GP Hall of Fame Inaugural Class - Nominee #1

With 2010 coming to a close soon, I want to get the ball rolling on the Grand Prix Hall of Fame, which will be a long-term feature of Total GP.

Criteria for drivers nominated include a mandatory 5-year retirement period. Championships are not a requirement, but they certainly will help status.

For the 2011 Hall of Fame class in the drivers category, a focus will be put on the sport's early years. Not only from the modern F1 period that began in 1950, but also drivers who were considered stars during and before World War 2 will also be considered.

A single nominee will be revealed each day until all have been named. The first nominee is:

Louis Chiron (1899-1979) - the only driver from Monaco to appear in an F1 event; he started racing professionally as a teenager and won his first event in 1926, the Grand Prix de Comminges. He went on to win the Marseille Grand Prix, Czech Grand Prix, Italian Grand Prix, Belgian Grand Prix, German Grand Prix and Spanish Grand Prix. In addition to these, he won the 1933 Spa 24 Hours race with co-driver Luigi Chinetti and placed 7th in the 1929 Indianapolis 500. Chiron started racing in the European Championship in 1931, getting what would be his only career victory in that series in that year's French Grand Prix. His last season there came in 1938.

Chiron's age would catch up with him by the time Formula One began in 1950, though he continued to race. He won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1954, in what was his only career rally victory. He became the oldest driver to compete in an F1 event in 1955, finishing 6th in his home race just weeks before his 56th birthday. He competed in his last F1 event in 1958 and retired from competition. Chiron died in 1979, a little over a month before what would have been his 80th birthday.