Britain's first grand prix winner: when Henry Segrave & Sunbeam beat Fiat in France

Coatalen’s hand had been forced by the late arrival of Fiat’s six-cylinder Tipo 804; small and neat – from rounded radiator cowl to wedge tail via steeply staggered seats, full-length undertray and enclosed tail pipe – as well as low and light, it set new standards for packaging – and promptly practised some 30sec faster than Sunbeam’s best. Only one of the three entered finished – weak back axles causing two late accidents, one of them fatal – but it won.

So Coatalen reached for the company chequebook again – and this time doubled down: Vincenzo Bertarione and Walter Becchia, members of the talented team that had worked on the Fiat under the direction of Guido Fornaca, were spirited from Turin and, as such, the 1923 GP Sunbeam basically would be a six-cylinder ‘green Fiat’ – albeit with detailed changes/improvements: slower piston speeds due to a reduction of the bore/stroke ratio; larger valves (just two per cylinder) at a narrower angle; and cams driven by gears at the rear of the engine rather than by Fiat’s Y-arrangement of shafts and bevels.

Britain’s best had never been so well placed: its cars, the lightest in the race, this time to be held in Tours, had been thoroughly tested beforehand and tailored to suit their crews, while the support team, honed by bitter experience, was well equipped and practiced.

One of the Sunbeams would be pressurising the Fiats throughout the 35 laps

Works driver Henry Segrave, by inclination a purveyor of fastest laps, vowed to make the most of the opportunity this afforded him in the season’s most important race. His previous attempts had resulted in 14 tiresome punctures (and last place) and three weeks in bandages because of burned backside caused by spilt petrol (before the merciful release of retirement.) Accordingly, this time he resolved to hold back in the early stages to save his machinery. Not that he could match the Fiats in any case.

The Italians had again arrived late and with by far the fastest car: a straight-eight this time, boosted by a supercharger – a GP first – driven from the nose of the crankshaft. The Sunbeams had been training assiduously for three days by the time Pietro Bordino finally ventured onto the triangular, often narrow and heavily cambered, 14-mile road course: his fastest was more than a half-minute under Segrave’s.

Sunbeam’s American-born Old Etonian raised in Ireland stuck to his (somewhat spiked) guns, however – he had learned that more often the race was not to the swift – while Bordino disappeared into a dusty distance from the two-by-two rolling start. Segrave had informed Coatalen of his cautious plan for this demanding 500-miler and received neither approval nor contrary instruction. But be it by good luck or by good management, the green team struck upon and operated an effective strategy: one of its number would be pressurising the Fiats throughout the 35 laps.

Initially this role was fulfilled by Kenelm Lee Guinness, who inherited the lead – the first British driver to do so in a British car – on the eighth lap when Bordino’s engine failed; some say that a stone holed the Fiat’s sump and others that its low-mounted, unfiltered ‘blower’ had sucked up road dirt.

KLG’s glory was short-lived. Ceding a 4min advantage to the remaining Fiats of Enrico Giaccone and Carlo Salamano during a scheduled pit stop after 11 laps, the Sunbeam’s clutch began to slip thereafter. Riding mechanic Bill Perkins manfully hauled on a rope looped around the pedal to try to engage it, but the exertion was such that he had to be replaced by Jack Smith.

Indeed, a Sunbeam passenger seat proved a difficult and dangerous place to be: Albert Divo’s mechanic Hivernat was knocked cold by a flying rock and had to be substituted for Jules Moriceau; and Segrave’s Paul Dutoit would have his shoulder cut almost to the bone by a jutting cockpit edge.

The latter pair was determined to finish having stopped halfway to discuss whether it was worth continuing so bad had their clutch slip gradually become. They endured this torture for more than 300 miles when suddenly the metal stop containing rearward movement broke off and the clutch released fully. With just 70 miles to go, there was no chance of their winning but at least now they had the freshest car still running.

Divo was better placed having seen off Giaccone, who retired before mid-distance because of a broken exhaust valve – or ‘Hoovered’ grit, or both. Sunbeam’s Parisian led briefly and was running second to Salamano at a final planned pit stop with five laps remaining. There, disaster struck when Divo, in his haste – Segrave was closing yet distant still – somehow jammed the supposedly quick-release fuel cap. A ‘circus act’ involving saw, hammer and chisel ensued – much to the amusement of the onlooking Fornaca – but nothing budged the cap and the crew were after an 18min delay resigned to refilling the reserve tank after each and every subsequent lap.

So Salamano had it in the bag. Yet Fiat, also panicked unnecessarily by Segrave’s increased speed, dangled the ‘All out!’ signal. Big mistake. The leader ran out of fuel on the 33rd lap and his riding mechanic had to run 2km to the pits. Organisers insisted that the same exhausted man should carry the can back to the stranded car – and do so on foot rather than by a bicycle grabbed from a bystander.

The incredulous Segrave thus scored the first Grande Épreuve victory for a British car after more than six-and-a-half hours’ effort under a fierce July sun. Chastened runner-up Divo was almost 20min behind. And it would have been a 1-2-3 for the Michelin-shod ‘green Fiats’ had not KLG’s increasingly recalcitrant mount – no second gear (of three) plus burnt valves – stalled on the last lap and failed to fire until after a Bugatti had overtaken it.

Fiat’s response to (what should have been) a humbling defeat was to fit a Roots-type blower in place of the Wittig vane-type for its home GP at Monza in September. Now generating 140bhp and attaining 136mph, it dominated, finishing 1-2.

Sunbeam had wisely stayed away. Coatalen picked his fights as carefully as he cherry-picked his men. The next GP-winning Sunbeam – at Spain’s San Sebastián race of September 1924 – would be supercharged. By which time influential Fiat, having been surprisingly overshadowed by Alfa Romeo, who had poached designer Vittorio Jano from it, and to a lesser extent by Sunbeam in the GP de l’ACF at Lyon, had vacated the field entirely: “Fiat did not copy; it taught, after having created.”

Well, there’s a lesson that should have been learned.