The Swiss Grand Prix (French: Grand Prix de la Suisse, German: Großer Preis von der Schweiz) was the premier auto race of Switzerland. In its later years it was a Formula One race.
Grand Prix motor racing came to Switzerland in 1934, to the Bremgarten circuit, located just outside the town of Bremgarten, near Bern. The Swiss Grand Prix counted toward the European Championship from 1935 to 1939.
The Bremgarten track remained the home of the Swiss Grand Prix until 1954 and in 1948 it was designated the European Grand Prix, in a time when this title was an honorary designation given each year to one grand prix race in Europe. Any chance to return was erased in 1958 when motor racing was banned by the Swiss government as an unsafe spectator sport following the death of 80 people at the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans race. The Swiss Grand Prix returned in 1975 as a non-Championship Grand Prix just across the border, at the Dijon-Prenois circuit, France. The next, and last, Swiss Grand Prix was a round of the Formula One World Championship in 1982, also held at Dijon.
On June 6, 2007 Swiss Parliament voted to lift the ban of circuit racing in Switzerland, 97 in favor and 77 opposed. However, the legislation was subsequently not ratified by the Swiss Council of States (the Senat) and the ban is now highly unlikely to actually be lifted.
Read more about Swiss Grand Prix: Winners of The Swiss Grand Prix
Famous quotes containing the words swiss and/or grand:
“Nothing sets a person up more than having something turn out just the way it’s supposed to be, like falling into a Swiss snowdrift and seeing a big dog come up with a little cask of brandy round its neck.”
—Claud Cockburn (1904–1981)
“The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same the world over: and where these principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)