Motor racing was started in France as a direct result of the enthusiasm with which the French public embraced the motor car, with manufacturers drawn by the opportunity to showcase their vehicles. The first motoring contest took place on 22 July 1894, organised by the Paris newspaper Le Petit Journal. The Paris–Rouen rally covered 126 km (78 mi) from Porte Maillot in Paris, through the Bois de Boulogne, to Rouen. Count Jules-Albert de Dion was first into Rouen after 6 hours 48 minutes at an average speed of 19 km/h (12 mph), but the official winners were Peugeot and Panhard as cars were judged on speed, handling, and safety; De Dion's steam car required a stoker, which the judges deemed outside their objectives.
In 1900, James Gordon Bennett Jr. established the Gordon Bennett Cup to drive automobile manufacturers to improve their cars. Each country was allowed up to three cars, which had to be fully built in the country they represented. International racing colours were established at this event. The 1903 event took place at Athy in Ireland on a closed circuit — the first ever closed-circuit motor race — following fatalities at the Paris–Madrid road race. In the United States, William Kissam Vanderbilt II launched the Vanderbilt Cup at Long Island, New York, in 1904.
In 1904, many national motor clubs banded together to form the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR), founded in Paris on 20 June 1904. In 1922 the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) was empowered on behalf of the AIACR to regulate Grand Prix racing and other forms of international racing.
The only race 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, based near Le Mans, was roughly triangular in shape with each lap covering 105 kilometres (65 mi); six laps were run each day and each lap took approximately an hour. The driving force behind racing on a closed circuit rather than town-to-town roads was the Paris–Madrid road race of 1903, during which a number of people were killed — including Marcel Renault — and the race was stopped by French authorities at Bordeaux.
From 32 entries representing 12 different automobile manufacturers, the Hungarian-born Ferenc Szisz (1873–1944) won the 1,260 km (780 mi) race in a Renault. A key factor in Renault's victory was detachable wheel rims developed by Michelin, which allowed tyre changes without levering the tyre off the rim. This race was regarded as the first Grande Épreuve — meaning "great trial" — a term used from then on to denote the most important events of the year, up to eight per season.
Early Grand Prix races were heavily nationalistic, with rules typically centring on maximum weights to limit engine size indirectly; 10–15 litre engines with no more than four cylinders producing less than 50 hp were common. Cars carried a mechanic on board as well as the driver, and no one was allowed to work on the cars during the race except those two.
A mass start was used for the first time at the 1922 French Grand Prix in Strasbourg. The 1925 season was the first during which no riding mechanic was required in a car, the rule having been repealed in Europe following the death of Tom Barrett during the 1924 Grand Prix season. At the Solituderennen in 1926 a system using flags and boards to give drivers tactical information was used for the first time by Alfred Neubauer, the racing manager of Mercedes-Benz. 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 a draw.
Regulations were virtually abandoned in 1928 with an era known as Formula Libre, when race organisers ran events with almost no limitations. The number of races with Grand Prix status grew from five in 1927 to eighteen in 1934, the peak year before World War II.
Prior to 1935, competing vehicles were painted in international auto racing colours: 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 paint was left off a Mercedes-Benz W25 to reduce weight — and the unpainted metal earned their vehicles the media nickname "Silver Arrows".
French cars led by Bugatti, Delage, and Delahaye dominated until the late 1920s, when Italian manufacturers Alfa Romeo and Maserati began winning regularly. In the 1930s, Mercedes and Auto Union, encouraged by the Nazi government, utterly dominated from 1935 to 1939, winning all but three of the official Championship Grands Prix in that period. The cars were single-seaters with 8 to 16 cylinder supercharged engines producing upwards of 600 hp (450 kW) on alcohol fuels.
The first World Championship took place in 1925 for manufacturers only, consisting of four races of at least 800 km in length: the Indianapolis 500, the European Grand Prix, and the French and Italian Grands Prix. This world championship was officially cancelled in 1930. A European Championship for drivers was instituted in 1931 and competed every year until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, with the exception of the 1933 and 1934 seasons.
In 1947, the old AIACR reorganised itself as the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), headquartered in Paris. The FIA announced the new International Formula — also known as Formula 1 or Formula A — effective from 1947. At the end of the 1949 season the FIA announced a World Championship for drivers beginning in 1950, linking several national Formula One Grands Prix; due to economic difficulties, the 1952 and 1953 seasons were actually competed in Formula Two cars.
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 at Monaco and has the distinction of being the only manufacturer to compete in every season of the World Championship.
From 1925 onwards, the AIACR and later the FIA organised the following championships:
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.