Pau Grand Prix
motor race held in Pau
The Pau Grand Prix (French: Grand Prix de Pau) is a motor race held in Pau, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department of southwestern France. The French Grand Prix was held at Pau in 1930, leading to the annual Pau Grand Prix being inaugurated in 1933. It was not run during World War II and in 2020–2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The race takes place around the centre of the city, where public roads are closed to form a street circuit, and over the years the event has variously conformed to the rules of Grand Prix racing, Formula One, Formula Two, Formula 3000, Formula Three, Formula Libre, sports car racing, and touring car racing.
In 2021, Autocar included the Pau Grand Prix in its list of "The 10 best street circuits in the world".
Circuit
The race is run around a 2.769 km (1.721 mi) long street circuit, the "Circuit de Pau-Ville" laid out around the French town, and is in many ways similar to the more famous Formula One Monaco Grand Prix. About 20 km (12 mi) to the west of the city, there is a 3.030 km (1.883 mi) long club track named Circuit Pau-Arnos.
For the event, cars are set up with greater suspension travel than is typically utilised at a purpose-built racing circuit to minimise the effect of running on the more undulating tarmac of the street circuit.
History
Circuit du Sud-Ouest (1900–1901)
In 1900, as part of the 'Semaine de Pau', the newly created Automobile-club du Béarn held a race on a 300 km (190 mi) road circuit, called the Circuit du sud-ouest (Pau–Tarbes–Bayonne–Pau). The race was given the same name as the circuit, and was won by René de Knyff.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1092864. Authority coordinates are 43.292, -0.363. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 1933, 2020 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pau Grand Prix” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.