Victor Hémery

Victor Hémery (18 November 1876 – 9 September 1950) was a champion French racecar driver of the early Grand Prix motor racing era.

Victor Hémery in 1912

Life and career

He was born in Sillé-le-Guillaume, Sarthe, France. In 1904 he joined Automobiles Darracq France as their chief tester and helped prepare cars to compete in that year's Gordon Bennett Cup. He drove a German Opel-Darracq to victory at Hamburg-Bahrenfeld.

1905 was his most successful year in his racing career. In August 1905, he drove a Darracq to victory in Circuit des Ardennes at Bastogne, Belgium, and in October 1905 he won the Vanderbilt Cup at Long Island, New York, beating Felice Nazzaro, Louis Chevrolet, and Ferenc Szisz. On 30 December 1905 he set a land speed record of 109.65 mph (176.46 km/h) in Arles, France, driving a Darracq. In 1951 Hémery was retroactively awarded the United States Driving Championship for 1905.

Victor Hémery at the 1911 Grand Prix de France

He left Darracq to join Benz & Cie. in 1907 and in 1908 he won the St. Petersburg to Moscow race and finished second in the French Grand Prix. He scored another second-place finish behind Louis Wagner at the United States Grand Prix in Savannah, Georgia. On 8 November 1909 he set another new speed record at Brooklands of 202.691 km/h (125.946 mph) driving the famous "Blitzen Benz" (German for "Lightning Benz").[1] In 1910 his Benz team finished 1-2 at the United States Grand Prix, just 1.42 seconds behind winner David Bruce-Brown, the closest Grand Prix to date at the time. In 1911, Hémery won the Grand Prix de France at Circuit de la Sarthe in a FIAT S61.

Victor Hémery died at Le Mans, France, on 9 September 1950, aged 73 years.

gollark: Pascal's Wager basically goes "if no god, belief doesn't have costs anyway (wrong, since it takes time and may make your thinking more irrational); if god, non-belief means infinite badness (hell), belief means infinite goodness (heaven), so rationally you should believe".
gollark: There *may* be a god of some kind who rewards you for believing in them and their afterlife and such, but there is an infinity of possible gods including ones like "allocates you to heaven or hell entirely at random", "entirely indistinguishable from no god", "sends you to hell if you believe in the *other* god", "incomprehensible eldritch abomination" or "literal bees".
gollark: PASACL'S WAGER BAD
gollark: ÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆA
gollark: Whether there *is*... some supernatural thing after death, such as an afterlife... is pretty much independent of whether you believe it or not, and while the exact form of that *may* depend on your beliefs about it, that makes a LOT of presumptions about god or who/what created the system which are not supported.

References
  1. "The Blitzen-Benz". AutoSpeed (360). December 6, 2005.
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