The Long, Strange Trip of the United States GP Cup

Grand Prize, Grand Prix, and F1 Racing in America

Next weekend will see the running of the V SAP United States Grand Prix. Although using the moniker of the "V SAP United States Grand Prix," the 2004 edition is actually - maybe - the XXXIII United States Grand Prix. Or, perhaps, the XXXII United States Grand Prix. Or just the V SAP United States Grand Prix. Or, it could even be the XL United States Grand Prix. You get the idea.

Whenever you seek help from the various references that are available for F1, you find that the statistics for the World Championship for Drivers - which the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) first ran during the 1950 season, often includes the results from the Indianapolis 500 for the years 1950 to 1960. Some of the references include these races and others don't. Those references which include the Indianapolis events rarely give them much attention and treat them as anomalies. The references will usually provide you with the information that the date and place of the first USGP was in December of 1959 at Sebring.

Were it that simple.

In reality, we might find that the impetus for what might be considered the first United States Grand Prix began in early 1904. A scion of the wealthy Vanderbilt family, William Kissam "Willie K" Vanderbilt II (although some refer to him as WKV Junior), decided to place America smack dab in the middle of the developing international motor racing scene. Fellow American James Gordon Bennett had launched the first truly international automotive competition, the Coupe Internationale Automobile - best known as the Gordon Bennett Cup, in 1900. The Coupe Internationale Automobile was a competition in which the national automobile clubs entered teams to compete against the teams field by other national automobile clubs. This meant that a team might be composed of several different marques of automobiles.

Vanderbilt took a slightly different tack. He decided that the entries for his race would be based upon manufacturers and not the national automobile club. The entries would have to be products made entirely within the country of that manufacturer. The Automobile Club de France (ACF) would soon begin to echo the Vanderbilt approach - despite winning four of the six Gordon Bennett events, France believed that its automobile industry was being unfairly restrained by limiting each nation to only three entries. After its lobbying effort failed to get the regulations for the Coupe Internationale Automobile changed, the ACF simply launched its own event in 1906, the Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France, which solicited entries from the manufacturers, an idea it borrowed from the Vanderbilt Cup.

The problem in 1904 which launched into motion the chain of events which eventually leads us to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the V SAP United States Grand Prix in June 2004 was a simple fit of pique. Rather than ask the patrician Automobile Club of America (ACA) to sanction the event under its Racing Committee, Vanderbilt turned to the Racing and Technical Committees of the distinctly middle class American Automobile Association (AAA) to conduct the sanctioning functions of the event.

The howls of protest from the ACA were as much from the betrayal of "Willie K" to his class as the selection of the upstart AAA rather than the ACA. At the time that Vanderbilt presented his Cup to the AAA in January 1904, the organization was less than two years old - the AAA not being formed until March of 1902. The ACA had been organized in 1899 and had been the club serving as the American entrant in the Coupe Internationale Automobile events. Later in 1904, the ACA would become the American member of the newly formed Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnu (AIACR) - known today as the FIA.

Despite the unpleasantness that existed between the ACA and the AAA, circumstances and pressure brought to bear by the American manufacturers and other interested parties led the two clubs to an uneasy alliance to conduct the running of the first major motor racing event in America, the Vanderbilt Cup Commission. It was not a relationship made in heaven, but the AAA and the ACA managed to cooperate to the extent necessary to ensure the success of the event. The problem was that there was little doubt as to whom the lead agency in this effort - the AAA.

Although the ACA was incorporated into the membership of the Vanderbilt Cup Commission, it realized that to refuse to participate would with it carry greater consequences than tagging along as the second fiddle. While the nominal reason that the ACA was needed was its membership in the AIACR, it was quite obvious that the AAA would have held the race despite that small inconvenience. Another reason for being a part of the Cup Commission was to better keep an eye on things should certain "opportunities" arise.

The 1904 Vanderbilt Cup had an outcome that was nearly ideal - an American (albeit an expatriate) driver, George Heath, winning aboard a French car, a Panhard. The Vanderbilt Cup used roads on Long Island for the event, with even a short jaunt into the Borough of Queens as part of the course. The close proximity of New York and its teeming masses had the desired effect on attendance - the number of spectators was into the thousands upon thousands, it appearing that the entire course was lined with people - often several deep. This mass of humanity and the close proximity of the spectators to the racing surface led to serious consequences whenever a car and the crowd tangled. There were several deaths and a fairly large number of injuries to drivers and spectators during the first three years the Cup was run over the roads of Long Island, 1904 to 1906.

In 1907, the Vanderbilt Cup was not run. The 1906 event had been terminated due to crowd control problems. As both the drivers and the newspapers reported, it was nothing short of a miracle that many hundreds of spectators did not get killed. That there were relatively few injuries out of what could have been catastrophic crashes was the final straw for all concerned. The 1907 event was canceled until better crowd control measures could be put into place.

For 1908, a shortened course - a 23.46 miles incorporating nine miles of the Long Island Parkway - was used and the police presence (which had been completely inadequate at about 16 per mile in earlier years) was considerably beefed up with the presence of members of the Irish Brigade, a corps of Spanish War veterans, Pinkerton men, Nassau County deputies, and various other men ("trained athletes") in an effort to control the crowds. When over 200,000 showed up for the event, even this beefed up force proved completely inadequate for the job. Fire hoses had to be used to clear the starting area of spectators so that the cars could be waved off at their appointed intervals. To the delight of the American crowd, the winner was the Locomobile of George Robertson. This was the first victory of an American car in a major competition, although the entry was rather diminished in terms of international entries from earlier years.

During the year that the Vanderbilt Cup was idle, there had been a meeting, the International Ostend Conference, which laid down the first international racing formula, the "Ostend Formula." The Ostend Formula set a minimum weight and a maximum engine size. The minimum weight was 1,100 kilograms and the maximum engine size was determined by the bore and the number of cylinders: four cylinder engines could have a maximum bore of 155 millimeters and six cylinder engines a maximum bore of 127 millimeters - the stroke was left up to the manufacturers.

The Vanderbilt Cup was not run to the Ostend Formula. The AAA Racing Committee imposed only a minimum weight limit of 1,200 kilograms on the entries. This was the opportunity that that ACA had been waiting for - it announced that it would hold an event run to the Ostend Formula after the Vanderbilt Cup. This event, the "Grand Prize of the Automobile Club of America" - often called the Gold Cup after the trophy that the ACA had commissioned, had Savannah, Georgia as its venue. Whereas the foreign entries for the Vanderbilt Cup were fairly thin, the Grand Prize was a truly international event, all the major manufacturers fielding entries: F.I.A.T., Benz, Renault, Clement-Bayard, Itala, and de Dietrich, along with the American Buick, Chadwick, Acme, and National entries. When the race ended, Louis Wagner driving a Fiat was the winner, but only when Felice Nazzaro had to stop and change a tyre on the last lap.

In 1909, the Grand Prize race was not run. However, the Vanderbilt Cup was run and under a new arrangement of the ACA and the AAA. The two now formed the Motor Cups Holding Company whose duties included the sanctioning of the Vanderbilt Cup and the Grand Prize events. The Vanderbilt Cup was held on a course which used as much of the Long Island Parkway as possible and simplified to where there were only a half dozen real corners. However, the opening event to production - stock chassis - cars and the reduction of the foreign entries, and moving the start to mid-morning from dawn all somehow conspired to reduce the crowd to a mere 20,000 spectators. Added to the mix was a race which was relatively lackluster due to the high rate of attrition during the event. Harry Grant and Alco gave America another victory in the Cup, but one that was not quite what had been hoped for.

In 1910, the Motor Cups Holding Company ran both of its events for the first time, the Vanderbilt Cup making its final appearance on Long Island. The Vanderbilt Cup rebounded after its off-year in 1909 and the crowds were estimated to be in the range of 300,000 or more. Needless to say, crowd control was a problem once again. The event was run with its largest field ever (30) and the starting interval reduced to only 15 seconds which increased the tempo of the event significantly. The deaths of two riding mechanicians - Charles Miller and Matthew Bacon - and at least twenty or more hospitalized due to incidents doomed the return of the Vanderbilt Cup to Long Island the next year. The winner was Grant and his Alco once again.

After respectfully declining to run the American Grand Prix event in 1909, the Savannah Automobile Club agreed to hold the event once again in 1910. The field was a mixed one in some way, but still a strong one, the Fiat team being very strong: Louis Wagner, Felice Nazzaro, and Ralph De Palma. Crowd control was not as issue of any significance at Savannah for the simple reason that the Georgia National Guard and local law enforcement made certain that the roads stayed clear of spectators. The course was also shortened to 17.3 miles from the previous length of 25.3 miles. The winner of the Second Grand Prize event was the young American David Bruce-Brown, driving a massive Fiat to victory over the equally massive Benz of Hemery by the razor thin margin of only 1.42 seconds after nearly six hours of driving. It would be an understatement to state that it was a very popular victory.

Even if there is now evidence that Bruce-Brown was older than thought at the time of his victory, the triumph of the young American was a shot in the arm to the American racing community. Bruce-Brown was a genuine talent and had the potential to be the first American to make an impact on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to Bruce-Brown, two other Americans made the 1910 Grand Prize event a good day for the Americans: Bob Burman placing third on the Marquette Buick and Ralph Mulford in fourth driving a Lozier.

With its return to Long Island out of the question, the Motor Cups Holding Company now teamed the Grand Prize and Vanderbilt Cup events for the 1911 series of the events. After the success of the 1910 Grand Prize event, Savannah agreed to host both of the events. The Vanderbilt Cup was held three days prior to the Grand Prize race. Another American victory was the result, Ralph Mulford in the Lozier leading the Mercedes machines of Ralph De Palma and Wishart across the line. In the Grand Prize race, It was a repeat victory for Bruce-Brown and Fiat, with Eddie Hearne (Benz), De Palma (Mercedes), and Caleb Bragg (Fiat) following, Cup winner Mulford retiring with a broken driveshaft.

After Opening in 1909 and struggling through that year and the following year, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was converted from a 2.5-mile dirt speedway to one paved with bricks. On Decoration Day in 1911, the speedway management ran an event that was shrewdly calculated to capture the public's imagination: a 500-mile race, the International Sweepstakes. Literally an instant success, the International Sweepstakes would gain in popularity through the years preceding The Great War and in the years following The Great War would become one of the great American sporting events.

The 1912 running of the races shifted to the outskirts of Milwaukee - Wawautosa township - in early October. Unfortunately, Bruce-Brown was killed during a practice session when a tire failed as he tried to squeeze in another lap of the course. The crash killed not only Bruce-Brown, who had led the Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France that year until disqualified (taking on additional gasoline after repairing a split fuel line), but his riding mechanician Tony Scudelari. The field for the Cup event was very sparse, only eight starters for the 300-mile event. At the end, Ralph De Palma and Mercedes crossed the line first after the Fiat of Ted ("Terrible Teddy") Tetzlaff retired while leading the race. Hughie Hughes was second in the Mercer with Wishart third in a Mercedes. The Grand Prize race saw a larger entry, 12 cars, but the finish saw only four manage to reach the checkered flag, the Fiat of Caleb Bragg covering the 409.88 miles nearly 15 minutes ahead of the Benz of Bergdoll. Anderson was third in a Stutz.

In 1913, for a variety of reasons, neither the Vanderbilt Cup or the Grand Prize race were run. Both returned in the West Coast debut of the events at Santa Monica in February 1914. Both events boasted large entry lists, with the cream of the American racing world appearing in the events. The cars were a mixture of American and foreign makes, but a significant absence was that of the Peugeots which won the International Sweepstakes in 1913. The Vanderbilt Cup was a repeat of the 1912 race, De Palma and Mercedes. Trailing De Palma by just over a minute, was the Mercer of Barney Oldfield. It is often forgotten that Oldfield was an accomplished racing driver in addition to being a showman. Only four of the 15 starters finished the event. The Grand Prize race saw Eddie Pullen emerge as the victor in another war of attrition, heading the only four survivors of the 17 starters. The second and third-placed cars were American: the Marmon of Ball in second and the Alco of Taylor in third.

For 1915, the Motor Cups Holding Company stayed on the West Coast, moving the events from Santa Monica to San Francisco. The move was in conjunction with the Panama-Pacific Exposition being hosted by San Francisco. A 3.84-mile course was laid out using both paved streets and planked boarding laid down for the course. The result was an a circuit which run through an area now the center of much of the city's tourist trade. The Vanderbilt Cup was originally scheduled to be run on Washington's Birthday, but severe weather - high winds and monsoon rains - delayed it until 6 March. However, the American Grand Prize event was appointed day, 27 February, despite a severe storm.

The 1915 Grand Prize witnessed the American debut of the driver who would dominate his two seasons in America - Dario Resta. Driving one of the new Peugeot cars, the EX3 - with which the course of American racing would be altered once Harry Miller inspected the engine, Resta simply put on a display of driving mastery which allowed him to cover the 400 miles nearly seven minutes ahead of the second-placed Stutz of Howdy Wilcox. Those 400 miles were run in appalling conditions and only five covered the full distance, the rest of the 30 starters either being flagged, withdrawn or retiring. To prove that this was no fluke, Resta and the Peugeot then won the Vanderbilt Cup in similarly convincing fashion, once again ahead of Wilcox and the Stutz.

1915 was a year of transition in American racing, the appearance of speedways constructed of planked boards at Mayewood (Chicago) and elsewhere (with concrete speedways in Minnesota and Rhode Island tossed into the mix as well...) leading to a trend which would play itself out just over a decade later. Another issue that surfaced during 1915 and continued into 1916 was the dwindling supply of racing cars, foreign racing machines in particular. The advent of The Great War meant that the European constructors with the most recent involvement in motor racing - Peugeot, Delage, Sunbeam, and Mercedes - were now occupied with other, more pressing matters.

1916 was a the season during which the American Automobile Association conducted its first drivers' championship, the idea being concocted by the Contest Board as a way to gain attention to a selected series of events. The events on the National Championship Trail for 1916 were, by agreement among the promoters and the Contest Board, limited to 300 miles. This included the International Sweepstakes event at Indianapolis. For most of early part of the year, the sites of the Vanderbilt Cup and Grand Prize events were in limbo. The dramatic upsurge in the popularity of the new planked board speedways saw the Contest Board place many of its championship events on such venues. There was significant interest in luring both the Vanderbilt Cup and Grand Prize events to such tracks. "Willie K" Vanderbilt was already unhappy with this prospect and specifically stated in the agreement with the Motor Cups Holding Company that his event, the Vanderbilt Cup, had to be held on a road course. The Automobile Club of America insisted upon a similar stipulation for the American Grand Prize race.

After rumors tying the events to Corona and other venues - to include the speedway at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, the events returned to Santa Monica in mid-November. There was a "Speedway American Grand Prize" event held in October at Mayewood, but that was simply a means to circumvent the restriction put in place by the ACA. The Eleventh Vanderbilt Cup race was run over 35 laps (294 miles) of the Santa Monica circuit. The winner was the same combination of man and machine that had dominated the 1916 season, Dario Resta and the Peugeot. Resta won the International Sweepstakes event and the AAA championship that year in a season which left few doubts as to who was the best racing driver in America. Following Resta over the line in the Vanderbilt Cup race were Earl Cooper (Stutz) and William ("Wild Bill") Weightman (Duesenberg).

The Seventh American Grand Prize witnessed another victory for Peugeot, but the duo of Howdy Wilcox and Johnny Aitken shared the driving chores, benefiting from the retirements of Resta and Eddie Rickenbacher (Duesenberg) to assume the lead and take the checkered flag. Cooper was second in this event as well. With Aitken not scoring any points, this event saw Resta capture the crown regardless of what Aitken or Rickenbacher did during the final round at Ascot in December.

After the 1916 event, it would be the end of the American Grand Prize race. The ACA suspended the event during The Great War and it was never revived after the hostilities came to a halt. The William K. Vanderbilt II Cup - after its owner seriously considered dropping it overboard during an ocean voyage - was likewise never revived after The Great War. By 1916, the International Sweepstakes event had emerged as an equal to the Grand Prize and Vanderbilt Cup races. Only it would remain on the scene after 1916.

Forgotten by most is the fact that the International Sweepstakes events during the 1920s were run to International Formula, albeit often a season behind its adoption in Europe. The inaugural event of the first world championship devised by the CSI was the 1925 International Sweepstakes. Although slightly different in deference to the environment in which they performed, the America racing cars of the 1920s were true Grand Prix machines. However, American racing at the premier level began to drift away from international scene.

There were several factors for this drift, one of the main one factors being the souring economic state of American racing by 1928. The spectacular planked board tracks carried with them high maintenance costs, the green lumber needing constant replacement or extensive repairs. The promoters were finding it difficult to make ends meet and they soon returned dirt tracks to stage their events. Road racing had petered out by the early 1920s when the Elgin races ceased to be staged.

In the mid-1930s, THE automotive racing event in the United States was the International Sweepstakes at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Period. However, in an amazing turn of events, road racing returned to Long Island and people began to speak of the "Indianapolis Grand Prix." All this came about through the happenstance of several divergent forces bumping into one another.

As the general manager of the Speedway, T.E. "Pop" Myers had always envisioned the International Sweepstakes in exactly that context, an "international" event. After the announcement of the so-called "Junk Formula" in late-1928 and its introduction at Indianapolis in 1930, Myers continued to consider ways to reintroduced the Speedway back into the international scene. There was a faction on the AAA Contest Board which was not very supportive of such notions. They were quite content to continue to maintain the status quo.

In 1935, the CSI extended the Formule Internationale an additional year, to 1937, with meetings to be held the next year as to the shape of the new formula. The CSI devised a formula which placed engine displacement and weight on a sliding scale, the maximum size for a supercharged engine being 3-litres and an unsupercharged engine 1.5-litres. This formula was to run from 1938 to 1940. The AAA Contest Board adopted this formula for its National Championship Trail beginning with 1938.

In the meantime, things had shifted in America and during the mid-1930s there was a revival of interest in road racing. This was in part due to the calculated efforts of the German automakers and the National Socialist government to ensure that the new Auto-Union and Mercedes-Benz racing cars appeared in the newsreels shown in theaters all over America. In 1936 alone, there were plans for new road racing facilities at Dallas (the State Fair Park), Los Angeles (Mines Field), and on Long Island (Westbury).

In the late-1920s and into the 1930s (and even in 1940), a group of young men in New England transitioned from racing motorized buckboards to Bugatti, Willys, and other cars over road courses laid out on private estates. This group incorporated itself as the "Automobile Racing Club of America" - ARCA - in 1934. In June 1935, ARCA ran the "Grand Prix of the United States of America" on the 3.3-mile circuit laid out on the Briarcliff Manor in New York State. The slow, twisty course held the average speed for the 100-mile event to a mere 48.67 mph. The winner was Langdon Quimby driving the white, number 11 Willys 77. Second was Joel Thorne in a Ford V-8 Special (whose strenuous, ungentlemanly protests that he had actually been first led to his receiving a letter terminating his membership in the Gentleman's club that that the ARCA most certainly was), and Dick Wharton in a Bugatti Type 35A.

What is interesting is that the ARCA actually went to the trouble to get the event covered by the AAA - that organization being one of the largest insurers in America. Interestingly enough, there was never another "Grand Prix of the United States of America" run by the ARCA. However, the AAA Contest Board and others were most certainly interested in road racing - to a point.

In 1936, there were several road races in America, three of which preceded the one most here might be familiar with. In March, Milt Marion won the first of what would prove to be a number of road-beach races at Daytona Beach, Florida. The AAA Contest Board sanctioned the 240-mile event, which saw Milt Marion cross the line first in his Ford V-8, ahead of Ben Shaw in another Ford. In fifth place was Daytona gasoline station owner - and recent emigrant from Washington, DC, Bill France. In May, the ARCA ran an 88-mile event in Memphis in conjunction with the Cotton Carnival. The race used a simple 4.4 mile "box" circuit. The winner was Sam Collier driving his black Auburn 12 Speedster, Langdon Quimby second at the wheel of his Ford V-8 Phaeton. In third was Barron Collier in a MG Type L Magna. In August, the ARCA ran another event at Alexandria Bay, New York. This was a true street circuit, being run in the midst of the small village. It was called the "'Round the House' Road Race" and used a 1.4-mile circuit which had the start/finish line and pit area across the street from the Alexandria Bay School.

Although the ARCA often gets some of the credit for the running of the Vanderbilt Cup events in 1936 and 1937, the shaker and mover behind the concept was the winner of the 1908 event, George Robertson. Unlike many of his fellow Americans, Robertson continued to follow European road racing during the 1920s and 1930s. Robertson had managed the winning Duesenberg effort at the 1921 Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France and then worked for Ford in Europe, returning in the mid-1920s. Robertson managed to get backers to invest in an endeavor which became Roosevelt Raceway, located on Long Island, next to Roosevelt Field - hence the name - in Westbury and Garden City.

The syndicate created to build the raceway got the funding and got the facility constructed in 83 days. The 4.0-mile that was built had a surface which was composed of a bed of packed clay, which was packed with gravel, crushed stone, and sand. All this was impregnated with a binder of slow-curing heavy oil. The composition was given repeated rolling to pack it together. Then a layer of fine sand was added and a binder of faster-curing oil added as a sealer. The was then rolled until the surface was considered "cured" and ready for use.

The efforts to get "Willie K" Vanderbilt to lend his name - and trophy - for the new races came to naught, and a relative of "Willie K" - a young, distant cousin - was found and convinced to give his name to the new cup, the George Vanderbilt Cup. The event was virtually a free-for-all, the only stipulation that displacement could not exceed 366 cubic inches or six litres. Robertson was able to round up a fair field of entries from Europe, although he failed to convince the Germans to send a team. The headliner from Europe was the incomparable Tazio Nuvolari driving an Alfa Romeo Tipo 12C-36 for Scuderia Ferrari.

Despite being among the few road racers of any description in America, the amateurs of the ARCA sat in the sidelines or in the grandstands along with the rest of the crowd. The field was a mixture of Europeans in a variety of cars and American professionals from the Speedway and bullrings that was American racing of that day. The ARCA crowd was not amused with their situation. The sole entry from an ARCA member, a Bugatti Type 51 and a Mercedes Miller, were driven by AAA-qualified drivers. The reason that the ARCA drivers were sitting on the sidelines was that they could not qualify for an AAA license since they had to compete in professional events to do so and they were all staunch amateurs.

The George Vanderbilt Cup was run on Columbus Day and the winner, appropriately enough, was Tazio Nuvolari. Unfortunately, the anticipated crowd of upwards of 175,000 was actually more in the neighborhood of a mere 30,000. Nuvolari and Scuderia Ferrari pocketed a nice paycheck for their efforts. The results were dominated by the Europeans, the Americans being more the victim of the inadequacies of their cars than any dearth of talent.

For 1937, the circuit at Roosevelt Raceway was modified to make it faster and shortened to 3.3-miles. And, the lobbying efforts of Robertson paid off when both Auto-Union and Mercedes-Benz machines were entered for the event, scheduled for 3 July. Unlike the previous year, American drivers were quick to see the advantage of modifying their cars with better brakes and multi-speed gearboxes - or driving an European car. A revelation to all concerned was the speed of Rex Mays in an obsolescent Alfa Romeo Tipo 8C-35. Mays qualified and finished third in the race. The winner was Bernd Rosemeyer in an Auto-Union Typ 1937, with second place going to Richard Seaman in a Mercedes-Benz Typ W125.

Unfortunately, the syndicate which built Roosevelt Raceway simply ran out of money. A proposal for a Pan-American race which would have North and South Americans square off against each other never got past the planning stage. The site was later used for harness racing before becoming a shopping mall.

Beginning in 1938, the International Sweepstakes and the other events on the National Championship Trail were run to the International Formula. In 1939 and 1940, a machine from the Grand Prix circuit won the Indianapolis race and many other such machines were in the fields before the War halted racing in 1941.

After the Second World War, the International Sweepstakes was revived and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway changed hands, Eddie Rickenbacker (formerly Rickenbacher) sold the track to Anton ("Tony") Hulman of Terre Haute, Indiana. Heir to the Clabber Girl estate and the license to bottle Coca-Cola in the State of Indiana, Hulman saved the event from oblivion. The Speedway was in terrible shape.

In the Fall of 1949, the CSI created a world championship for drivers patterned after the one that the FIM had inaugurated during 1949 for international motorcycle racing. The events selected by the CSI as rounds in this championship were mostly those events which were Grandes Epreuve from the pre-War World or European Championships. This included the International Sweepstakes.

What is remarkable is that the event was actually run to the most of the stipulations of the International Racing Formula 1 which had recently come into effect. In December 1946, the AAA Contest Board had adopted the new "International Racing Formula A" to come into effect in 1948. The 1946 International Sweepstakes was run to the International Formula which came into effect in 1938. In 1948, with the temporary delay in place for 3-litre supercharged engines until enough 1.5-litre units were available, the International Sweepstakes was otherwise run the technical aspects of the new formula.

The International Sweepstakes events from 1950 to 1953 were pretty much pukka Grand Prix events, except for the provisions to allow Diesel engined machines and the allowance for the supercharged cars to have a displacement of double that of the current formula - an option which only a few take advantage of, the majority of the entries being powered by 4.5-litre Offenhauser engines which were originally products of Harry Miller and now produced by Meyer-Drake. In 1952, Alberto Ascari (and with the blessing of Scuderia Ferrari) came to America with an entry in the International Sweepstakes. Although his car was eliminated by a broken - wire - wheel, Ascari impressed everyone with his professionalism and ability. From 1954 to 1960, the International Sweepstakes was completely at odds with the International Racing Formula One. When the new 1.5-litre formula for Grand Prix racing took effect in 1960, the International sweepstakes was quietly dropped from the world championship calendar.

During the late-1940s and the early-1950s, road racing was reintroduced to America. Beginning with the first "Watkins Glen Grand Prix" of October 1948, which were held on the roads of the small New York village, road racing would soon spread across the United States. The opening of the Riverside International Raceway in 1957, created the beginning of one of the paths the United States Grand Prix would soon travel.

Alec Ulmann organized the Sam Collier Memorial six-hour event at Sebring in December 1950. He had already helped with the planning of the 1948 Watkins Glen Grand Prix, assisting the mastermind of the that race, Cameron Argetsinger. By 1958, Ulmann had built up an extensive network of contacts as the result of organizing the annual 12-hour event at Sebring. He helped with the organization of the 1958 event that is often referred to as the Times-Mirror Grand Prix, but which Ulmann christened the "1st United States Grand Prix." It is often noted as the "Ist United States Grand Prix for Sports Cars."

Were it not that Ulmann decided to call his pukka Formula One event held in December 1959 as the "II United States Grand Prix," all the Stats Collectors would not have to live in denial. Although the first American road racing event included in the CSI World Championship for Drivers, the Sebring event was given the title of the "II US Grand Prix" by Ulmann and the 1960 event at Riverside was the "III USGP."

After encountering the slight problem of alienating the Grand Prix circus by not paying the appearance or prize monies promised, Ulmann held onto the sanction for the 1961 IV USGP until the last possible moment. In mid-August, Ulmann relinquished the sanction to Cameron Argetsinger and Watkins Glen, leaving only about six weeks for Argetsinger to pull the event together. This was accomplished in large part through excellent planning and that there was already an Intercontinental Formula event scheduled for the October weekend which was now the United States Grand Prix.

The USGP stayed at Watkins Glen until 1980. However, it got a bit complicated. In 1970, Argetsinger resigned as the Executive Director of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation. This was for a number of reasons, primarily over the direction of the circuit and its management strategies. In 1971, the Watkins Glen course was modified from its original configuration - largely unchanged since 1956, to one which now include what was to become known as the "Boot." The new course was now 3.377 miles in length and the modified original circuit now 2.428 miles versus 2.3 miles.

The problem was the bond issue which the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation had to assume to pay for the circuit modifications and facility upgrades. The debt was significant. Despite crowds numbering close to 100,000 or more for the USGP and large crowds for the other major events at the track, the track was in financial trouble. It was decided to hold a rock concert, Summer Jam, in late July of 1973. The 650,000 who turned out for the event dwarfed the mere 400,000 who attended Woodstock four years previously. However, the event was a public relations disaster for the track. There were approximately 12,000 concert-goers treated for various medical problems, including a skydiver who was apparently overcome by the fumes from his flares and failed to open his chute, suffering fatal injuries as a result. Another five deaths were attributed to traffic related to the concert. The police blotter saw over 200 criminal cases entered during the concert. Whatever money the concert brought the corporation was more than offset by the loss of an important asset - the goodwill of the community.

The goodwill of the international community was also waning when the area known as The Bog became more and more unruly. The burning of a chartered bus being used by a Brazilian group during the 1974 Grand Prix weekend was not the first nor the last of the vehicles burned at The Bog, but it was another nail in the coffin of the event on both a local and international level. Although Watkins Glen continued to produce events with excellent organization and decent crowds, the financial hemorrhage continued. The smaller events were draining an already serous financial situation faster than the major events could replete the monies.

In 1980, the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation was unable to meet its financial obligations to Formula One Constructors Association. The financial agreement between the corporation and the FOCA was revised from the previous seasons and FOCA organized the event. As a result of the just completed disagreement between FOCA and the successor to the CSI, the Federation Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), the USGP was shifted to a date in May of 1981. This was contingent upon funding being found to reimburse the FOCA. When the money was not found in time, the USGP fell off the calendar after 20 seasons at Watkins Glen.

On the West Coast, an English expatriate had an idea as audacious as that of Cameron Argetsinger in 1948 at Watkins Glen - a Grand Prix run on the streets of Long Beach. Amazingly enough, Chris Pook actually pulled it off. After holding the "Inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix" in September 1975 for Formula 5000 cars, the CSI World Championship for Drivers visited California for the first time since November 1960 when the Grand Prix circus showed up in March 1976. The problem is that while it seems to have been promoted as the "United States Grand Prix West," in 1976, it was the "Long Beach Grand Prix" in subsequent years. Or was it? There seems to be quite a bit of inconsistency and little agreement. However, Formula One decamped from Long Beach after the 1983 event, never to return, whatever the event was called.

Oh, the Grand Prix circus did visit the West Coast in 1971, but it was for the Questor Grand Prix, an non-championship event held for a field composed of Grand Prix and Formula 5000 machinery. The event was run in two heats and the winner was a popular result - Mario Andretti in a Ferrari 312B. It was assumed that perhaps this was the start of something, but nothing followed this one-off event.

Then we come to the Caesars' Palace Grand Prix events of 1981 and 1982. These events were literally run in the parking lot of the casino/hotel complex. Like Long Beach, Caesars' Palace was taken over by the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) organization. Unlike Long Beach, CART soon dropped the event.

In 1982, the Grand Prix circus descended upon the latest of the American Grand Prix street circuits, the streets of Detroit being the site of the Detroit Grand Prix. Once again, CART inherited this event once the Formula One types had raised the ante to the point where the organizers cried, uncle. CART assumed the sanction for the event in 1989. The addition of the Detroit Grand Prix meant that the United States was the host of three F1 World Championship events in 1982 - Long Beach, Detroit, and Caesars' Palace.

The Dallas Grand Prix only ran once, 1984, but it left quite a legacy in its wake - Keke Rosberg bringing his Williams-Honda across the line first in an event where the heat was easily the equal of the legendary 1955 Gran Premio de la Republica Argentina. Although the contract was said to be a multi-year one, the Dallas Grand Prix remains a singleton.

In 1984 and 1985, there was a United States Grand Prix, only it was not run for the F1 circus. For its events at the Meadowlands in New Jersey in 1984 and 1985, CART appropriated the title of the "United States Grand Prix" for the two events. Why did CART use the title? It seemed like a good idea at the time...

In 1989, Phoenix hosted the "Iceberg United States Grand Prix." Not the United States Grand Prix, but the Iceberg USGP. In 1991, the attendance for Iceberg United States Grand Prix was easily eclipsed by the attendance at another racing event held that same day - one for ostriches. After 1991, the United States Grand Prix went into limbo. Then the Indianapolis Motor Speedway agreed to terms with Formula One Management and the I SAP United States Grand Prix was held there in 2000. As mentioned, 2004 will be the V SAP United States Grand Prix. It may or not be the last USGP, but that is not for me to speculate upon, the real question being is it the "V SAP USGP" or what?

Doing The Math:

Contact the Author Contact the Editor