home second ten minutes later, with Hughes (Mercer) and Merz (Stutz) in third and fourth respectively. Ralph Mulford, second the previous year, finished last over 2½ hours after Dawson. Reputedly even stopping to change his shock absorbers and have a chicken dinner, he crossed the line in front of empty grandstands. Even the organisers had left. He completed the slowest ever 500 miles in the race. Two other records were set where DePalma had led the longest distance without winning (196 laps) and Dawson led the least to win (2 laps) until 2011. The French Automobile Club (ACF) revived its Grand Prix this year. Once again it was staged over two long days – over 1500km – at Dieppe, where the last Grand Prix had been held in 1908. To encourage entrants, the organisers used Formula Libre (open) regulations with the only restriction being that cars must be no wider than 1.75 metres. They also decided to run the Coupe des Voiturettes (3-litres or less) concurrently with the larger cars. Fourteen Grand Prix cars and 33 voiturettes were entered. The “Charlatans” arrived with their three new Peugeot L-76s. The strongest challengers were the three FIAT S74s for Louis Wagner and Americans Ralph DePalma and David Bruce-Brown. There were also teams from Rolland-Pilain, Lorraine-Dietrich and a six-cylinder Belgian Excelsior. An entry from Mercedes was rejected by the organisers on the pretext that the entry was filed by the manufacturer’s Belgian agency and not the company itself. With Peugeot devoting its energy to its Grand Prix cars, they only had a single voiturette entry for René Thomas. Ranged against him were a number of teams from France (including Sizaire-Naudin, Grégoire and Th. Schneider) and Great Britain (Sunbeam, Vauxhall and others). Boillot had put in the fastest lap time in practice. The race started at 5.30am with Victor Rigal’s Sunbeam leading out the voiturettes and Victor Hémery’s Lorraine the first of the Grand Prix cars. Bruce-Brown set the pace, running ahead of Boillot then Wagner. But although the FIATs were faster the Peugeots had much more efficient pit-stops with their knock-off wheel-hubs to change tyres and a pressure-system to refuel. Zuccarelli went out with ignition problems and both Goux and DePalma were disqualified for refuelling away from the pits when they ran out of petrol. After 10 laps and 6½ hours racing at the end of the first day, Bruce-Brown had a two-minute