Louis Chiron

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Louis Chiron
Nationality	Monegasque
World Championship Career
Active years	1950 - 1951, 1953, 1955 - 1956, 1958
Team(s)	Maserati, Talbot-Lago, O.S.C.A., Lancia
Races	19
Championships	0
Wins	0
Podium finishes	1

Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
First race	1950 British Grand Prix


Last race	1958 Monaco Grand Prix

Louis Alexandre Chiron (born August 3, 1899 in Monte Carlo, Monaco – died there on June 22, 1979) was a champion of Grand Prix motor racing.

Louis Chiron, in the blue Bugatti, duels with Italian Gastone Brilli-Peri in the 1928 Rome Grand Prix

As a teenager, Louis Chiron fell in love with cars and racing. He learned to drive at a young age and joined the Grand Prix circuit after World War I where he had been requisitioned from the artillery section to serve as a chauffeur. Competing in France, in 1926 he won his first local race, taking the Grand Prix de Comminges at Saint-Gaudens near the city of Toulouse. From there, Chiron went on to drive a Bugatti and an Alfa Romeo P3 to important wins in the Marseille Grand Prix, the Circuit of Masaryk, and the Spanish Grand Prix. In addition, he teamed up with champion marathon driver Luigi Chinetti to win the 1933 Spa 24 hours endurance race in Belgium.

Louis Chiron's career came to an end with his retirement in 1938 and auto racing itself a year later with the outbreak of World War II. When racing resumed after the War, Chiron made a comeback and drove a Talbot-Lago to victory in two French Grand Prix races. In 1949, the first Monte Carlo Rally after World War II took place and a large celebration party was given in Monaco. In what is now regarded as one of the black moments of Chiron's life, at the party, in front of numerous race organizers, race drivers, and celebrities, Chiron denounced the female driver Hellé Nice by declaring that she had been an agent of the Gestapo during the war. (This has an ironic cast, in that the lure of a superior car led Chiron to lend his skill to the Mercedes-Benz team, which the Nazis were using as an object of propaganda for their philosophy of racial superiority, at a time when his Jewish colleague and rival René Dreyfus could not). His unsubstantiated allegation destroyed Nice's life and she would be shunned by all, dying in abject poverty.

By the time the new Formula 1 circuit was organized for the 1950 racing season, age was beginning to catch up with him but he still won the 1954 Monte Carlo Rally paired with Swiss racedriver Ciro Basadonna. In F1 racing, Chiron did manage a podium finish in his fifteen races and in 1955, in front of a hometown Monte Carlo crowd, a few weeks before his 56th birthday he became the oldest driver to compete in a Formula 1 race. To the applause of Prince Rainier and his many fans he guided his Lancia D50 to a sixth place finish in the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix.

After a remarkable 35 years in racing, on his retirement Chiron still remained active as an executive with the organization running the Monaco Grand Prix who honored him with a statue erected along the Grand Prix racecourse and named one of the track's curves for him. Louis Chiron held the most podiums in Bugatti cars, and the 21st Century Bugatti company remembered him with the Bugatti 18/3 Chiron named in his honor.

Major career victories:

Belgian Grand Prix : 1930
Czechoslovakian Grand Prix : 1931, 1932, 1933
French Grand Prix : 1931, 1934, 1937, 1947, 1949 (Reims)
German Grand Prix : 1929
Italian Grand Prix : 1928
Spanish Grand Prix : 1928, 1929, 1933
Grand Prix du Comminges : 1947
Grand Prix de Marseilles : 1933
Grand Prix de Nice : 1932
Spa 24 hours : 1933

[edit] Complete Formula One results

(Note: Grands Prix in bold denote points scoring races.)

Yr	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	Team
1950	Mase	GBR	MON	IND	SWI	BEL	FRA	ITA					Mase
1951	Mase	SWI	IND	BEL	FRA	GBR	DEU	ITA	SPA				Talb
1953	Osca	ARG	IND	DUT	BEL	FRA	GBR	DEU	SWI	ITA			Osca
1955	Lanc	ARG	MON	IND	BEL	DUT	GBR	ITA					Lanc
1958	Mase	ARG	MON	DUT	IND	BEL	FRA	GBR	DEU	POR	ITA	MOR	Mase

[edit] Complete European Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)

Year	Entrant	Make	1	2	3	4	5	EDC	Points
1931	Usines Bugatti	Bugatti	ITA Ret	FRA 1	BEL Ret			4=	12
1932	Ettore Bugatti	Bugatti	ITA Ret	FRA 4	GER Ret			5=	17
1935	Scuderia Ferrari	Alfa Romeo	BEL 3	GER Ret	SUI Ret	ITA	ESP Ret	9=	29
1936	Daimler-Benz AG	Mercedes-Benz	MON Ret	GER Ret	SUI	ITA		18=	28