The 1914 French Grand Prix was held at Lyon on 4 July 1914. Hailed as one of the greatest races of the twentieth century, it was a contest between the French Peugeots and the German Mercedes. For the first time, the Grand Prix was run to an engine limitation – of 4.5L maximum capacity. It was won by the Mercedes of Christian Lautenschlager who won at an average speed of 105.7 km/h (65.7 mph) after a tense seven-hour contest with the Peugeot of Georges Boillot.
For several years, the Automobile Club de France (ACF) had been trying to reduce engine sizes in racing which it saw as increasingly dangerous with their higher speeds. This year, for the first time, it mandated a maximum engine size of 4.5-litres along with an allowable weight range of 800–1,100 kg (1,764–2,425 lb). This obviously benefited the leading French racing manufacturers of Peugeot and Delage, that had dominated the recent years of voiturette racing along with Sunbeam, at the expense of the big-engined cars of Italy and Germany.
The city of Lyon promised large subsidies to host and the race was held on a 37.6 km road circuit to the south of the city. The Grand Prix was to be twenty laps of the circuit, totalling 752.6 km.
building the model
The model is based on a 1/16th kit by Heller. When I first purchased the kit I contacted the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart and they sent me photos of the car in their museum. The kit bore little resemblance to the actual car and at the time I did not have the skills or the experience to make it what I wanted it to be, so I put it back in the box and waited. Thirty years later I rediscovered the box and started planning. I retained only the chassis, radiator grill and engine cover and built the rest from scratch. The artillery wheels of the kit were wrong so I replaced them with wire spokes. There are still some items that are incorrect and have yet to be replaced - but I won't tell if you don't.