Greatest Formula 1 Races – The Tripoli Grand Prix of 1933

1933 Tripoli Grand Prix – The Race That Was Rigged

By Alfred Neubauer from Speed was My Life

It was in 1933 that the giant American airship Akron crashed in the Atlantic with all hands aboard. Thirteen years of Prohibition ended in the United States. In Germany, the cruiser Admiral Scheer was launched. Goebbels imposed a boycott on Jewish businessmen and the first concentration camps were established. And in the Italian colony of Libya, Italo Balbo opened the new racing circuit at Tripoli, the fastest in the world.

Unlike the narrow, twisting course at Monte-Carlo, the Tripoli circuit was 8 ¼ miles long. You could keep up a speed of 120 m.p.h.- and break your neck. The drivers were well aware of this. So, too, were the authorities. They wanted sensational publicity for Italy, for Mussolini’s ‘Roman Empire’ and especially for Marshal Balbo, the new governor of Libya, the elegant sportsman who had mapped out a brilliant future for himself.

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