Troy's Grand Prix and Motor Racing Homepage

My aim in writing the Grand Prix and Motor Racing Homepage is to provide as much of a reference for the whole sport world-wide - encompassing categories from Formula One to Champs Cars (formly Indycars), Nascar to IRL, Formula 3000 to Formula 3, Indy Lights to GT Racing, and many other forms of national and international motor racing events.

A Brief History of the beginnings of Grand Prix racing.

City to City Races : 1894-1903
From the advent of the motor vehicle, man has felt the need to see whose car is the fastest. As early as 1887, unsuccessful attempts to organize a motoring competition near Paris. It wasn't until 22 July 1894, that motor racing was born when 21 cars left Porte Maillot in Paris for the 80 mile trip to Rouen.
Within 12 months of this first race, a newly formed commitee, which would later become the Automobile Club de France, organized the first true race from Paris to Bordeuax and back. This would set the format for the inter-city races which would dominate racing for the early parts of its history.
Each year, the ACF would decide upon a new destination for their Paris races. Cars had to be under 1000kgs and in order to have the largest possible engines, designers built light and mainly fragile chassis.
In 1903, On the first day's run to Bordeaux of the Paris-Madrid race, an estimated three million spectators lined the roads to wacth the cars, some of which were capable of 80 mph in a straight line. Unfortunately, their brakes were not as effective and a series of frightening accidents left five competitors and numberous spectators dead and the event was abandoned. The searing heat, blinding dust and poor crowd control had turned the Paris-Madrid race into a disaster and the ACF turned to closed cicuit racing for the future, albeit on courses over 50 miles in length.

Gordon Bennett Trophy
The promotional and commercial value of motorsport was recognized quickly, and especially by one man in 1899, by the name of James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald European Edition, and it was he who announced the first Coupe Internationale, better known now as the Gordon Bennett Trophy.
National teams up to three competitors could enter with drivers and riding mechanics being members of the national motoring organization and all components being made in the country of which the team is being entered (Merecedes built cars in Germany and Austria in 1904-1905 to gain more enteries). The winners would then have the right to hold the race in the follwoing year.
Although not well supported to start of with, by 1904 six nations competed, and the Automobiles Club de Framce was forced to organize an elimination race to decide its enteries from a field of 29. The pressure for French enteries finally forced the Gordon Bennett Trophy to be abandoned in 1905, after Auvergne.
The ACF decided to replace the Gordon Bennett Trophy with a new event in which all manufacturers, irrespective of nationality, could enter up to three cars, and so Grand Prix racing was born.