1914 Grand Prix de France

The world was at the edge of the huge turmoil that was to be World War I.

Just a few days before the 1914 Grand Prix de France, Archduke
Franz Ferdinand was felled by an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo, so rumours of imminent war ran wild.

But near Lyon, France on July 4th 1914, there was only talk of French victory on the track, with Peugeot’s Georges Boillot, winner of the 1912 and 1913 Grands Prix, being favoured by the partisan crowd of over 300,000.

Mercedes showed up with an effective-looking team of 5 white cars (and one spare), and white-dressed mechanics and drivers, along with colour-coded containers (red, white and black) for fuel, water, and oil.

The Mercedes engineers had even made earlier visits to the circuit to test the cars and make the appropriate improvements.

Pen&ink and white paint markers on gray archival paper © Paul Chenard 2014

It was the first return of Mercedes to racing since they had won the 1908 race, which was still stingingly fresh in the minds of the French. Still, they expected a French win in a French car in their French race …

Of the 37 cars that started the race, only 11 finished. After 20 grueling laps totaling 752 kms, Mercedes took the top 3 places, with Jules Goux’s Peugeot coming in 4th. After 7 hours of racing, the brilliant Christian Lautenschlager, winner of 1908 event, earned the victory laurels yet again for Mercedes.

One mouth after the race, the world was plunged into World War I, and the race would disappear from the spectators’ memories …

Les 24 heures du Mans 2011

The 24 heures du Mans is coming up this weekend, at the same time as Grand Prix du Canada. Talk about over-stimulation!

The 24 Heures du Mans race is the world’s oldest sports car race, with the first race being held in 1923.


The race is organized by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and it is run on the Circuit de Sarthe, about 2.5 hours south-west of Paris.


On the world stage, the race equals in stature to the Grand Prix de Monaco in the Formula 1, and the Indianapolis 500 in Indy car.


There have been cycles of consecutive winners starting with Bentley in the late 1920’s, followed by Alfa Romeo through the 1930’s, and two Bugatti wins late in the decade.


 The war years stopped the race until 1949, with the advent of Ferrari’s first win there. There was mostly Jaguar dominance through the mid-1950’s. Ferrari came back with a vengeance, winning six years in a row, 1960 through to 1965.


At this point, we were well into the Ford/Ferrari war, with Ford taking the next four years. Please read A. J. Baimes’ great book “Go like Hell” to get fabulous insight on the battles.





1970 heralded the Porsche years at Le Mans, with sixteen wins until 1998. These were interspersed with wins by Jaguar, Mercedes, Mazda, Peugeot, Dauer, McLaren, and BMW.


Since 2000, we have been in the Audi years, with the exception of Bentley (2003) and Peugeot (2009).


Aston Martin has returned “en force”, so this year is looking like a three-way battle between them, Audi and Peugeot.


Le Mans has never been so exciting!

French Racing Blue

In these days of race cars covered with sponsors logos and colours, it’s easily to forget that race teams used to race for their country, not their sponsors.

To differentiate the country for which to team raced, a colour-coding was developed. The first usage of this came during Gordon Bennett Cup races in 1900-1905 which was a race between Nations and their automotive products. Germany was assigned white, Belgium yellow, USA red, United Kingdom green, and France blue.

As more and more countries got into racing, the colour palette grew, and some colours changed, most notably Germany to silver, Italy to red, and the USA to white with blue, but France maintained it’s traditional blue.

The cars that shared those various shades of French blue are Peugeot, Ballot, Amilcar, Salmson, Voisin, Delage, Delahaye, Talbot-Lago, Gordini, Alpine, Matra and of course, Bugatti.

1947 Simca Gordini T15
Photo courtesy & © John Mackenzie

1971 Matra-Simca MS120B
Photo courtesy & © John Mackenzie

They were much simpler times, when racers drove for their nation, and not necessarily the highest bidder.

This all changed in 1968, when Colin Chapman carried non-automotive, Players Gold Leaf cigarette graphics on his Lotus 49’s.

The advertising floodgates were opened for good … and gone, with very few exceptions, were the international colours.

All images © Paul Chenard