1927 Grand Prix season
Previous year's winner Frank Lockhart started on pole position and led for over half the race until his car suffered a broken con-rod.
Rookie George Souders, driving Peter DePaolo’s 1925 race-winning Duesenberg, came through and took a comfortable victory with an eight lap margin.
Three Americans, including Indy-winner George Souders, came over for the mandatory Italian round but their oval-track car-designs were unsuitable for European circuit-racing.
The season had opened with the advent of a new road-race across northern Italy – the Mille Miglia was a race for touring cars from Brescia to Rome and back.
Italian leader Benito Mussolini, a keen follower of motor-racing, saw it as a propaganda advantage and an opportunity to enhance national prestige.
Bred for the oval tracks, his sleek single-seater was now putting out an incredible 230 bhp running on alcohol fuel – making it easily the most powerful racing engine across the world.
During the year Eddie Rickenbacker, decorated war-hero and former racing driver, bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from Carl Fisher and Jim Allison for $700 000.
Four young gentleman-drivers (including Conte Aymo Maggi and Franco Mazzotti), wanting to restore Brescia's former pre-eminence in Italian motorsport, put a proposal to the government for a national road-race that was promptly approved.
Conelli was first to arrive back at the line, but on elapsed time, Minoia had a five-second lead over Dubonnet with Materassi and female Czech driver Eliška Junková less than a minute behind.
Rookie Dutch Baumann drove the works car, while a number of customer teams backed them up with experienced drivers like previous winners Frank Lockhart and Peter DePaolo, as well as Ralph Hepburn, Leon Duray, Harry Hartz and Eddie Hearne.
Another ten rookies started this year's race including Wilbur Shaw, Louis Schneider, Cliff Bergere and Fred Frame.
[61] Former racer and champion Earl Cooper built four Miller-powered front-wheel drive specials, sponsored by the Buick Motor Company.
Duesenberg was in line for a 1-2 finish until, with two laps to go, the rear gearing broke on Babe Stapp’s car that he was running relief for Benny Shoaff.
[64][65] In 1926, after his mathematical work for college football, Professor Frank G. Dickinson at the University of Illinois developed a points system for the AAA.
[36] Earlier in the weekend, Divo had won the Course de Formula Libre in his Talbot, while Wagner and Williams raced Sunbeams but retired.
[36] By the time of the next Grand Prix, in Spain, Talbot had withdrawn from motor-racing with the company facing an uncertain financial future.
These left only three cars in the race, leaving Benoist to take another comfortable victory, ahead of Conelli's Bugatti, and teammate Bourlier's Delage.
Fiat withdrew their entries for Pietro Bordino and Carlo Salamano, citing that the new cars were untested over a grand prix distance.
But the Americans returned after a year away, with Indianapolis-winner George Souders in his Duesenberg, and Earl Cooper and Pete Kreis in front-wheel-drive Cooper-Millers.
The cars had been sold after Parry-Thomas was killed earlier in the year making a Land Speed Record attempt at Pendine Sands.
Around the halfway point, most drivers stopped to refuel but Conelli, running in fourth, ran out of petrol and spent half an hour pushing his car back to the pits in the lashing rain.
This frustrated the spectators, and early on in the season at the Provence Grand Prix, held at the Miramas oval, they expressed their displeasure.
Heavy rain in the morning had delayed the qualifying races, then in the warm-up for the final, Robert Benoist crashed his Delage into two other cars forming up on the grid.
[75] The Marne Grand Prix, held just after the French GP, was a win for Bugatti to a future star: Philippe Etancelin.
The Rome Grand Prix, back on the calendar after a year's absence, was held in the city on a circuit just south of the River Tiber.
The Nürburgring was similar in concept to the 22km Solitudering near Stuttgart: a windy circuit in the hills centred around the local Nürburg castle, near Koblenz.
It came from a project driven by the mayor of Cologne to draw tourism to the Ardennes area in the west, as well as creating work for many unemployed in the region.
[44] After a successful season running his own Maserati 26, Itala Special 55 and Bugatti 35, Emilio Materassi was declared the first winner of the new Italian national championship.
[84][85] In the United States, Tommy Milton, 1921 AAA champion and two-time Indianapolis winner retired, taking up an engineering position at Packard.
[61] For Robert Benoist, with his unbeaten run in the World Championship, the reward was even greater – the president of France awarded him the country's highest honour, making him a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur.
