Spanish Grand Prix
The first Spanish Grand Prix in 1913 was not actually run to the Grand Prix formula of the day, but to touring car rules, taking place on a 300-kilometre road circuit at Guadarrama, near Madrid, on the road to Valladolid.
French Grand Prix
The 1906 race was the first ever Grand Prix, which was an event that originated from the Gordon Bennett Cup races that had started in 1899. This race was run on a 66-mile (106km) closed public road circuit starting at the western French town of Le Mans, through a series of villages and back again to Le Mans. Hungarian Ferenc Szisz won this very long 12hour race on a Renault from Italian Felice Nazzaro in a Fiat, where laps on this circuit took around an hour and the horse carriage road surface was made of dirt. The 1908 race saw Mercedes humiliating the French organizers and finishing 1-2-3 at the lethal circuit at Dieppe, where no less than 4 people were killed during the weekend. The 1913 race was won by Georges Boillot on a one-off 19-mile (31km) circuit near Amiens in northern France. Amiens was another extremely deadly circuit – it had a 7.1 mile straight and 5 people were killed during its use during pre-race testing and the race weekend itself. The 1914 race, run on a 24mile circuit near Lyon is perhaps the most legendary Grand Prix of the preWWI racing era. This was a hard-fought battle between the French Peugeots and the German Mercedes. Although the Peugeots were fast and Boillot ended up leading for 12 of the 20 laps the Dunlop tyres they used wore out badly compared to the Continentials that the Mercedes cars were using. Boillot's four-minute lead was wiped out by Christian Lautenschlager in a Mercedes while he stopped an incredible eight times for tyres. Although Boillot drove very hard to try to catch Christian Lautenschlager, he had to retire on the last lap due to engine failure, and for the second time in 6 years Mercedes finished 1–2–3; a humiliating result for the organizers and Peugeot.