Coming from a family of wine-growers, Louis Chiron's father gained employment as a butler in the Hôtel de Paris at Monaco.

[3][4] Employed as a dancer after World War I, Chiron's racing career started in 1923, after a rich American woman he was friends with bought him a second hand Bugatti Brescia.

[4][1] He started in local hillclimbs,[5] and moved to Grand Prix racing in 1926, after getting a Bugatti T35, and befriending rich industrialist Alfred Hoffman.

At the team's first race, the 1933 Monaco Grand Prix, Caracciola had a season ending accident, and Chiron switched to Alfa Romeo cars run by Scuderia Ferrari mid-season.

[1] He won the 1933 Spa 24 hours race with specialist endurance racer Luigi Chinetti in an Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza.

He won the 1934 French Grand Prix at Montlhéry, against several works Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union entries, a race that is often considered one of the greatest victories of his career.

[10] According to a Los Angeles Times review of fellow driver Hellé Nice's biography, Chiron accused her, at a 1949 party in Monaco to celebrate the first postwar Monte Carlo Rally, of "collaborating with the Nazis".

[12] Seymour's book says that in a letter to Antony Noghes, the head of the Monte Carlo Rally committee, Hellé Nice "protested her innocence"; that she told him she would appeal to the Monaco court unless Chiron wrote an apology; that no letter from Chiron has been found; and that the court has no record of such a case between 1949 and 1955.

[16] He is also the oldest driver ever to have entered for a Formula One race, taking part in practice for the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix when he was 58.