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Car racing (automobile racing) began in France in 1895 and has risen in popularity to become the most commercialised spectator sport in history to date.
The first recorded contest was organised in 1894 by Le Petit Journal, a Paris based magazine. This was primarily a road test to determine reliability and performance for factory built cars but soon grew in stature and was renamed the Paris to Rouen 1894.
The first 'real' race, the Paris to Bordeaux, was not held until the following year. The first race for a trophy, the 'Vanderbilt Cup', was held in Chicago, USA, in the same year.
The French continued to dominate car racing until 1903, when the authorities banned open road racing after a fatal accident in the Paris to Madrid race, which caused caused eight deaths.
The 1930s saw the evolvement of racing cars take a different path to that of normal 'factory built' cars - and as they say - the rest is history.
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