1911 Grand Prix season
The 1911 Grand Prix season consisted of Grand Prix races in the United States and Europe. It was a significant year as European racing gradually came out of the doldrums. A Grand Prix was held in France again. The first Indianapolis 500 was held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, joining the American Grand Prize (held in Savannah, Georgia) as a leading race. The Automobile Club de la Sarthe et de l’Ouest organized the Grand Prix de France of 1911. This race is not considered to be part of the lineage of French Grand Prix, as it was a separate event from the official French Grand Prix, the Grand Prix de l'ACF, organized by the Automobile Club de France from 1906 onwards. Major races Sources: Season review The season started with the Targa Florio with fifteen cars entered. It included cars from new Italian companies ALFA and SCAT (another company from the Ceirano family). Heavy rain beforehand had made the roads treacherous and they quickly turn to mud. Franchini, in the ALFA, led until he had to retire after the second lap from exhaustion of manhandling the big machine for six hours. In the end only five cars finished the three laps, headed by Ernesto Ceirano in his SCAT. The Indianapolis speedway had hosted a number of races in 1910 after being repaved with bricks. But the organisers wanted something greater and had the idea of holding a single 500-mile race offering the biggest prize-money in the country. The whole month of May was allocated to testing and qualifying for the entrants. The regulations were adapted from the current AAA rules: a maximum of 600 ci (9.8-litres) and a minimum weight of 2300 lb (1044 kg). Forty qualifiers lined up at the start. Almost all the drivers ran with a riding mechanic. The only exception was Ray Harroun, who was enticed out of retirement after winning the championship the previous year. He instead fitted a rear-view mirror to his Marmon, the first driver to do such. The race started with another first – a rolling start - and was close and full of incident. On lap 13, Arthur Greiner’s Simplex lost a wheel, spun and slammed into the wall on the back straight. Greiner was thrown out and his mechanic, Sam Dickson, hit the wall and was killed. Soon after half-way, the steering on Joe Jagersberger's Case broke. As it slowed on the front straight, his mechanic got out to try and manually steer the wheels, but was knocked over by his own car. Harry Knight just avoided him, swerving into the pitlane and crashing into Herbert Lytle’s stationary car. Amazingly, despite the mayhem, no-one was killed in the accident. Meanwhile, Harroun had been leading since the 200-mile mark, and with the assistance of a 35-lap relief drive by Cyrus Patschke, went on to win the race. Ralph Mulford in a Lozier was second, although he protested that he had not been scored a lap in the confusion during the big accident