Circuit Des Nations - A Tragic End

A Tragic End

Towards the end of the third Grand Prix des Nations (1950), the engine of Alberto Ascari's Ferrari 340 blew up, pouring oil onto the corner at the end of the Avenue de la Paix. Behind him Luigi Villoresi, in a Ferrari 275, could not avoid the oil, his car skidded, went over the security barrier and ploughed into the crowd. Three spectators were killed, another twenty were injured. Villoresi survived with a severely fractured leg.

After this tragedy, stemming like others from the use of street circuits ill-adapted to increasingly high-speed motor racing, the organisers cancelled the following year's event. Geneva would never again host a Grand Prix race.

In 1958 motor racing was banned altogether by the Swiss government as an unsafe spectator sport following the death of 80 people at the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans race.