Pau: A great place for an F3 race

February 19 1933: It's snowing in Pau, a town in South-West France in the shadow of the Pyrenees. It's approaching 2pm and the flakes have been falling since last night. Which is a shame, as the very first Grand Prix de Pau is about to start.

The organisers have been toying with the idea of calling the race off - there's no chance of postponing it - but, with a logic that would be welcome amid today's health-and-safety madness, they decide that the drivers are good enough to judge the conditions themselves.

Led by Algerian Guy Moll, the 22-year-old rising star in a Bugatti Type 51, the field slithers away. Conditions are so bad that Philippe Etancelin, winner of the 1930 French Grand Prix on a much-longer road circuit nearby, pits to have snow removed from his plug leads. Eventually the snow stops, the course turns to mud and Marcel Lehoux wins the race from Moll - a one-two for Algerians and for Bugattis (which inevitably comprise most of the field), at the earth-shattering speed of 45mph.

Seventy years later, on June 7 2003: it's blazing sunshine in Pau, even at just after 9:30am. This writer arrived in the town for his first visit only nine hours earlier; it's his first sight of a circuit that, apart from a rerouting around Parc Beaumont for the second running of the race in 1935, has changed very little in the intervening seven decades.

Pau is a challenge like very few others © LAT

Since 1999 the Pau Grand Prix has been for Formula 3 cars, and in 2003 it's a round of the Euro Series. There's a fantastic entry, split into two groups for practice, and I'm standing by a chicane that has a day job as a mini-roundabout when the racing cars aren't here. The first group has been out for its opening practice session, and I'm waiting for the second when I realise I'm standing in front of an estate agent's window. For the same price as the two-bed semi I've just bought in Twickenham, I see that I could get a five-bed place - with land - in Pau. Taking the phone out of my pocket, I text Laurence Foster, then the editor of AUTOSPORT: "Do you mind if I don't come back? Weather gorgeous. Property dirt cheap. Love it."

Two minutes later, the reply came back: "Don't worry. I'll move the whole office down there."

I'm still waiting.

Pau is a venue - an event - that most fall in love with the first time they go. And, after a worrying fall from the calendar in 2010, it's back this year. What's more, instead of being a World Touring Car Championship round, as it was in its most recent incarnation, it's a race for up-and-coming single-seater racers, just as nature intended, as a round of the FIA International Formula 3 Trophy.

This is a new series of races, instigated for 2011 at the behest of FIA president Jean Todt, who is a great supporter of F3. This category, of course, is an FIA-regulated international junior class, with open chassis (even if Dallara dominates, through doing a better job than every other challenger) and engines.

Todt wanted to give drivers reward for competing in F3, to restore some of the lustre that had been conceded to 'commercial' spec-car categories such as GP2, GP3 and new-era F2. By setting up the International F3 Trophy, he is able to award F1 superlicences to the highest finishers in the new championship, thereby giving back some of the must-do credibility that F3 was beginning to lose.

Jim Clark in action during the 1964 race © LAT

Most of the International Trophy rounds are piggy-backing existing races, with races including the Spa British F3 round, the Hockenheim Euro Series event, plus traditional stand-alone classics at Zandvoort and Macau and a new race at Korean Grand Prix track Yeongam, which is intended to restore a two-part Asian double-header with Macau. But Pau is different, because this is a race specifically for the International Trophy. With few drivers registered for the series, the entry is small for Pau this year, but don't rule out the International Trophy - and the Pau GP - gaining prestige in the years to come.

If that happens, it will go some way to restoring the fixture to its former glory.

Pau quickly became an important race in the 1930s. The Mercedes 'Silver Arrows' visited in '38, but that did not stop Rene Dreyfus inflicting a famous defeat on them in his Delahaye. In '39, Hermann Lang notched one for the silberpfeile.

After the war, the 1949 race became one of the early European victories for new-to-Europe Argentinian sensation Juan Manuel Fangio, and in '61 Jim Clark scored his first F1 win in the town for Lotus. For '64, Pau switched to F2 rules, and it was from this point that the race around the charismatic little 1.7-mile track found its metier.

As the European F2 Championship went from strength to strength in the 1970s, Pau was won by names such as Jacques Laffite, Rene Arnoux, Bruno Giacomelli and Eddie Cheever, and also featured rare category cameos from two men who would go on to become legends of the sport: When Gilles Villeneuve was killed in qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix, he was expecting to either set up his own team or drive for McLaren in '83. If he had joined McLaren, it wouldn't have been the first time the Canadian had driven for Ron Dennis: that happened with Ron's previous team, Project 4 Racing, at the '76 Pau GP.

AUTOSPORT's Bob Constanduros wrote in his qualifying report: "Starting off the fifth row was Alberto Colombo, who was, like Giancarlo Martini, looking tidier than of late. The same can't be said of his neighbour, Gilles Villeneuve."

Villeneuve raced for Ron Dennis in 1976 © LAT

Villeneuve's March ran ninth early on, in a race led by his future buddy Patrick Tambay from Arnoux, but retired with an overheating engine.

Two years later, promising F3 racer Alain Prost made a very rare F2 appearance as team-mate to series regular Keke Rosberg in the Fred Opert Racing Chevron team. And, in a prelude to '86 at McLaren, he comfortably outqualified the Finn.

Prost, who lined up a superb fifth, was so impressive that poleman Brian Henton had this to say: "I saw this blue Chevron in front of me and didn't know who it was except that he was pulling away. He was really fast through the park section and showed me a pretty good line that I hadn't tried before. It certainly helped a bit."

In a very un-Prost-like performance, he went out of the race when he overstressed the engine by 1400rpm.

Henton's remarks about the Parc Beaumont section illustrates some of the inherent appeal of the circuit. You can find old video of the track dating back to the 1930s on YouTube, and the run through Parc and then the Marechal Foch chicane (named after a statue of the man who played a large part in the post-World War One Armistice) is just as spectacular today - even for F3 cars.

These cars are unspectacular to watch on modern circuits, but that doesn't mean that the drivers aren't using just as much skill as they would require to manhandle 600bhp grunters around on bicycle tyres.

Returning to the theme of 2003, the field contained such future stars as Nico Rosberg, Ryan Briscoe, Timo Glock, Christian Klien, Markus Winkelhock - and Sakon Yamamoto (slowest of the 29 qualifiers). Robert Kubica and Bruno Spengler were out of action due to injury, but their substitutes were quite handy: Lucas di Grassi and Jamie Green.

Above all, however, the standout memories come from the Parc Beaumont car control of Alex Premat and Nicolas Lapierre - both drivers who had already gained experience of Pau from their junior days - as they held their Dallaras in beautiful opposite-lock slides through the never-ending right-hander. Two years earlier, Anthony Davidson had come of age as an F3 driver at Pau in 2001, earning victory and the appreciative nickname 'l'acrobat Britannique' for his exploits at the Foch chicane.

Davidson won plaudits for his 2001 victory © LAT

So Pau is a circuit where even F3 cars can look spectacular. But it's much more than that: it's a feast of motor racing, from dawn until well into the night, when touring car and GT categories switch on the headlights and race uphill along the Avenue Napoleon Bonaparte, from the Virage de la Gare to the Pont Oscar hairpin, beneath the Boulevard des Pyrenees where the holidaying Victorian English used to promenade, above the cliff where only a barrier separated Kenny Acheson from a dreadful fall when he was rudely chopped by Michele Alboreto as they battled for the lead of the F2 race in '81.

The historic brigade have also moved in, giving the town a second race meeting (this year's happened last weekend) and celebrating a tradition that has provided wins over the past 78 years for Tazio Nuvolari, Fangio, Alberto Ascari, Jack Brabham, Clark, Jochen Rindt, Jackie Stewart, Francois Cevert and Patrick Depailler. Then, in more modern times, for Jean Alesi, Juan Pablo Montoya (twice in Formula 3000, the second time by more than a lap!) and Lewis Hamilton.

Even the 'modern' event is a fantastic festival on a circuit with a heritage and a tradition that must be upheld. Back in 2003, one of the organisers told me that he hoped to extend the track, providing a new loop beyond the sweepers that lead the field back to the start-finish line. The idea was to get Champ Car or the DTM, but the modification looked a bit slow. Above all, the 1.7-mile Pau track layout is best left untouched. I'm glad that plan didn't work out.