Topic: Pre-war racing circuits

[Allan L]

This may be treading on Nicanary's territory, but arising from a thread in another place, there were a lot of road-racing circuits in Europe which used public roads, often with very little alteration, to make a race track.
In my younger days I managed to visit and photograph some of them - albeit half a century or more after their last use = and I shall dig a few of my photos out and post them here. Here are a couple of my 1986 photos on the Strasbourg circuit which I posted a couple of years ago:


Please will the rest of you join in if you can with any photos you think appropriate!

[Otto Puzzell]

Neat idea 

[nicanary]

Brilliant Allan! Not treading on any toes whatsoever. I wish I could offer some content, but as you will have read on that other site, "if only....."

Motor Sport magazine ran a series on this theme for a couple of years, and I was going to use those articles as the basis for a trip round Europe, which never happened. For those interested, there are videos available on a well-known site taken from dashcams, with enthusiasts going round old circuits as best they can, given that some roads no longer exist. Certainly Clermont-Ferrand is done, and Solitude.

Since AP is an international site, hopefully we'll get some interesting input on here.

[Allan L]

I should have linked this 1922 photo which sixtee5cuda posted, and my first photo is supposed to be showing the same view after 64 years:

[Allan L]

Now I shall transfer to the circuit near Lyons, used in 1914 and 1924.
The only feature I was able to find and photograph was the downhill S-bend known as Virage de la Mort (1914) or Piège de la Mort(1924). So here we have Lautenschlager in the winning Mercédès in 1914; ten years of health & safety and Garnier's Bugatti has paling fences either side in 1924 which have gone by 1986 and the road has been widened.

[Allan L]

A slight deviation to report that Jim Loveridge has put together a book called "The Places They Raced" which has pictures of many of the early Grand Prix, Gordon Bennett and other racing venues of the first decades of motor sport. Many of the illustrations are from postcards so have contemporary captions.
I've posted one of the pictures as a puzzle but won't flood the site with too many more.

[Allan L]

One year I managed to visit Chimay and worked out where the circuit must have been for myself. This diagram (one of a series of circuit maps he's done) would have been a great help and I would have had confidence to take photos of what I saw. It's post-war but only by a few years so has the character of a pre-war road circuit.

[nicanary]

I recently posted a puzzle showing the start of a race at Chimay. Now that the puzzle has been solved I can post some images I found online whilst researching my content.

The first photo is of Bira in the 1947 Grand Prix des Fontieres, and the second one is of an Escort taking part at the circuit in 1970.  I believe the corner is the hairpin in the village at the south-eastern corner of the circuit. The scene hasn't changed at all. Little wonder the place had to cancel car racing after 1972 - it was extremely fast out in the country, fearsomely so, and no longer a safe place to be.

[nicanary]

I intended to add an amusing/sarcastic comment about the Armco, but the security problems today on AP didn't allow me to modify my text. The onlookers in 1947 remind me of the old Group B rally days. Brave or foolhardy?