The first page of street racing cars’ history was opened by the construction of the first petrol-fuelled autos. It was in 1894 when the first street racing contest took place. The competition was organized by Paris magazine “Le Petit Journal” in order to test modern vehicles and determine the best car of the year.
Among the competitors there were factory cars from Karl Benz’s Benz & Cie and Gottlieb Daimler and Wihelm Maybach’s DMG.
But the first real race started only one year later in 1895. It also took place in France, the course being passed from Paris to Bordeaux. The winner Emile Levassor was disqualified because of his car, which didn’t correspond to the contest rule to have a four-seater car.
The Gordon Bennett Cup in auto racing puts start to an international street race competition. In Chicago on November 28, 1895 the first auto race in the United States took place. The course was over 54 mile long (87. 5 km). The winner was Frank Duryea.
The growing development in auto construction and the great popularity of street race competitions involved the appearance of regular car competitions. As a rule, they took place in France – the dominating country in auto industry at that moment. In spite of great success of such kind of competitions the open-road racing was banned by French government in 1903. Such decision was caused by the growing risk at human’s lives.
