Supercharged Grand Prix Cars 1924-1939 (full version)

Ah, in

1924

a new Grand Prix car first appeared, it was destined to become the most successful racing car of all time, designed and built by an Italian living in France who simply called it his type 35. His name Ettore Bugatti from

1924

to 1930. 350 Bugatti flooded. On the racing circuits of Europe, allowing France to assume a dominant position, a three-way fight ensued between France, Italy and Germany, which would lead to some of the most exciting racing ever seen between Grand Prix

cars

that They have become legend. Bugatti had been the first pacemaker and during the 1930s

cars

continued to race in the hands of amateur drivers, but our Bugatti had created the car that remains an enigma, since its previous designs had given little indication of what was to follow, for example. example, the type 29, which was registered for the French.

Grand Prix in Strasbourg in 1922 the race was more than 500 miles on the muddy circuit it was in terrible conditions the race became a duel between Bugatti and fear The Bugatti were going more than 115 miles per hour on the straights, but their bricks and road - still needed development two of the theaters had been abandoned, but Nazar took over the leading Bugatti to win the race, as this contemporary print shows, the following year Bugatti decided on a completely aerodynamic car, it was cruelly nicknamed the tank, the tanks were certainly fast, but their wheelbase was too short and they performed poorly on the fast course of the circuit, so Seagrave in a British Sunbeam at the 1923 French Grand Prix, at the end of the year they were sold Bugatti tanks and produced a completely new car, the type 35, is difficult.

Now, to reconcile the appearance of this very elegant automobile with its unlikely ancestors, the beauti

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y built 2-liter engine had a straight eight, was fed by two single carburetors, and produced a modest 90 horsepower, the The secret of the Bugatti type 35 lay in its workmanship, together with excellent steering brakes and suspension, all of which produced road holding unsurpassed for its time, the pleasing bodywork that set a trend in racing cars could have been influenced by The attacks of 1923, however, when the new Bugattis first appeared for the 1924 French Grand Prix. At Lille they created a sensation among the rivals: another new car, the Italian Alfa Romeo p2, but Seagraves Sunbeam led from the start , before one hundred thousand spectators, the Sunbeam broke the lap record, but then began to fail, allowing the Alfas to overtake the new Bugattis, which was going well also inexplicably began to slow down Frederick loses control Disgaea crashes into a stone wall in the bugatti pit the reason for the accidents is clearly a fault in the tires the new and much admired bugatti alloy wheels had been designed with the idea of ​​making adjustments to the brakes Quickly, but always, the original bugatti had specified a non-standard tire size and the hastily produced batch for the race proved defective, the fiat s dropped out and so, with the ferocious Sun Beeman Bugattis out of the race and Alfa Romeo driven by Campari. victories in those days they drank champagne Seagrave Sunbeam had finished fifth its misfire was due to a faulty Magneto.

This is Seagraves' 1924 car with one of the surviving Grand Prix Bugattis leos. The Sunbeam seems to lack refinement, but in some ways it is the most technically advanced. The engine is

supercharged

. The first successful

supercharged

engine was the American Miller 91 with its large centrifugal fan engaged from the engine at 50,000 rpm, forcing the mixture into the cylinders, but such compressors are only efficient at high speed. In Indianapolis, United States, there are gently sloping curves. the cars run at

full

speed throughout the race the supercharger increased speed up to one hundred and fifty miles per hour but the overloaded engines often failed causing catastrophic accidents the Sunbeam was the first European Grand Prix car to be successfully supercharged it attracted a Inheriting gasoline charges the carburetor by compressing it and pumping it into the cylinders to supercharge them, the blower used differed from the Miller centrifugal type, it was much more efficient and consisted of two figure-eight-shaped blades that interlocked like an egg beater while compressing the fuel mixture. fuel.

The Roots compressor, as it is known, has the virtue of efficiency at low speeds. It could pressurize the induction system even when the engine was idling, allowing the Sunbeam to accelerate cleanly away from a slow corner, which a centrifugal supercharger couldn't do after Seagrave's disappointing tour win. The Spanish Grand Prix, the last time a British car and driver would win a Grand Prix for the next 30 years, Bugatti refused to tolerate supercharging and declared it unsportsmanlike. However, there might have been another, more practical reason, as Bugatti authority Hugh Conway explains, which was a strange mix of instinctive design ability and lack of technical competence and certainly wasn't able to design a supercharger itself, so In fact, he eventually got someone else to do it for him, but he objected to one of the suspects because he didn't have one. available and would have been at a disadvantage was as a result of not having one in 1926 the formula changed to a 1.5 liter supercharged even Bugatti knew he would have to use a supercharger to remain competitive his 1.5 liter cars blew up He easily won the Grand Prix from France that year for a very good reason: the only cars entered were road-going Bugattis, but on the sidelines there were other contenders, mainly the 8 inline de l'arche.

The de l'arche was a completely new design. The supercharger. It was driven by the crankshaft, drawing the mixture through a large carburetor, but the intricate engine incorporating no fewer than 60 ball or roller bearings proved expensive to produce. The last race of 1937 was also the last Grand Prix held at the Brooklyn track, a poorly driven DeLarge. Benoir was the end of the unpopular one and a half liter formula due to cost, the days of factory support were coming to an end, only seven eights were built in a row, two large ones since 1928, Grand Prix racing was to be abandoned the Formula, producing some unlikely Contenders like this four and a half liter Bentley.

Bentley's sports car had won the LeMond 24-hour race in 1928 to try to repeat this feat. In 1929 a supercharger was added which increased engine power from 125 to 240 horsepower. The Bentleys, as they were called, did not win in limousines, but Sir Henry Birkin entered a stripped-down four and a half liter Bentley in the 1930 @po French Grand Prix in south-west France. Finally, the under 18s stood out on the field. Perkin in the Bentley passed the pits around 130 miles per hour and passed car after car to the amazement of the crowd, only a Bugatti driven by Felipe Ta'ala remained in front of the Bentley and the fastest truck in the world, as it is said to have called Bugatti, came in second place.

The winner ran a factory that Bugatti entered, what kind of contract would he have? It's pretty clear that many of the drivers asked if they could drive and actually paid their own way so they could drive race cars and have those happy days or so. Of them they had some kind of contract, although we know for sure that people like Chiron used to receive cars instead of money that they could then sell. I don't think many of the Bugatti drivers received much in terms of In a feed, there was no shortage of Bugatti drivers during 1930, but the type 35 engine, although later supercharged and enlarged to 2.3 liters, only had a single shaft overhead cams and Bugatti realized that it was becoming obsolete;

He knew that in the nineteen-year-old theater 929 he was being marginalized. That was pretty clear and there's a complicated history, but he acquired a couple of American Miller cars that were supposed to be left by an American in Europe and he stripped them down and actually copied the engine exactly into a

version

of the '35 called the type 51. and that produced about 30 more horsepower than I had ever seen before for a given size. Eventually, the Miller engine had a double overhead camshaft, one for the intake and one for the exhaust valves set at a 90-degree angle, improving gas flow and thus increasing.

The power that the new engine had installed in the Bugatti Horizon type 51 invited Grand Prix driver John Watson to test a meticulously restored example. Well, I think the engine has some performance. The engine is very impressive. It has what I would call lush power and it really works. from the bottom and I never really ran it at its maximum revs, but you can feel that that's the push and pull that is very impressive. The gearbox has been a bit difficult for me because I am not so used to this type. of the gearbox, but otherwise it's very nice, I really felt that driving was much more difficult because you have to drive much more physically and on my shoulders, I mean, after a few laps around here, I had to turn the steering wheel.

Really worn out and I can't imagine how they drove for as long as I did many years ago. At first I was very nervous about it, but now that I'm more used to it I can understand why owners of these cars enjoy it. The more I drive it, the more I start to enjoy it and it actually feels like a much more car than maybe the current grunt cars because they are much more refined. Brooklyn sorry until 1933 the only British circuit the races were mainly for sports cars which had to be silenced the local residents insisted on it but the Bugattis and mg banks raced around the bumpy bank most weekends it was the biggest possible fan Brooklands is no longer closed in September

1939

forever a k3 mg that often rises here drives along one of the few remaining sections the passenger is motorsports bill body editor and record breaking Brooklyn historian back 140 3.44 by air engine maker Rosen John Cobb said he felt like leaning too far out of an upstairs window fell farther than he wants now for comfort, he was a rather passive man, so he said They should never have taken it lightly, neither the drivers nor the select summer crowd at Brooklands cared much about the tied prize races that were a European sport. most of the races here were handicap no previous experience was necessary we cant have a weekday and pay attention together and whatever you want.

My mother came once we were founded in 1928. I think the house one said that b14 wouldn't do more than our 45 all the towers fell after about 100 meters or you know, but they didn't worry one bit and I'm pretty sure that at the end of the day they didn't even count the heads and if you had had an accident somewhere you were in a ditch I think that's where you probably stayed it's all terribly carefree but not always keeping a Bentley at 130 miles an hour on the bank It required great skill and judgment A single mistake could lead to disaster The 1933 Tuna Grand Prix Bugatti is harassed by Italian Alfa Romeos and Maseratis The cars are driven by a whole new generation of professional drivers who sell their skills to the highest bidder as the winner of this race Tazio Nuvolari destined to become one of the greats in 1932 bugatti did not achieve a single important victory, unfortunately the time had come for his beautiful cars to go out and become a legend, a legend that lives on four Bugattis survivors worth around £120,000 peace, our race is still 19:34 and Maserati has produced a new 3.3.

One-liter car, it was built according to the international formula that began that year, there were no restrictions on the size of the engine or on supercharging, but curiously the total weight of the car, without wheels, fuel or driver, should not exceed 750 kilograms. Bugatti competed with its Type 59, which was virtually its last Grand Prix car, although beautifully built, retaining features as obsolete as cable-operated bricks and was powered by what was essentially a sports car engine, although the driving mechanics had long ago banished, the type 59 was still a two-seater and had an eccentric starter. From a side point of view, the increase in construction costs in 1934 was such that Bugatti was never able to develop the type 59, by far the most successful of the trio was the Alfa Romeo type B, the car having been steadily developed for ten years with the capacity of its magnificent supercharged eight-cylinder in-line engine increased to three point two liters it was at the peak of its development like the previous P 3 alfa, which looked very similar to the type B had the classic single-seater or single-seater driving position John Watson tried it in thefinal development of the classic racing car that first appeared ten years earlier as the Bugatti type 35.

It is a three-speed gearbox. First it is straight up, then round enough, the second followed down for third. Today we are only going to use second and third. We will put a number of seconds that will be enough. The fuel valves here on the left, vertically up, are on and the magnetic switch is there on the right, as the two rev counters mark, it's a strange thing, well, tradition reads more or less the same, okay? ? John Wright, who has fun, but he drove on this alpha is still capable of reaching 150 miles per hour, so John Watson is not taking any chances, it is a very impressive car because it is very powerful and imagine that drivers in normal areas in particular They practice these cars on the Nurburgring and circuits like that which have a lot of potholes and the car doesn't have sophisticated suspension, it just puts into perspective how well those drivers really handle their day;

You need two years, the second or third year because it has a lot of torque, so much power at a thousand revolutions. and second gear up to five five the limit that in any corner of the sky you just have to put it on the accelerator Arnaud shoots there is no need to go down to the lowest gear to exit a curve if you take this type of engine The response given to the current car was fantastic, but there was another competitor to consider: Germany in 1923, this German Mercedes had won the Sicilian Targa Florio until 1934, Germany had been excluded from the French and Belgian Grand Prix and the last new racing car that Mercedes had produced in 1926, so a radical modern design was clearly essential for a 750 kilogram formula.

Work began in 1933, soon in the Mercedes-Benz racing department in Stuttgart, craftsmen began meticulously assembling a prototype engine to power the new car they called the w25. and unlike contemporary French and Italian contenders, it owed little to the past, the engine was initially 3.3 liters and was supercharged by a large fan that pressurized the carburetor creating the characteristic scream of these cars, even in its initial form, the straight-eight engine produced more than 400 horsepower. The body was carefully streamlined to reduce drag and the independently sprung wheels offered the road grip required at a speed of 175 miles per hour. The gearbox was in one unit with the rear axle which soon became universal for racing cars.

Racing The W25 was not the only German design in Jim Mnet's Ferdinand Porsche had designed for Auto Union a very unusual rear-engined car, common now, but unexplored territory in 1934. Auto Union also began construction in 1933. The company was a consortium created by Hawk Thunderer dkw and Audi. The car had a cast V 16 4.4 liter engine producing 300 horsepower It was tested on a corrugated road when driven on the track, however the handling was suspect The international debut of the German cars was a Larry close Paris for the 1934 French Grand Prix, Mercedes team principal Alfred Nobel leads a magnificent team confident of victory Nirisha Ho in the Alfa Romeo had made a great start to lead the race and Auto Union Li soon in problems the fast banked malaria track produces the advantage of the cornering superiority that the German cars possess hijiri messages breaks twice the laughs, records but cannot capture the alpha of the corridors after only 10 laps due to the problems in pits The German radio stations broadcast the race live, but only bad news comes from the circuit, no Bauer knows, the race is lost, the three Mercedes and the car, the unions withdraw due to mechanical breakdowns, their drivers reduce the spectators in the pits, the French public is Delighted with the victory of the popular Louis Chiron the press begins to dismiss the German returns to its own prize but in Stuttgart, at the end of the 1934 season, the Mercedes team is received as heroes for the races in which it won the Eiffel German in the coppa acerbo in Pescara in Italy and the Spanish Grand Prix.

The opening race of the 1936 season was underway. No German cars were entered. This was the type of race for which the 750-kilogram formula was devised with relatively low-powered Bugattis and Maseratis alphas. There was also a new four-and-a-half-liter and super French Delahaye driven by the veteran Tesla whose monica Easter 1936 the weather did not it would be as bad again until 1984 when the rest would be abandoned but that is out of the question in 1936 Bente res Meijer Auto Union crashes like several other cars somewhere in the rain Nuvolari in a new 3.8 alpha tries hard but only a driver is able to master these terrible conditions Mercedes Rudolf Caracciola also rained on the Eiffel Mountains with the Eiffel dremen held on the 14-mile Nurburgring circuit Mercedes drivers try hard but the fog closes in and the rising star of Auto Unions bent res Maya appears through the groom to win 19:36 it was really Auto Unions year and a concerned Mercedes-Benz hired a brilliant young German engineer Rudolf Renault.

I joined the racing team at the end of the 1936 season and this is the car that we started developing for the 1937 season we built 10 cars for each season, they are the The legendary W 125 with the engine enlarged to five point six liters to produce 640 horsepower, but to maintain the 750 kilogram limit, its lightweight construction and rough running, as long as the edge was rough, we knew it was fine, but if it became soft, we knew the crankshaft had started to crack, It was time to put in a new one and a new driver, the young Englishman Dick Seaman, whose first trip for Mercedes was on Long Island, New York, for the Vanderbilt Cup, Nuvolari had entered with the new be 12.

Alfa Romeo, which did not show be a rival for Siemens Mercedes, but an automobile union did not. Barros, my winners. Rosemeyer, a former motorcyclist, is the only driver to truly dominate the early automobile unions. so powerful that they can spin their wheels on a dry road at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles per hour and can reach 200. The power of these cars will not be surpassed until the arrival of the turbocharged Formula One cars of the 1980s. The tires alone limit the maximum performance Pit stops are frequent for 300,000 German spectators in that great summer of German technology the only question was whether the winner would be an Auto Union or a Mercedes in the German Grand Prix the answer were Caracciola's Mercedes children, seen in this unique color footage.

It was photographed in 1937 by the English photographer George Monkhouse, who recounts his impression of the German teams: tremendous efficiency of the entire shooting match. The winds reached the starting line. I mean, everything worked on them and made the headline at the frantic start. no nonsense Manfred von Brauchitsch the Mercedes driver and Tatiana Volare with her famous red helmet were now driving for Auto Union the brilliant Meyer and his Auto Union Mercedes Alfred without a bar Caracciola adjusts his mirror watched by his wife Alice who keeps the lap graphs The The rest of what George Monck has photographed was the 1937 Pescara Copper HL bow and we watch the race from the pits.

The no-holds-barred team manager with the red and black plan of his brings Caracciola in for a routine pit stop. German pit work has become legendary. Cars are just averaging. It's three miles per gallon and has a capacity of 88 gallons. All four wheels are changed and the mechanic tests the temperature of the exhaust manifold looking for a pool that would indicate a faulty cylinder. Everything's fine. The screen is cleaned. An annoyed Bauer sends Caracciola. his way after 26 seconds in the heat of the Italian summer he got up Meijer Auto Union has problems with the tires but wins the race by breaking comes in second place and dick semen fifth in those days the drivers dressed casually and few wore shock eyelets a Week later George Monck House is in Bream Garten to fill these British er ehs.

These one and a half liter cars first appeared in 1934 and competed in yacht races of roughly equivalent watts to those above: number 58 is driven by Prince Birra of Siam, a pre-war acquaintance. driver this is one of their cars era a meant English racing cars and 17 of these one and a half liter supercharged cars were built they were very successful they were equipped with a semi-automatic preselector gearbox most of the ER a s had beam axles with leaf springs tied with ropes for greater rigidity. The success of the one and a half liter cars went some way to compensating for the lack of a true British Grand Prix car, but at last we had a Grand Prix circuit at Donington Park, where it was introduced in 1937. season was too close Mercedes and Auto Union fielded full teams and only nominal opposition was expected from the British cars, with the news outlets acknowledging from the start that it is clear that the German cars will take the four-time honors as partners of British interests behind which are their competitors.

The face goes faster and faster, building toward a thrilling climax with the winners' average speed at eighty-two point eight six miles per hour. The Donington crowd had never seen anything remotely like it. Res Man 1 in a car union Donington was the last time the 6- meter cars, you would have seen it, a new 3-litre formula came into force in 1938 Mercedes produced the W 150 for a v12 incorporated all the experience gained during Four years it had cost millions subsidized by the German government in Stuttgart money was never a problem I could have everything I wanted, no one said I was spending too much and I don't even know what we spent.

The V12 engines alone reportedly cost seven thousand four hundred pounds each in 1938, they were built to the highest standards, as was the entire car the road handling was certainly the best obtainable then and would be difficult to improve on today. few Grand Prix cars have surpassed the determined lines of the 1938 Mercedes the first rush towards the new formula became evident with the peloton including 51 Bugattis Dreyfus in a delahaye leads with Kara Sheila restless in the new car and Herman Lag makes a turn in This shot, although cut from the contemporary newsreel of the race, was in fact taken in practice, the car being too damaged to quickly start a new three-litre Maserati. but the fragile Dreyfuss on Adela hey a Mercedes wins by finishing second it would be a very different story at the French Grand Prix in Reims don't come here I see loose ants Caracciola makes a bad start the tire circuit is very fast the new Mercedes soon running faster 100 miles per hour, but Caracciola is still not comfortable in the 3-liter car and the Auto Union 3-liter seems to have inherited some of the handling problems of the previous cars, unfortunately Auto Union is without Rose Meyer, who he lost his life in a record attempt earlier that year the race became a demonstration race for Mercedes-Benz with foie gras hitch drives flawlessly to win the French Grand Prix at an average of over 101 miles per hour The decadent French start their careers with a Nurburgring a non-functioning lighting system is used, but they are switched off anyway for the 1938 German Grand Prix from brackish water and only to win their second free scholarship is in the lead when arrives at a routine pit stop.

Fuel is pumped into cars at five gallons per second make mistakes and this never happens to von Brauchitsch Spark and his car is on fire with 88 gallons of fuel on board live our efficient firefighting in hydration puts out the fire while the sailor leaves the pits after his stop to take the lead in dracolich insists on rejoining the race, but shortly after goes off the road with Englishman Dick Seaman who is now leading the German Grand Prix. -Benz online sports leader is not happy and even Dick Seaman looks embarrassed. He is also very different from Darrell Donington.

We are a large crowd that had appeared attracted by stories of the German invasion the year before October and just three weeks after the Munich crisis. The German teams are restless and almost took Gulen out of the stop and Novara received direct instructions from Stuttgart not to take any chances. A natural semen awaits another victory. The Duke of Kent is formally greeted by a bull. I'm adding tweets in English for the occasion. Maserati very quickly, who ran out, told George Monck's house that if the Germans had prepared them they could have won a French delahaye. It seems old-fashioned, but so do the Perpendicular Englishmen, as popular bandleader and very good amateur driver Billy Cotton must drive.

A Nuvolari will drive a car syndicate. The pre-war Donington circuit, threemiles, it was very narrow and bumpy. It is known that German cars had all the advantages over others. around bed C Mon Lang and the bidder take a chance and get their way, but after everything that can happen in a race like this, the engine of an English car explodes and spills oil on the track, the first The victim is Hasser's automobile union. Dick Semen follows him in his Mercedes, but he will be able to restart, of course, he is surprised to find the new Allari number four in the lead, driving with all the skill that becomes world famous and wins at an average speed of eighty-eight points. four nine miles per hour even on this twisty circuit the three liter cars proved to be almost as fast as the earlier six liter cars seeking even more speed for

1939

Auto Union has revised its cars the driving position has been moved rearward to improve the handling of the v12 The engine is modified to provide more power.

A two-stage supercharger is installed, meaning one supercharger pressurizes the other, increasing power from 420 to 485 horsepower, giving Auto Union a speed of 195 miles per hour. Only two Auto Unions survive in the west, one in Munich and In the east of England in 1939, the German teams were as invincible with the 3-litre cars as before, they won all the

grand

prix

. In that last year of peace, the power and road holding capabilities of the 3-litre Mercedes are such that a new cornering technique has evolved, four-wheel drift John Watson, basically the car is steered by the use of engine power, balancing the slip and propelling the car into the corner.

The weather in Spa was very bad. Dick Seaman was leading, but misjudged a turn and crashed. thanks Herman Laing one but there was no joy at his victory possibly the greatest technical achievement of 1939 was Lee's one and a half liter Alfa Romeos Yulin's heart had admired them in Pescara the Italians determined to win at least one Grand Prix in only six months' notice restricted the Triple E meeting to one and a half liter cars; In those six months, Mercedes designed and built cars with a one and a half liter V8 engine; it would have taken most teams longer than that simply to prepare the existing cars to come.

It's no surprise to learn that German cars took first and second place in five years. The Germans had achieved complete dominance of international Grand Prix racing. All opposition was eclipsed. While it is true that the National Socialist government had financed the team's main propaganda reasons. It is also true that money alone can never guarantee success in motorsports. German achievements like Bugatti's 15 years earlier were due to superior technology. The silver cars. The last race was in Belgrade on September 3, 1939, two days after the outbreak of World War II. war oh