What happened to the 20th Italian GP?

Was there ever a 20th Italian GP?
The pre-war GP's were numbered 1-16.
(See FORIX and my own homepage http://www.kolumbus.fi/leif.snellman).
They were followed by the 17th in 1947,
18th in 1948 and 19th in 1949. (See Forix)
Then FORIX says that the 1950 Italian
GP was the 21th. That's confirmed by other
sources including Mike Lang's "Grand Prix!"
Could someone explain the jump in the count?

Hi Leif, good to see you here.

I'm not exactly sure yet, but it might have something to do with the 1930 Grand Prix, which was actually known as the Grand Prix of Monza rather than the Grand Prix of Italy.

More on this as I find it.

Dear Leif

Well, I have one of those explanations that, I assume, will leave you as speechless as it has left me : there was never a 17th Italian Grand Prix !
The race in 1948 (that should have had that number) was "converted" into the 18th Italian Grand Prix, due to the well-known fact that 17 is the bad luck number in Italy.
I have never seen myself a poster of that edition and hence cannot tell if the number in it read 17 or 18, but evidence from the late thirties and the first fifties suggest that this is the explanation.
:-)
(We want to see you around more often, pal !)
Un abrazo
Felix

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OOps !
When I wrote 1948 I meant 1947.
;-)
Felix

Leif,

First, Welcome to the Forum, ol' Buddy!!!!

Second, I concur with Felix. There was some confusion even at the time it appears, but the '17th' became the '18th' retroactively with the resulting ripple effect.



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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,

Don Capps

Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…

History has a habit of changing the facts. The Monkhouse/King-Farlow book, in its list of Italian GP results, shows:

1930 See Monza GP

There were Monza GPs in 27, 29, 31, 32 & 33 as well, the 1930 race being over 149 miles.
There was no Italian GP in 1929, but they have not put the above reference to that year, so one can draw the conclusion that, while the 62-mile Monza GP of 1929 couldn't count, the longer race of 1930 might qualify in some kind of hindsight review.
In the same way, the South Australian Centenary Grand Prix, held 1.1.37, has become etched into the history books as the 1936 Australian Grand Prix.