Reología

The Grand Prix of France (officially called Grand Prix of the ACF until 1967) is a automobile race created in 1906. It appears in the calendar of the championship of the world of Formule 1 since 1950 (except the year 1955 when the test was cancelled following the drama of the 24 hours of Mans).

History

Created in 1906, the Grand Prix of France is the senior of the automobile Grand Prix. The organizers borrowed the term of Grand Prix from the world of the horse races and cyclists. The first Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of France (ACF) proceeded with the Mans, the June 26th 1906 with thirty-two cars.

Following the accidents which marked the race Paris-Madrid in 1903, the ACF and the authorities impose the behavior of the test on circuit. Mans makes application form and the city which considering being born the first marketed car (Amédée Bollée) receives the first Grand Prix of France in 1906 on a circuit of 103,16 km almost only in straight lines. Contrary to the races city to city, any circulation in fact is prohibited on this road sector. To circumvent certain villages, the organizers set up wood deviations! Moreover, one tars “hot” the forming circuit of the extreme ashes arriving at immisser until behind the special glasses of the pilots. This work is extremely expensive, and the financial results of the Grand Prix are catastrophic. The following year the circuit is tiny room of half. One thus delocalizes the editions 1907 and 1908 on the small circuit of Dieppe, definitely less expensive.

The Grand Prix of France, right from the start, never privileged a circuit in particular. The Circuit of Nevers Magny-Course is used for the GP since 1991.

The short-term future of the GP of France is currently rather vague. Although the company managing the circuit of Magny-Course has a contract with FOM until 2009, the FFSA (organizing and promoter of the test), estimating that all the conditions are not met for the good organization of the event (cost, lack of road infrastructures and hotel) decided to suspend the request for inscription of the test to the calendar of the championship 2008. The project of the FFSA is to make revive the Grand Prix as from 2009, preferably on a new layout which would be located in Paris region.

The 24 July 2007, at a meeting between the Prime Minister Francois Fillon and chair it FOM Bernie Ecclestone, it was decided that the Circuit of Nevers Magny-Course would accommodate the GP of France until in 2009, then that starting from 2010, the circuit will have to be closer to Paris. One speaks about Versailles, Disneyland Paris or Évry.

Various circuits used

Records of the circuit of Magny-Course

Striking facts

  • 1953 : Presented by the specialized press of the time like the “race of the century”, the test is the theater of a confrontation at the top between the armadas Ferrari and Maserati. Juan Manuel Fangio (Maserati) seems able to make stumble Ferrari for the first time since nearly 18 months, but with the price of an operation of going beyond " virile" in the last turn, the young British pilot Mike Hawthorn takes down his first victory while preserving the invincibility of the mark at the pulled up horse.
  • 1954 : The event of the race is the presence at the beginning of the “Money Arrows” Mercedes, absent from the world of the Grands Prix since 1939. As of their first appearance, the W196 show a insolente superiority on competition and Fangio gains the race easily.
  • 1957 : Announced on the decline after a season 1956 in half-tone (although punctuated of a fourth championship of the world), Fangio (Maserati) delivers a lesson of piloting on the Circuit of Rouen-the-Essarts. Obliged to compose with tires with the anguish, it gratifie in particular the spectators of spectacular passages all slips about it into the descent of the " New Monde". Its victory brings it closer to its fifth world title.
  • 1958 : Mike Hawthorn (Ferrari) gains her only victory of the season, which will not prevent it from taking down the world title. Marked by the fatal accident of Luigi Musso (Ferrari), the Grand Prix is also that of the good-byes to the competition of Fangio. Obliged to compose with Maserati growing old, in prey with a broken clutch, the Argentinian pilot is close to undergoing humiliation to be made take a turn in end of the road by Hawthorn. By respect, the English will remain behind him and in answer to the interrogations of the journalists on his attitude, this word remained will have famous: “One does not take a turn with Fangio. ”
  • 1961: Beginning in championship from the world (it already disputed and gained two Grand Prix of F1 out-championship, but vis-a-vis a heterogeneous opposition), the Italian pilot Giancarlo Baghetti creates the feeling while asserting himself on the wheel of his private Ferrari (engaged by the Italian federation). If one excludes Giuseppe Farina (inaugural GP of the championship in 1950) and Johnnie Parsons (first Indy 500 cash for the championship), Baghetti is the only pilot to be itself imposed as of its beginnings in championship of the world.
  • 1968 : Disputed under execrable weather conditions, the race is marked by the fatal accident of the popular French pilot OJ Schlesser (Honda), of which they was the beginnings in F1. Winner of its first Grand Prix, Jacky Ickx (Ferrari) will deposit his bouquet of flower on the place of the accident.
  • 1979 : Jean-Pierre Jabouille (Renault) mark history of F1 by gaining its first Grand Prix, but especially while making triumph for the first time a turbo engine single-seater. On the blow, its success is however mainly eclipsed by the duel of anthology that delivered themselves in the last turns and for the profit of the second place Gilles Villeneuve (Ferrari) and Rene Arnoux (Renault).
  • 1982 : The French pilots are with the honor on their grounds since they sign a historical quadruplet (in the order: Rene Arnoux, Alain Prost, Didier Pironi and Patrick Tambay). But on the podium, the tension is palpable between Arnoux and Prost, team-members at Renault. Prost, placed better than Arnoux in the race with the title, will reproach Arnoux for not having played the team game as it according to him had engaged there before the departure.
  • 1999 : Disputed under dantesques weather conditions, the Grand Prix gives place to a scenario with bounce from where as a winner the innatendu Heinz-Harald Frentzen emerges on Jordan - Mugen.
  • 2002 : Winner of the race (after having in particular benefitted from an error of Kimi Räikkönen) for the arrival, Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) gains its fifth world title. Never a world champion had been crowned also early in the season.

Prize list

By year

By many victories

(Updated after the Grand Prix of France 2007)

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External bonds

  • Official site Grand Prix of France F1

  • official Blog of the Grand Prix of France F1

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