Automobile racing | History, Types & Safety (2024)

automobile racing, professional and amateur automobile sport practiced throughout the world in a variety of forms on roads, tracks, or closed circuits. It includes Grand Prix racing, speedway racing, stock-car racing, sports-car racing, drag racing, midget-car racing, and karting, as well as hill climbs and trials (see hill climb; see also rally driving; gymkhana). Local, national, and international governing bodies, the most notable of which is the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), divide racing cars into various classes and subclasses and supervise competitions.

Early history

Automobile racing began soon after the invention of the gasoline- (petrol-) fueled internal-combustion engine in the 1880s. The first organized automobile competition, a reliability test in 1894 from Paris to Rouen, France, a distance of about 80 km (50 mi), was won with an average speed of 16.4 kph (10.2 mph). In 1895 the first true race was held, from Paris to Bordeaux, France, and back, a distance of 1,178 km. The winner made an average speed of 24.15 kph. Organized automobile racing began in the United States with an 87-km race from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois, and back on Thanksgiving Day in 1895. Both early races were sponsored by newspapers for promotional purposes. In Europe, town-to-town races in France, or from France to other countries, became the norm until 1903 when authorities stopped the Paris-to-Madrid race at Bordeaux because of the large number of accidents. The first closed-circuit road race, the Course de Périgueux, was run in 1898, a distance of 145 km on one lap. Such racing, governed by the Automobile Club de France (founded in 1895), came to prevail in Europe except for England, Wales, and Scotland. By 1900 racers had achieved speeds of more than 80.46 kph. Danger to spectators, racers, and livestock on roads not built for the automobile, let alone racing, ultimately caused road races to decrease in number. A notable exception was the Mille Miglia, which was not stopped until 1957.

International racing in the modern sense began after James Gordon Bennett, owner of The New York Herald, offered a trophy to be competed for annually by national automobile clubs, racing three cars each that had been built of parts made in the respective countries. The Automobile Club de France organized the first Bennett Trophy races in 1901, 1902, and 1903. The event was later held at the Circuit of Ireland (1903), the Taunus Rundstrecke in Germany (1904), and the Circuit d’Auvergne (1905). The unwillingness of French manufacturers to be limited to three cars led to their boycott of the Bennett Trophy Race in 1906 and the establishment of the first French Grand Prix Race at Le Mans in that year, the cars being raced by manufacturers’ teams. The first Targa Florio was run in Sicily the same year and thereafter except during wartime at distances varying from 72 to 1,049 km.

William K. Vanderbilt, the New York sportsman, established a trophy raced for on Long Island from 1904 through 1909 (except for 1907) at distances ranging from 450 to 482 km. Thereafter the race was run at Savannah, Georgia; Milwaukee; Santa Monica, California; and San Francisco until its discontinuance in 1916. Later Vanderbilt Cup races were run in 1936 and 1937 at Roosevelt Raceway, Long Island, New York.

In early racing, in both Europe and the United States, competing race cars were usually prototypes of the following year’s models. After World War I, racing became too specialized for the use of production cars, though occasionally high-performance touring cars were stripped of their bodies and fitted with special seats, fuel tanks, and tires for racing. Still later stock-car racing in 1939 started with standard models modified for racing.

Speedway racing

The first speedway purpose-built for automobile racing was constructed in 1906 at Brooklands, near Weybridge, Surrey, England. The track was a 4.45 km circuit, 30 m (100 ft) wide, with two curves banked to a height of 8.5 m. Sprint, relay, endurance, and handicap races were run at Brooklands, as well as long-distance runs (1,600 km) in 1932. Twenty-four hour races were held in 1929–31. Brooklands closed in 1939. The first road racing allowed in England was at Donington Park, Lancashire, in 1932, but the circuit did not survive World War II. Oval, banked speedways on the Continent included Monza (outside Milan, 1922) and Montlhéray (outside Paris, 1924), both of which were attached to road circuits, using only half the track as part of Grand Prix racing. Montlhéray was also the site of many long-distance speed records.

Possibly the best known speedway is the 4-km Indianapolis Motor Speedway at Speedway, near Indianapolis, which opened as an unpaved track in 1909 but was paved with brick for the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911, the race continuing thereafter except during wartime. Oval, banked board tracks, first used before World War I, were popular in the United States throughout the 1920s. Both before and after that decade unpaved (dirt) tracks of half-mile and mile lengths were in use.