The ralmost 621-mile XIX Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France, held at the newly opened 12.5-kilometer Linas-Montlhéry track, near Paris. Antonio Ascari left his family at their villa on Lago Maggiore to travel to Paris to compete in the French Grand Prix, he was in search of a his third Grand Prix win in a row. But during practice, team boss Nicola Romeo designed Giuseppe Campari instead of Ascari, as team leader for the race. The best of the cars, the lightened Alfa Romeo P2 #3 was assigned to Campari, and Ascari had the #8. Very upset about the decision, he presented himself unshaven on race day, coming alone at the track and wearing sandals on his feet. His nephew Giovanni Minozzi, who also was in the race with the Alfa Romeo team, suggested him to come back home.

The grid of the eighty-lap race was set in rows of three competitors sorted by car numbers; therefore Ascari, driving the #8 Alfa Romeo P2, departed from the outside of the second row, alongside Divo’s Delage and Masetti’s Sunbeam. Campari was in the center of the first row, between the poleman Henry Segrave in a Sunbeam and the Bugatti of Pierre de Vizcaya. The race started at 08h00 on Sunday, 26 July 1925. No rails nor barriers lined the track, but only a long wooden fence. Hundreds of wooden planks were stuck into the ground at the edge of the uneven roads, all along the circuit’s bends. With the rest of the Alfa Romeo drivers, Ascari had already tested the track, honing in his precise knowledge of the demanding circuit. Campari made a bad start and, despite his clear nervousness, Ascari jumped into the lead and completed the first lap already in first place, progressively pulling away from the other competitors.

Antonio Ascari opened an huge advantage – some 5min56s - over Campari who was second, followed by Benoist, Wagner, Divo and Masetti. On 15th lap he pitted for fuel and rear tyres, and engineer Jano told him: “Ascari, vada tranquillo!” (“Ascari, go on quietly!”). He had time to sip an eggnog and almost two minutes later he restarted, retaining the lead, while a light rain began falling. Antonio Ascari completed twenty-two laps ahead of the field, and while passing in front of the pits he gestured with his right hand, still expressing confidence.

He did not complete his 23rd lap. At 10h22 he went off the track at 180 km/h (112 mi/h), when the front left hubcap of his car clipped a post retaining wooden palisades, on a fast bend in front of the Château de Saint-Eutrope, at the exit of the Anneau de Vitesse, along the southern segment of the road course called Piste Routiére. Ascari’s P2 went out of control and ripped down a hundred meters of the the wooden paling fence. Then the car started flipping several times, coming to rest upside-down into a ditch on the right side of the road. The driver who had been thrown out of the cockpit, was lying on the roadside.

Gravely injured, Ascari died half an hour later during the transport to the hospital.

R.I.P