Allez maintenant! France’s burgeoning historic racing scene

The French historic racing scene rivals Britain as the European home of this branch of sport. One of the key French players is HVM Racing, promoter of the Historic Tour and headline historic race meetings at Paul Ricard and Dijon.

The HVM head is Laurent Vallery-Masson, a racer through and through who wheels out his Formula 2 March whenever he can.

“I’ve been running HVM since 2003,” he says. “But at the beginning it was just a team for friends and then we started to organise our own meetings in 2009 at Dijon.”

That was the catalyst for growth and HVM became the designated organiser for historic racing on behalf of the French motor sport governing body, FFSA. At the heart of HVM’s offering is the Historic Tour, a series of race meetings at the leading French tracks and regularly visiting Charade, Magny-Cours, Dijon, Nogaro and Val de Vienne. From Dijon in May, the Historic Tour runs until mid-October at Val de Vienne and the nicely spaced schedule avoids the peak of the summer when temperatures across France can get very high.

“We have five events for the French historic championship called Historic Tour and we have something like 300 drivers at each event,” Vallery-Masson tells. “We have 11 series in Historic Tour with different groups from touring cars to GT cars and single-seaters. For instance, we have a Formula Ford category and we have two grids. We have 50 cars on each grid in Formula Ford. It works well.”

The range of series is impressive, spanning single-seaters, pre-90 and post-90 GT and touring cars and a series of 200km races for the French Historic Endurance Championship. However, unlike the obvious UK equivalent, the Historic Sports Car Club, cars of the 1980s and 1990s are more centre stage than those of the 1960s and 1970s. A Trophée Lotus series is home to all variants of the Lotus 7, including Caterhams, while the Maxi 1300 offers great competition to a range of cars up to 1300cc.

“What we try to do is to offer entertainment for people who want to race because I knew from when I was young that, unfortunately, I had no talent,” Vallery-Masson explains. “So we try to work in the best way to give maximum entertainment. It’s all about enjoying the racing and having safety. But you know we don’t organise races for people who are winning. We organise racing for people who are not because you have more people who are not winning.”

Alongside the five race meetings that make up the Historic Tour, HVM also organises two headline meetings, notably drawing competitors from the UK for the French Historic GP and Dijon Motors Cup.

“Now we produce the French Historic GP at Paul Ricard, which is a big event,” says Vallery-Masson. “This year we will have Alain Prost, Gerhard Berger and Jacky Ickx.”

With so much going on, Vallery-Masson does not have much chance to race himself but has recently stepped up to Historic Formula 2 with a March 772 after many years in 2-litre Classic Formula 3 cars.

His passion for F2 led to a new initiative for 2024 for the Historic F2 series: “I am really motivated to do something around single-seaters like Formula 3 and Formula 2. We did a joint venture with the HSCC to produce a European series this year, with a couple of big meetings in Europe. One of those is, of course, the Silverstone Festival, where we will bring Formula 2 and Formula 3. We will have two very good grids – because this, for me, is the best event in the year. HVM is organising great events in France, but we have to respect what Goose and the HSCC do at Silverstone.”

Fans visiting the festival in late August can expect bumper F2 and F3 races with a target of attracting around 40 cars to each grid.

“We are a small team at HVM Racing – I have six people working for me,” Vallery-Masson adds. “They work very hard to try to organise races and hopefully we have the chance to have some success but if the success comes it is because we have the trust of the drivers.”