GR Racing

Motor racing was started in France, as a direct result of the enthusiasm with which the French public embraced the motor car. The first motoring contest took place on 22 July 1894, and was organised by a Paris newspaper, Le Petit Journal. The Paris–Rouen rally was 126 km (78 mi), from Porte Maillot in Paris, through the Bois de Boulogne, to Rouen. The official winners were Peugeot and Panhard.

In 1900, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the owner of the New York Herald and the International Herald Tribune, established the Gordon Bennett Cup. He hoped the creation of an international event would drive automobile manufacturers to improve their cars. The 1903 event occurred in the aftermath of the fatalities at the Paris-Madrid road race, so the race, at Athy in Ireland, though on public roads, was run over a closed circuit: the first ever closed-circuit motor race. In the United States, William Kissam Vanderbilt II launched the Vanderbilt Cup at Long Island, New York, in 1904.

Some anglophone sources wrongly list a race called the Pau Grand Prix in 1901. The name of the 1901 event was the Circuit du Sud-Ouest and it was run in three classes around the streets of Pau. Maurice Farman was awarded the Grand Prix de Pau for his overall victory in the Circuit du Sud-Ouest driving a Panhard 24 hp.

The only race at the time to regularly carry the name Grand Prix was organised by the Automobile Club de France (ACF), of which the first took place in 1906. The circuit used, which was based in Le Mans, was roughly triangular in shape, each lap covering 105 kilometres (65 mi). The driving force behind the decision to race on a circuit – as opposed to racing on ordinary roads from town to town – was the Paris to Madrid road race of 1903. During this race a number of people, both drivers and pedestrians – including Marcel Renault – were killed and the race was stopped by the French authorities at Bordeaux. Further road based events were banned.

From the 32 entries representing 12 different automobile manufacturers, at the 1906 event, the Hungarian-born Ferenc Szisz (1873–1944) won the 1,260 km (780 mi) race in a Renault. This race was regarded as the first Grande Épreuve, which meant "great trial" and the term was used from then on to denote up to the eight most important events of the year. A key factor to Renault winning this first Grand Prix was held to be the detachable wheel rims (developed by Michelin).

For the most part, races were run over a lengthy circuit of closed public roads, not purpose-built private tracks. This was true of the Le Mans circuit of the 1906 Grand Prix, as well as the Targa Florio (run on 93 miles (150 km) of Sicilian roads), the 75 miles (121 km) German Kaiserpreis circuit in the Taunus mountains, and the French circuit at Dieppe (a mere 48 miles (77 km)), used for the 1907 Grand Prix. The exceptions were the steeply banked egg-shaped near oval of Brooklands in England, completed in 1907; the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, first used in 1909 with the first Indianapolis 500-Mile Race in 1911; and the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, in Italy, opened in 1922.

In 1908, the United States of America became the first country outside France to host an automobile race using the name Grand Prix (or Grand Prize), run at Savannah. The first Grande Épreuve outside France was the 1921 Italian Grand Prix held at Montichiari. In 1904, many national motor clubs banded together to form the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR). In 1922 the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) was empowered on behalf of AIACR to regulate Grand Prix racing and other forms of international racing. The 1933 Monaco Grand Prix was the first time in the history of the sport that the grid was determined by timed qualifying rather than the luck of a draw.

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, and yellow for Belgium. 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".

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. In the 1930s, nationalism entered a new phase when the Nazis encouraged Mercedes and Auto Union to further the glory of the Reich. The two German marques utterly dominated the period from 1935 to 1939. 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. Subsequently, a European Championship, consisting of the major Grand Prix in a number of countries (named Grandes Épreuves) was instituted for drivers in 1931.

In 1946, following World War II, only four races of Grand Prix calibre were held. Rules for a Grand Prix World Championship had been laid out before World War II, but it took several years afterward until 1947 when the old AIACR reorganised itself as the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile or "FIA" for short, headquartered in Paris. It announced the new International Formula, also known as Formula 1 or Formula A, to be effective from 1947. At the end of the 1949 season the FIA announced that for 1950 they would be linking several national Formula One Grands Prix to create a World Championship for drivers. The first World Championship race was held on 13 May 1950 at Silverstone in the United Kingdom. The first World Champion was Giuseppe Farina, driving an Alfa Romeo. Ferrari appeared at the second World Championship race, in Monaco, and has the distinction of being the only manufacturer to compete in every season of the World Championship, still competing in 2025.

From 1925 onwards, the AIACR and later the FIA organised World and European Championships for Grand Prix manufacturers, drivers and constructors:

World Manufacturers' Championship (1925–1927)

European Drivers' Championship (1931–1932, 1935–1939)

World Drivers' Championship (1950–1980)

International Cup for Constructors (1958–1980)

Formula One World Drivers' Championship (1981–present)

Formula One World Constructors' Championship (1981–present)

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.