25 replies to this topic

[Wolf]

Here I go again... ;) I've been composing (up to '52 so far)the list of post-WWII GP races, and I'd appreciate some help with it.

1. Are there any GP races other than listed? Or are there some on the list that are not considered GPs?

2. Names:
2a. I tried to use original names wherever possible. Are they correct? Some dubios ones are in blueish fields... Most notably Albi GP- VIII and X edition ('46 and '48) are given as GP d'Albi, whereas IX ('47) edition as GP de l'Albigeois, as well as I'd like to have articles checked out in languages I'm not familiar with (French, e.g.- where sometimes GP du Nice and sometimes GP de Nice is used)
2b. What are the original names of the races in blueish fields in italics (I guess the names are in the English)?
2c. The proper names of Swiss and Belgian races... Lang lists all Belgian GPs as Grote Prijs van Belgie and all the Swiss ones as Grosser Preis der Schweiz, and other source(s) as Grand Prix de Belgique and Grand Prix de Suisse respectively.

3. Numbering:
3a. Discrepancies (in gray fields). E.g.- I have '47 Italian GP listed as 17th, and Swiss GP as 8th. Yet, Lang has '50 Italian GP as 21st and Swiss as 10th. Careful inspection shows that if the data for '47 is correct that '50 races should be 20th (Lang's number is as if two Italian GPs were held one year) and 11th (Lang's number is as if one of the '48 and '49 races didn't count) respectively... Or like Marseilles GP jumping from 1st to 6th in one year.
3b. I was supposng that races in consecutive years had succesive numbers, is that OK? But what happens in cases where there is a break e.g. Pescara ('50, '51 and '57)? Can anyone fill in the numbers he knows? And esp. for races like Goodwood and Richmond Trophy where I have no numbers (or were they numbered at all?)...
3c. This one's purely academic. Why are all the numbers roman? Esp. considering they should be ordinal number. And I've noticed Lang tries to make them into ordinal (is that possible at all?), but with some inconsistencies- why using superscript in e.g. French titles (for XIe) but not in English ones (IIIrd)?

4. What races (excluding C'ship races, which I consider to be of such stature) could be said of having a stature of Grande Épreuve?

5. And, last but not least- how does one define a GP? What were the requirements for a race to be considered a Grand Pix?

Thanx in advance and sorry about the length of this post.

[Vitesse2]

Okay, to tackle the names first!!

As regards the Belgian and Swiss races, both are correct. Belgium has two official languages - Walloon (a dialect of French) and Flemish (closely related to Dutch). Switzerland has FOUR official languages - French, German, Italian and Romansch: to avoid any bias, Swiss stamps (? and coins?) are inscribed "Helvetia", which is the Latin name for the area now known as Switzerland.

French grammar, like German, depends on the gender of the subject. Unlike German, which has three genders, French has only two - masculine and feminine. IIRC French town and city names are almost exclusively feminine and the name of a GP of a city should theoretically be (as an example)

Le Grand Prix de la Nice

In practice, this is abbreviated to

Le Grand Prix de Nice

Department names are masculine, so we should have:

Le Grand Prix de le Roussillon

However, "de le" is converted to "du", both meaning (like "de la") "of the" or just plain "of". So, we get:

Le Grand Prix du Roussillon

No doubt FEV or Kpy will correct me if I'm wrong (it's 25+ years since I studied French!)

Like you, I'm mystified by the changing title of the Albi race - I suspect that Albigeois is correct and the shorter version come from English sources which didn't want to confuse their insular readers!

Re the numbering, I seem to recall a discussion about the Italian GP numbers some months back ....

Also, I note you have one consistent mis-spelling - it should be Comminges!

The original names of the Czech and Swedish races are given in Sheldon (yes - I know you don't own them!! ) and I would post them for you, but I need character sets I don't know how to post here! Stefan and Sat are your guys for that, I guess ...

And in 3c, I think the inconsistencies in Lang's numbering are probably just down to sloppy proof-reading. In English, it is not usual to add ordinals to Roman numerals: 3rd is correct, IIIrd is not.

Hope this helps you!!!

[scheivlak]

Originally posted by Vitesse2
Belgium has two official languages - Walloon (a dialect of French) and Flemish (closely related to Dutch).

IIRC: Belgium has three official languages - Dutch (spoken by the Flemish) and French (spoken by the Walloons) and German (spoken somewhere behind Stavelot and Malmedy...).

scheivlak

[FEV]

Despite the 25+ years you spent away from French grammar books, you have good souvenirs of it Richard !
So just a few corrections here. The outcome of your explanation is correct, but the way you got there is not exactly correct.
It is not exactely correct to say French town and cities are exclusively feminine. In fact the name of the town itself never as a genre. Only the word town in French (ie "ville") is feminine so therefore you say "La ville de Nice" but you never say "la Nice" or "la Paris". So in fact, the genre of a town depends of the word or adjective you associate it with. For instance the word "capital" ("capitale" in french) is feminine in French. Therefore you say "Paris est LA capitale de la mode" for "Paris is the capital of fashion". But the word place ("endroit") is masculine in French; which gives us for "Paris is the greatest place in the world" : "Paris est LE plus bel endroit du monde". I' not sure my poor english abilities allows me to be very clear here - I should have let this one to kpy !

Departments, counties, districts, etc... are not exclusivley masculine. Contrary to towns, the name of the department itself has a genre. You say "Le Finistère" or "Le Jura" but you also have "La Meurthe-et-Moselle" and "La Gironde".
Note that "Le Roussillon" is not a departement but a district ("une région" in French, made of several departements - more like a state in the USA, the "département" being the equivament of the US county).
So you are right Richard when saying that the logical way is to say "de le Roussillon" which as been shortened to the more nice souding "du Roussillon". But to add to the complexity of the thing, "du" is only the shortened version of "de le" - "de la" remains as it is and cannot be shortened (Grand Prix de la Marne for instance).

So if you don't mind Wolf here are what I believe are some of the original names of the French Grands Prix you mention :

Grand Prix de Nice
Grand Prix de Marseille (no 's' at the end in French, like no 'h' in Reims)
Coupe de la Libération (with an accent on the 'e')
Grand Prix de Pau
Grand Prix de Nîmes (with this accent ^ on the 'i')
Grand Prix du Comminges (not Commingues)
Grand Prix de Bordeaux

About Belgium I always thought that the official name of the Belgian GP depended on where it was organised. Spa-Francorchamps is in the French part of Belgium so it is "Grand Prix de Belgique". When held in Zolder it becomes "Grote Prijs von Belgie". But, despite my belgian-flamish origins I am not 100% sure about it

Hope this brings more help than confusion !!

[Vitesse2]

Well, I did pass A-level French (like the Baccalaureat, sort of!). Thanks for the clarification - I only hope you haven't totally bamboozled Wolf!

You could be right about the Belgian GP - sometimes it is the bleedin' obvious, as Barry Boor so eloquently put it to me once!!

And I suppose I should have made it clear that de la is never shortened: mea culpa! (more Latin!!!)

But what about Albi ...??

[Roger Clark]

It's 40 years ago now, but I can still remember that I first became interested in French lessons when I discovered why it was Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans and not de le Mans

[Wolf]

Thanx guys. BTW, Vitesse, not only do I know a few French words (acquired by listening to Brel and Piaf), but I could tell You few things about my native language that would make Your hair curl-up...;) Not only do we have more cases than Germans (and I suppose French)- namely 7, but we have all the weird stuff as well (verbs changing with gender of the subject &c). It is said we have second most complicated language in Europe, right next to Finnish.

And I was aware of the issues in Switzerland and Belgium, which is why I posted that question. I'm fairly certain that language in Switzerland is not so big an issue in political terms, as I suppose it is in the Belgium (mainly betwixt Flemmish ppl and Waloons). IIRC, Lang says that e.g. '73 Belgian GP had to be mowed to Zolder because of political decision (although, I guess, cancellations in '69 and '71 didn't help organizers of the race at Spa, either).

Keep 'em corrections and suggestions coming.

[Milan Fistonic]

I see you have the 1948 GP de l'A.C.F. listed as the 35th running of that event. I recently read an article in the May 1949 edition of Motor Sport about the numbering of that race. The author "Baladeur" (whose name escapes me at the moment) could not figure out how it could be number 35 when a list of previous winners gave the following result.

1906 to 1908...3 races
1912 to 1914...3 races
1921 to 1939..19 races
1947.................1 race

Total.................26 races

He then went through various permutations of events before coming to this conclusion.

1904 - 1905 French Eliminating Races......2 races
1906 - 1947 Grands Prix proper..............26 races
1909 - 1911 Grands Prix manques...........3 races
1919 - 1920 Grands Prix manques...........2 races
1946............Grand Prix manque...............1 race

Total........................................................34 races

He concludes: Well, that calculation produces the right answer, and although I do not for a moment doubt that I may have reached the right result for completely the wrong reason, I consider that I have done better than could anybody, myself included, in the bar of the Lion d'Or.

[Wolf]

Milan, the 1954. 25th Pescara GP (as listed by Lang), got me thinking in the same direction, but upon checking Quintins site I came nowhere near 25 GPs raced in Pescara, let alone bearing the name Pescara GP... Were the rest sports car races, or something?

[FEV]

About the ACF Grand Prix the reason is the following : at some time in the 30s (can't check the dates at the moment) an argument arose between the british and french officials. The British were saying that the Tourist Trophy was the oldest car race in the world (first in 1903 IIRC). The ACF, angry to be robbed of this unofficial honour, decided to rename the "Paris" races between 1894-1903 as Grand Prix de l'ACF (taking one race for each of this ten years of course). Therefore the 1906 ACF Grand Prix jumped from 1st to 11th !!! Once again all of this is off the top of my head, and the dates might be accurate, but that's the main story behind it ! And the MotorSport excerpt posted by Milan seems to indicate that the British did not (rightly IMHO even if this is a rather futile disput) accept this French trick !

About Pescara, the official name of the race (at least for the pre-WWII races) was the Coppa Acerbo. And yes there was also a sportscar race in the 30s (6, 12 or even 24 hours depending the years). But IIRC it had another name (Targa Abruzzi maybe) so might not have influenced the calculation on the GP race.

[Vitesse2]

Frank is pretty much on the money with the French GP, but I can't pin down the exact reference at the moment either!

As to Pescara, the calculation does include the Coppa Acerbo, which started in 1924 - Sheldon has 1939 (run to 1500cc Voiturette rules) as the fifteenth race, and there was no race in 1929. There was also a Voiturette Coppa Acerbo in 1939, but that had an 1100cc limit. The Targa Abruzzo was a completely separate event, as Frank surmised, although the 1952-3 (12 hours) and 1961 (4 hours) races were perhaps it's spiritual successors.

Post-war, the Coppa Acerbo became the Pescara GP and was run as follows:

1947 (XVI) Sports cars
1948 (XVII) Sports cars
1949 (XVIII) Sports cars
1950 (XIX) F1
1951 (XX) F1
1952 (XXI) Sports cars
1953 (XXII) Sports cars
1954 (XXIII) F1
1956 (XXIV) Sports cars (2000cc)
1957 (XXV) F1
1961 (XXVI) Sports cars

BTW, I found a small mistake by DSJ in Georgano - he says there was no race in 1951!!

[Roger Clark]

Paul Sheldon lists the pre-1906 Grands Prix as:

I 1893 PAris-Bordeaux
II 1896 Paris-Marseilles-PAris
III 1898 Paris-Amsterfam-PAris
IV 1899 Tour de France
V 1900 Paris-Toulouse-Paris
VI 1901 Paris-Berlin
VII 1902 Paris-Vienna
VIII 1903 Paris-Madrid

I have seen this list eleswhere. It makes the 1906 race the 9th, not the 11th, but with the 26 races from 1906-47 listed by Baladeur, we get the 1948 race as the 35th.

Frank may be right about the renaming of the early races, but I always thought it happened earlier, probably from the time of the 1906 race. In any case, the Targa Florio also pre-dates the 1906 Grand Prix.

Was Baladeur Kent Karslake?

[anjakub]

Name of the czech race.

1949 Masaryk GP/Czech GP = Velka Cena Èeskoslovenska
Masaryk Circuit = Masarykùv Okruh

note: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937) was the first and long-time president of Czechoslovakian Republic in 1918-1935.

[Marcor]

I've checked your list with my records (period 1946-1949). There were some slight discrepaties. And I can't add something about Albi. I think it was sometimes GP de l'Albigeois, sometimes GP d'Albi and even the Pelissier's book (Albi et ses Grands Prix) is not clear about it.


1- I'm not sure I would have included "La Coupe Robert Benoist" (1945) in the list as it was a "voiturette" race (cars under 1500 cc).

2- Coupe de la Libération.

3- I GP International automobile de Marseille, 12 May 1946

4- XVI Grand Prix des Frontières (Chimay), 9 June 1946.

5- I GP du Roussillon (Perpignan). => 2 "S", also in 1947,

6- Ulster Trophy, 10 August 1946 (short race: only 49 miles)

7- Milan GP, date = 29 September.

8- GP du Salon, date = 6 October 1946.

9- SMK Stockholm GP (Vallentuna), 23 February 1947 (there were 2 races in Sweden).

10- GP de Pau, 7 April 1947, id 1948...

11- II GP International de Marseille, 18 May 1947 ==> no "s" at the end.

12- GP de Nîmes. ==> accent.

13- ? GP de Belgique, yes same problem as with the ACF GP (renumbered) but the title was GP automobile d'Europe (et de Belgique).

14- GP de la Marne, 6 July 1947 (and not GP de Reims).

15- Circuit de Strasbourg, 3 August 1947 (and not GP d'Alsace).

16- GP du Comminges, 10 August 1947 (as already said, no "u").

17- Coupe du Salon, 16 November 1947 (and not GP du Salon but I had to check it).

18- GP d'Europe (et de Suisse), 4 July 1948.

19- GP du Comminges, date = 1 August, I've seen 8 August in some websites...

20- Coupe du Salon, 10 October 1948 (and not GP du Salon). Coupes du Salon = meeting (including the GP race and also a sportscars race).

21- Richmond Cup. Maybe this race was to short to be entitled GP... (only 39 km)

22- JCC Jersey International Road Race, 28 April (I had to check it).

23- GP du Roussillon, 8 May (and not 7 May).

24- III Circuit International de vitesse de Marseille, 22 May 1949.

25- XIX GP des Frontières, 5 June 1949.

26- GP de Belgique, 19 June 1949. (date is not 12 June).

27- GP de l'ACF, 7 August 1949, was a sports cars race, not in my list.

28- II GP de Lausanne, 28 August 1949 (not 27 August).

I don't quote my sources, it's too long...

[William Hunt]

About Belgium I always thought that the official name of the Belgian GP depended on where it was organised. Spa-Francorchamps is in the French part of Belgium so it is "Grand Prix de Belgique". When held in Zolder it becomes "Grote Prijs von Belgie". [/B][/QUOTE]

Actually it is 'Grote Prijs van Belgie" (and not 'von')

[David McKinney]

Originally posted by anjakub
Tomás Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1937) was the first and long-time president of Czechoslovakian Republic in 1918-1935.

Wasn't the circuit named after Jan Masaryk, the president's son?

[William Hunt]

Yes , the Czech GP circuit of Brno was called Masaryk, I'm 100% certain of that.

[anjakub]

Jan Masaryk was the minister of foreign affairs, but circuit is about his father Tomas G. Masaryk, who donate a trophy for race.

[dmj]

In fact the name of the town itself never as a genre

Not so sure about it, but I also didn't use my French much in last ten years... Towns certainly had genres in the past as some remaining ones can prove:
Le Havre
La Rochelle
... and a town with certain motorsport importance called Le Mans...

These are just reminders of old age, before simplification of language (probably Den Haag is similar proof in Dutch) - I believe all towns in French have genre, historically known, but it just isn't usual to write it.

[scheivlak]

Originally posted by Wolf
IIRC, Lang says that e.g. '73 Belgian GP had to be mowed to Zolder because of political decision (although, I guess, cancellations in '69 and '71 didn't help organizers of the race at Spa, either).

Keep 'em corrections and suggestions coming.

In 1972 the Begian GP had already moved to Nivelles (en Wallonie), where the 1974 GP was held too. So the first decision presumably was: cancelling the possibility of a GP at Spa for safety reasons, and the next one: switching it every year between Nivelles (Wallonie) and Zolder (Vlaanderen) like the Belgians used to switch their Eurovision song contest entry every year between the Dutch and French speaking (or singing) people and so on and so on....
But Nivelles was really too dumb a track for F1 (soon to be broken down, must be one of the few circuits that didn't leave any nostagic memories whatsoever) so after 1975 it just stayed at Zolder till the resurgence of Spa/Francorchamps in the eighties.

What's intriguing me is that Forix list all the Pre-Nivelles Belgian GPs -held at Spa/Francorchamps- as "Grote Prijs van Belgie"....

scheivlak

[William Hunt]

... like the Belgians used to switch their Eurovision song contest entry every year between the Dutch and French speaking (or singing) people and so on and so on.... (quote)

We still do the switching , but the Eurovision results usually aren't that great (apart from '86 when we won with Sandra Kim)

[FEV]

Not so sure about it, but I also didn't use my French much in last ten years... Towns certainly had genres in the past as some remaining ones can prove:

Good point here dmj ! But I think this has to do with the fact all these towns are named after a natural site or someone, etc... For instance La Rochelle means "little rock", Le Castellet means "little castle", etc... So I think (but I could be wrong since I'm not a linguist - my fiancée is one and she'll kill me if I said anything wrong on this ) that we can say that French towns do not have a specific genre.
But I'll try to find a real grammatical rule about this !

[William Hunt]

... my fiancée is one and she'll kill me if I said anything wrong on this... ) [/B][/QUOTE]

I know the feeling my fiancée is (apart from very gorgeous looking) linguist as well. She finished university in Germanic langauges (mainly Dutch & English) and is now doing Human Resources (I studied law.)

And she can get very tempered if I make language faults. So , I perfectly understand U there, believe me !

[Rob29]

Originally posted by scheivlak




What's intriguing me is that Forix list all the Pre-Nivelles Belgian GPs -held at Spa/Francorchamps- as "Grote Prijs van Belgie"....

scheivlak

Sure I heard somewhere that Spa was part of GERMANY until WW1.Grosser Preis von Belgie?

[Marcor]

I'm not sure Spa was ever part of Germany. In the old track (before 1939 and the Raidillon) a corner was called "L'Ancienne Douane" (the old customs). Malmedy was, I'm nearly sure, part of Germany before WW1.

The triangle Spa (Francorchamps)-Malmédy-Stavelot was first used in 1921 for a motorbike races. Originally a car GP -same regulations as the ACF GP - was planned for August 1921 but the organisers only received one entry and the race was cancelled and replaced by this motorcycle race.

So the circuit was never part of Germany. (don't count the 1940-45 period)

[William Hunt]

Originally posted by Rob29
Sure I heard somewhere that Spa was part of GERMANY until WW1.Grosser Preis von Belgie?

NO WAY ! Verviers is the only part that was of Germany before.