of July | |
| 1962 |
 Dan Gurney
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Porsche | Porsche | D. | 2: 07: 35,500 h | 6.542 km | 54 | 166.124 km / h | 8th of July | |
| 1964 |
Dan Gurney
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Brabham | Climax | D. | 2: 07: 49,100 h | 6.542 km | 57 | 175.042 km / h | June 28th | |
| 1968 |
 Jacky Ickx
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Ferrari | Ferrari | F. | 2: 25: 40,900 h | 6.542 km | 60 | 161.662 km / h | 7th of July |
France
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Record winner driver: Dan Gurney (2)
Record winner driver nations: USA (2)
Record winner Constructors: Ferrari (2)
Record winner engine manufacturer: Ferrari (2)
Record winner tire manufacturer: Dunlop , Pirelli (2 each)
References
literature
- Roger Biot, Rouen-Les Essarts, 1950-1993 . Édition du P'tit Normand, Évreux 2001, ISBN 2-906258-58-X (French, entry in the national library ) .
Web links
- Route maps and aerial photo
- History and construction photos (English)
- Report and photos of the current condition of the route
- Deaths on the line
- List of winners of the motorcycle world championship races ( memento from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
References and comments
- ↑ Three weeks earlier, the first French Grand Prix had taken place on the Circuit de Reims-Gueux .
- ^ Archive of the results of the French motorcycle world championship races (French)
