GRAND PRIX RACING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 74, 29 March 1938, Page 18

GRAND PRIX RACING.

NEW FORMULA IN USE.

WIDER RANGE PERMITTED,

This year international motor car racing will take on new interest, owing to the fact that all Grand Prix cars will be constructed or converted to comply with the new formula, which has been adopted with a view to making this type of racing more attractive by allowing engines of widely different sizes, supercharged or unsupereharged, to compete on even terms. Thus the world's chief motor contests of 1938 will see larger fields and probably more keenly-contested racing.

The cost of building super-speed Grand Prix maclrines, such as the German Mercedes and Auto-Union, and facing the heav«s expenditure of running racing teams to drive them, was beyond the compass of most Continental motor manufacturers, with the result that many of the leading makers dropped out of the racing game. They could not compete with firms backed by heavy subsidies. The outcome was that both Great Britain and France turned their attention to sports car racing. a

Now an effort is being made to attract a wide range of cars into the Grand Prix fields by m«ns of the new International formula. This provides for engines between 000 c.c. and 3000 c.c. for supercharged power units and 1000 c.c. to 4500 c.c. unsupereharged. A minimum weight limit of approximately TJewt is set for the small cars and a minimum of just under lOJcwt for the large machines. The approximate minimum weight for any intermediate engine size will l>e in direct ratio to those mentioned. Weight is taken to include tyres, gearbox and axle oils, but not fuel, oil in sump or water.

By the application of this new formula., which is to operate from 1038 to the end of 1040. it is thought that many prominent Continental motor concerns will come back to the racing fold. England, which lias scored so consistently in speed events in the Old Country, on the Continent, and in South Africa, with its wonderful 1000 c.c. and l.> 0() c.c.. "R.R.A.'s," is to be represented in this year's Continental Grand Prix events for the first time in manv years, with a. team of "R.R.A.'s" of 2500 c.c capacity, now being specially built to compete under the new formula, fierrpan. France, Italy and U.S.A. are, says thp "Dunlop Bulletin." also preparing machines to race under the new rules. The outcome should he a- particularly interesting motor racing season.