1928 Grand Prix season
Originally, the World Manufacturers' Championship was planned on seven national races but as the year went on, five were cancelled and only the Indianapolis 500 and Italian Grand Prix were held.
The accident was the greatest single loss of life in motor-racing history to that time, and still the second worst to date, after the 1955 Le Mans disaster.
Albert Divo won the Targa Florio for Bugatti's fourth successive year, after a well-prepared challenge from female Czech driver Eliška Junková.
Once again, a minimum of three races had to be competed in to qualify for the championship, including the compulsory European Grand Prix, this year awarded to Great Britain.
The German federation announced a similar plan in February, while the British were looking at holding their race on the Isle of Man or Ireland.
[39] This lack of formal regulations opened the door to privateer drivers to bring their older vehicles back to race.
[41] The Coppa Florio, in its alternate year with France, was again put up for competition and being run to the same distance as the Targa, was an additional trophy for the overall winner.
In November 1927, former race-winner and decorated war-hero Eddie Rickenbacker bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from Carl Fisher and Jim Allison for $700 000.
The deteriorating economic situation meant companies saw racing as a luxury they could not afford, to concentrate on standard road-car manufacture to make money.
The troubles at Alfa Romeo continued: Giuseppe Merosi and Giorgio Rimini resigned from the technical board at the start of the year.
[43] On 22 April, American Ray Keech raised the Land speed record to 207.6 mph with an 81-litre monster at the Daytona Beach Road Course.
To take them on, the Alfa Corse fielded six of their 6C sports cars, including the brand new, supercharged MMS version given to Giuseppe Campari.
[51] In the first week of April, several towns of the French Riviera hosted a series of street races, culminating in the Grand Prix d'Antibes on Easter Monday.
[53][54][55] With diminishing international racing, the Targa Florio took on greater significance, and hence attracted a good amount of works interest.
Bugatti arrived with five cars for team regulars Ferdinando Minoia, Caberto Conelli and Louis Chiron, as well as Albert Divo (formerly of Talbot and Delage, replacing Bordino) and Gastone Brilli-Peri.
After his serious accident the year before, Alfieri Maserati stayed solely as team manager, while his brother Ernesto joined Baconin Borzacchini and Diego de Sterlich driving the 2-litre 26B, while Luigi Fagioli ran the 1.5-litre Tipo 26.
Junková had arrived a month early with her husband and, with a car and guide provided by Vincenzo Florio, set about meticulously mapping the route in what was one of the earliest examples of race-notes, by marking trees and posts with braking points and landmarks.
Her meticulous preparation was paying off and despite Campari leading at the end of the third, a puncture dropped him back again, and she led going into the fifth and final lap.
Duesenberg had scaled back its participation, while Earl Cooper and Tommy Milton ran cars based around the Miller engines.
[61][60] Maserati finally broke the string of nine Bugatti victories in Europe at the Coppa Etna in Sicily, when Borzacchini won for the Italian team.
The rest of the race was fairly pedestrian, and after 30 laps Chiron won by four minutes from Brilli Peri, then Materassi and Minoia.
[64] A fortnight later, at the extremely fast Cremona track, Materassi's newest team-mate Luigi Arcangeli won an exciting victory for the Talbot team, by narrowly beating Nuvolari in a race of attrition where only four of the nineteen starters finished.
Won by Rudolf Caracciola and Christian Werner in their big 7-litre Mercedes-Benz SS, the race was notable for the death of Čenĕk Junek.
Chiron also won the Spanish Grand Prix four days later, which was held as a series of handicap elimination heats for sports cars, before a final race.
Campari easily won in his four-year old Alfa on the long straights at Pescara, while Materassi got his revenge at the twisty circuit of the lucrative Livorno race.
Young motorcycle champion, Achille Varzi, a sometime driver for both Aymini and Nuvolari was this time entered to drive Giuseppe Campari's Alfa Romeo P2.
After 100 km (10 laps), the leading group was Brilli Peri, Nuvolari, Varzi and Chiron covered by only ten seconds and changing positions regularly.
He hit a retired Bugatti parked between the two parallel tracks, tearing off the Maserati's wheel and skating along the pit-straight for 200 metres before coming to rest.
[77] A subsequent official court decision in 1931 found the race organisers and Automobile Club of Italy had not taken sufficient precautions for crowd safety and were ordered to pay reparations to the families of the victims.
[78] Louis Chiron was the dominant driver of the season, winning major races for Bugatti in France, Italy and Spain.
