The First Grand Prix

On June 26, 1906, more than two hundred thousand spectators crowded the roadsides outside Le Mans, France, to watch thirty-two automobiles compete in an event the world had never seen before: a Grand Prix. The Automobile Club of France had abandoned the sport's governing structure entirely and built a competition on their own terms. The race that followed, run across two scorching summer days on public roads, would become the blueprint for international motorsport for the next one hundred years and beyond.Send me a text!Support the show