page_title: Grand Prix motor racing
section_title: The Pre-WW II years
hierarchical_section_title: Grand Prix motor racing / The Pre-WW II years
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Monza / Mailand. Trainingsfahren um den Preis "Rund um Mailand" auf der grossen Automobilstraße in Monza. Die italienische Automobil-Industrie ist gegenwärtig in grossem Training um den Preis "Rund um Mailand". Blick auf den Startplatz aauf der Rennbahn in Monza. Information added by Wikimedia users.* Italiano: Schieramento di partenza per la "1ª Coppa Fiera di Milano", disputata sull'Autodromo di Monza il 19 aprile 1925. In primo piano due automobili Diatto.
context_page_description: Grand Prix motor racing, a form of motorsport competition, has its roots in organised automobile racing that began in France as early as 1894. It quickly evolved from simple road races from one town to the next, to endurance tests for car and driver. Innovation and the drive of competition soon saw speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour, but because early races took place on open roads, accidents occurred frequently, resulting in deaths both of drivers and of spectators.
  Grand Prix motor racing eventually evolved into formula racing, and one can regard Formula One as its direct descendant. Each event of the Formula One World Championships is still called a Grand Prix; Formula One is also referred to as "Grand Prix racing".
context_section_description: All the competing vehicles were painted in the international auto racing colors:
  blue (Bleu de France) for France,
  green (British racing green) for Britain,
  red (Rosso corsa) for Italy,
  white for Germany,
  Note: beginning in 1934, the Germans stopped painting their cars, allegedly after the paint had been left off a Mercedes-Benz W25 in an effort to reduce weight. The unpainted metal soon had the German vehicles dubbed by the media as the "Silver Arrows".
  yellow for Belgium.
  French cars continued to dominate (led by Bugatti, but also including Delage and Delahaye) until the late 1920s, when the Italians (Alfa Romeo and Maserati) began to beat the French cars regularly. At the time, the Germans engineered unique race vehicles as seen in the photo here with the Benz aerodynamic "teardrop" body introduced at the 1923 European Grand Prix at Monza by Karl Benz.
  In the 1930s, however, nationalism entered a new phase when the Nazis encouraged Mercedes and Auto Union to further the glory of the Reich. (The government did provide some money to the two manufacturers, but the extent of the aid into their hands was exaggerated in the media; government subsidies amounted to perhaps 10% or less of the costs of running the two racing teams.) The two German marques utterly dominated the period from 1935 to 1939, winning all but three of the official Championship Grands Prix races run in those years. The cars by this time were single-seaters (the riding mechanic vanished in the early 1920s), with 8 to 16 cylinder supercharged engines producing upwards of 600 hp (450 kW) on alcohol fuels.
  As early as October 1923, the idea of an automobile championship was discussed at the annual autumn conference of the AIACR (Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus) in Paris. However, discussion centered on the increased interest in racing by manufacturers and holding the first European Grand Prix at Monza in 1923. The first World Championship took place in 1925, but it was for manufacturers only, consisting of four races of at least 800 km (497 mi) in length. The races that formed the first Constructors' Championship were the Indianapolis 500, the European Grand Prix, and the French and Italian Grands Prix. A European Championship, consisting of the major Grand Prix in a number of countries (named Grandes Épreuves) was instituted for drivers in 1931, and was competed every year until the outbreak of World War II in 1939 with the exception of 1933 and 1934.
caption: Grid of Coppa Fiera di Milano 1925
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