The History of Motor Sport

A Case Study Analysis

David Hassan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415677882
• eBook ISBN: 9781317984719
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: History

First published in 2012. This book examines the evolution of motor sport from its creation in central Europe, throughout the rest of the continent and elsewhere, including in both North and South America. It was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Prologue: The Cultural Significance and Global Importance of Motor Sport

David Hassan

University of Ulster at Jordanstown, UK

This special issue intends to explore, analyse and explain the significance of motor sport in a number of selected countries throughout the world, to provide a focus on its numerous disciplines and outline how each of these varies in popularity from country to country. In so doing it is hoped to arrive at a more informed understanding of the role of motor sport in ideological and sporting terms and thereby begin to address the almost complete absence of academic research in this field to date. When examining sport, its meanings and significance in society, the accent is often on individuals and teams that represent a nation or a particular ideological standpoint. Rarely does attention turn to other sporting forms and yet it is here that a remarkable story is revealed.

At the same time that various sports were organising in codified forms and governing bodies were establishing themselves globally, the motor car was emerging as a source of fascination right across the world. The concept of racing these motor vehicles, and later other forms of motorised transport, emerged on mainland Europe but quickly spread throughout North America into South America and elsewhere. Indeed it’s apparent that what we were witnessing was an early but extremely popular form of sporting globalisation. It is remarkable therefore that in the expansive body of literature examining sport and globalisation that there is almost no mention of motor sport. Not only is motor sport universally popular – the World Rally Championship alone commanded a global television audience of 800 million in 2007 – but the discipline is organised on a transnational basis and is closely tied to the automobile industry, one of the world’s foremost manufacturing sectors. The motor sport industry is worth an estimated £50 billion per annum and considerably more when one considers the platform for additional sales that its leading events present for automobile manufacturers, especially in developing markets. Yet all the while almost nothing has existed within academic scholarship concerning the emergence, evolution and cultural significance of motor sport, its marquee events or even analysis of how the development of motor sport has exercised an influence upon other industrial sectors, such as aviation. An attempt to address these omissions constituted the primary motivation for this collection, which brings together the scholarship of a range of academics, many of whom were writing about sport for the first time, to commence a process of systematic research into the emergence of motorised vehicles as a popular form of sporting pastime and competition.

Content

What becomes apparent within this collection is the cultural centrality of motor sport within many developed nation states and this is especially the case within Europe. Éamon Ó Cofaigh’s opening contribution draws attention to the role of France, the established birthplace of motor sport, in the late nineteenth century during a period when the automobile itself was struggling for widespread acceptance. Motor vehicles were generally received with a combination of awe and intrigue but for some sections of European society their emergence gave rise to a considerable degree of resistance. Indeed it was the French aristocracy that pioneered these new inventions and subsequently began a programme of advocacy among the population at large. The article relays the initial emergence of city-to-city races, which were to become extremely popular across a number of European nation-states and elsewhere, before motor racing began to establish dedicated spaces in which men and their machines could compete. Ó Cofaigh also turns the spotlight on Gordon Bennett, widely accepted as being in the vanguard of the development of international motor sport, and tracks his personal contribution to this field. Finally the latter part of this article highlights the cultural significance of the Le Mans 24-hour race, which is not only a significant event in its own right but constitutes one third of the elusive ‘Triple Crown’ of motor racing, which is the subject of O’Kane’s contribution to this collection, one that will be previewed later in this prologue.

However it is apparent that the emergence of motor sport in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century had its genesis in northern central Europe, and this is a theme further developed in the outstanding contribution of Thomas Ameye, Bieke Gils and Pascal Delheye. They track the importance of motor sport in Belgium from the belle époque, when the nation was at the forefront of development across a range of cultural fields. More tellingly Ameye et al. detail the seamless shift from the bicycle to the automobile and in turn to the airplane during a time span either side of the dawn of the twentieth century, and which lasted little over a decade. Interestingly, although these developments may indicate that, in Belgium at least, the process of evolution was reserved for the bourgeoisie, in fact this work demonstrates that the working classes could achieve a degree of upward mobility too by engaging in such practices. The theme running though this article, however, is one of national pride in the very important role played by Belgians in the development of both the early automobile and, in turn, its impact upon other industries, including the aviation sector.

The significant contribution of motor sport to the wider political realm is at the core of an article by Teresa González Aja, which tracks the evolution of the Spanish nation from dictatorship, principally in the guise of General Franco, to democracy, during which the personal triumphs of the motorcyclist Angel Nieto provide a convenient prism through which to view this movement. Aja details how motorcycling, in this case, was a minority sport in Spain during its early years, but very quickly the regime realised that it represented a convenient method of advancing propaganda and began to channel funds towards it. The article also examines the iconography of the sporting hero and how his/her achievements can be partially appropriated by the nation state to advance a range of positive agendas. Ultimately the success of motorcyclists such as Angel Nieto convinced Spain’s ruling authorities of the value of investing in new circuits and the benefit of relaxing its attitude towards the foreign importation of goods, including motorcycles, into Spain. In a setting in which the game of association football appears to cast a long shadow over other sporting forms, Aja’s contribution reminds the student of Spanish, and indeed European, sport about the existence of other avenues for investigation when examining the impact of political ideologies upon sport.

Thereafter the collection metaphorically moves from two wheels to four in the form of Victor Andrade de Melo’s detailed and thoughtful analysis of motor racing in Brazil. Here de Melo briefly examines the remarkable, some would argue exceptional, achievements of Brazilian drivers within Formula One racing; but the main focus of the work is on the early automobile races that took place in the country, dating back to the opening decade of the twentieth century. It is from this period that the basis for Brazil’s subsequent dominance of motor sport and its close association with F1 can be traced. Here de Melo, almost regretfully, poses the question as to why Brazil, which for much of its history has remained an economically underdeveloped nation, continues to produce exceptional racing car drivers. In so doing he brings into sharp focus the ever-present debate surrounding the perceived extravagance of motor sport and perhaps more significantly the opportunity costs involved in staging major sports events of this kind.

It is a debate implicit throughout the work of Hassan and O’Kane who examine the history and impact of the iconic Paris to Dakar Rally, including the emergence of corporate social responsibility within the wider field of motor sport. The Paris to Dakar Rally is among the world’s most iconic events; one built less upon speed and more upon endurance as well as driver ingenuity. Yet the race has been the source of considerable controversy in recent years because of its negative impact upon the host environment and its people, and because of threats against competitors from a number of unspecified terrorist groupings. The latter has resulted in the race being staged in South America for the last two years with no impending prospect of it returning to its spiritual home, at least in the short term. Prior to this the race was already considered noteworthy because of the number of deaths and injuries arising from it, including among the indigenous people of the Saharan region, not to mention the considerable impact it had caused to the delicate desert ecosystem. It is timely therefore that this article examines the ‘dark side’ of motor racing and challenges the reader to consider the full extent of motor racing’s impact in the modern world.

Thereafter the remarkable detail contained within O’Kane’s single-authored piece on the ‘Triple Crown’ of motor racing reminds the reader of the iconic status of the Indianapolis 500, the Le Mans 24-hour race and the Monaco Grand Prix, which individually and collectively command unparalleled levels of respect among motor sport aficionados. It also serves to highlight the importance of America as a site for motor sport and in so doing fulfils the collection’s key aim of providing a selective appreciation of motor sport across Europe, Africa and both North and South America.

However the chequered flag is not finally waved until Ben Shackleford offers a valuable overview of the inception and evolution of NASCAR racing in the USA. The latter is particularly popular in the Southern states (as opposed to the omnipotence of Indycar racing in the north of the country) and Shackleford does a remarkable job in interpreting this cultural distinction as part of a detailed investigation into a field that has rarely, if ever, received adequate levels of scholarly attention. Indeed Shackleford’s work is indicative of the collection as a whole in that it uncovers new and invigorating areas of research and yet at the same time merely offers an initial grounding in this field and instead points the way for others to follow.

Motor Sport in France: Testing-ground for the World

Éamon Ó Cofaigh

Department of French, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

The birth of the automobile in the late nineteenth century was greeted with a mixture of awe, scepticism and sometimes even disdain from sections of the European public. In this article, the steps taken in France to pioneer and promote this new invention are examined. Unreliable and noisy, the early automobile owes a debt of gratitude to the French aristocracy who organised and codified motor racing in an effort to test these new inventions while at the same time introduce them to a wider public. City-to-city races demonstrated the potential of the automobile before the initiative of Gordon Bennett proved to be the catalyst for the birth of international motor sport as we recognise it today. Finally this article looks at the special connection between Le Mans and the automobile. Le Mans has, through its 24-hour race, maintained a strong link with the development of everyday automobile tourism and offers the enthusiast an alternative to the machines that reach incredible speeds on modern-day closed circuits. This article examines how French roads were veritable testing grounds for the earliest cars and how the public roads of Le Mans maintain the tradition to this day.

France played a major role in the early development of the motor car. French craftsmen looked to the automobile as a vehicle capable of transforming the fortunes of smaller enterprises willing to take a gamble on the new invention. Central to this process was motor sport, which came into being in France in the 1890s, based on the model of the bicycle races that had successfully provided a bridge between the nation’s major towns. Turn-of-the-century city-to-city races provided stern tests for these early vehicles while simultaneously providing an advertising platform upon which manufacturers could display their models, albeit to an initially reluctant public. Pioneering manufacturers such as Renault and Peugeot quickly realised that it was necessary to participate in these events to ensure the commercial viability of their vehicles.

Motor sport in its infancy was an important testing ground for these newly invented motorised vehicles as early races gave manufacturers the opportunity to test the reliability of their cars over long distances on public roads. The new sport was inevitably extremely expensive and it was thus France’s upper classes who were the first to test and promote the automobile. As motor sport gradually began to democratise the car, Gordon Bennett served as an important catalyst in the growth of the sport when he inaugurated the first international races, precursors to the first international Grand Prix. Le Mans, just 200km to the west of Paris, also played an active role in the early development of motoring. In this article, the genesis of motor racing in France will be discussed, demonstrating how sport helped the automobile to establish a foothold in society. The impact of an American, Gordon Bennett, in placing the sport on the international stage will also be examined. More specifically, a case study of Le Mans will show how this city, birthplace of the Grand Prix, has become synonymous with French motor sport, having hosted its iconic 24-hour race for over 80 years.

Pre-1900

Although the internal combustion engine was invented by Gottlieb Daimler in Germany in the 1880s, the automobile developed more quickly in France for a number of reasons. Firstly, the more developed road network in France allowed the transition from horse-drawn vehicles to the automobile to be made without too much difficulty. Napoleon Bonaparte’s creation at the turn of the nineteenth century of a star-shaped road network with Paris as the hub allowed easy access to and from the capital. Paris was, itself, capable of accommodating the motor car, having been rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century by Baron Haussman under the orders of Napoleon III. Fashionable houses were built on elegant boulevards with open intersections which had been designed to deter the building of barricades by rebels, but which now allowed for the coexistence of horseless and horse-drawn carriages.

A second major factor was the foresight of French entrepreneurs, anxious to make up ground lost as a result of France’s belated and partial industrial revolution. The traditional famille artisanale only began to industrialise in the latter half of the nineteenth century. These small businesses typically engaged in trades such as metal-and woodworking and thus had both the necessary flexibility and the existing infrastructure to turn their workshops into automobile manufacturing plants. These family-run workshops rapidly established themselves as the core of what came to be known as the Second Industrial Revolution in France. Thus, by the turn of the century, France had over 600 car manufacturers compared with fewer than 100 in the rest of Western Europe and the United States put together.¹

The French aristocracy was mainly responsible for the first attempts to codify the sport. The bourgeois actively supported and participated in sports and indeed, the Jockey-club de Paris, a gathering of the elite of nineteenth-century French society, was an example of this close link. It was two members of this exclusive club who formed two-thirds of the founding members of the Automobile Club de France (ACF) in 1895. The Count de Dion, Baron de Zuylen and Paul Meyan, a journalist with Le Figaro and editor of the newsletter La France Automobile, met in September 1895 to create the world’s first automobile club. De Dion was nominated club president, a post he immediately ceded to de Zuylen as he saw his position as a major manufacturer of the time as a conflict of interest in the promotion of the car. Although the creation of the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR) in 1904 may be seen as the logical development of a governing body for automobile clubs, this predecessor to the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), which came into being in 1947, was essentially the body with which the ACF organised its international races. Its headquarters is located next door to that of the ACF at 8 Place de la Concorde and had, until 1963, the same presidents as that of the ACF. Indeed, the link between motor sport and aristocracy endured through much of the twentieth century; to this day, only three out of the ten presidents of what is now known as the FIA have not had noble titles.

The growth in automobile racing was also to have its effects on the highly politicised arena of journalism. The Comte Albert de Dion and Pierre Giffard found themselves on opposite sides of one of the largest political scandals in French history: the Dreyfus Affair. Giffard founded Le Vélo in 1892 and pursued an active role in promoting both the bicycle and automobile; as a result, his paper was widely used for the advertising of these vehicles. One such manufacturer was the Comte de Dion, a vocal anti-Dreyfusard. De Dion became involved in a highly publicised spat with the French president Émile Loubet at the Auteuil races and for which he was jailed for 15 days. Having been heavily criticised by Giffard in the newspaper he sponsored extensively, de Dion removed his advertising from Le Vélo and set about creating a new newspaper. He and a number of other industrialists, including Michelin created L’Auto-Vélo in 1900 with Henri Desgranges as editor-in-chief. It became L’Auto in January 1903 when Giffard successfully sued the paper for infringement on his own paper’s name. Hence it was L’Auto in 1903 that was responsible for the creation and organisation of the Tour de France.

The popular press at the time was also experiencing substantial development with growing levels of literacy in society as each newspaper was striving to come up with ideas to increase its readership. A strong link developed between journalism and the expansion of sport. As sport was of growing interest, it was seen by journalists as a means of acquiring and then maintaining a high readership. The coverage of a sporting event that lasted over a number of days or even weeks was used as a tool to promote the purchase of newspapers on a regular basis. Pierre Giffard, editor-in-chief of Le Petit Journal, the largest-selling newspaper of the 1890s, organised in 1891 a bicycle race from Bordeaux to Paris; this was followed in the same year by Paris-Brest-Paris. These bicycle races allowed Giffard to create a daily column relating to the race build-up and the preparations involved...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Historical Perspectives series page
• Sport in the Global Society series pages
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Prologue: The Cultural Significance and Global Importance of Motor Sport
• 2. Motor Sport in France: Testing-ground for the World
• 3. Daredevils and Early Birds: Belgian Pioneers in Automobile Racing and Aerial Sports During the Belle Époque
• 4. From Dictatorship to Democracy in Spain: The Iconography of Motorcyclist Angel Nieto
• 5. Before Fittipaldi, Piquet and Senna: The Beginning of Motor Racing in Brazil (1908–1954)
• 6. The Great Race Across the Sahara: A History of the Paris to Dakar Rally and Its Impact on the Development of Corporate Social Responsibility Within Motor Sport
• 7. A History of the ‘Triple Crown’ of Motor Racing: The Indianapolis 500, the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Monaco Grand Prix
• 8. NASCAR Stock Car Racing: Establishment and Southern Retrenchment
• 9. Epilogue: The Evolution of Motor Sport Research
• Index