Autosport Plus

Pau: A great place for an F3 race

After a year's absence, the Pau Grand Prix returns to the motorsport calendar as a round of the International Formula 3 Trophy this weekend. As Marcus Simmons explains, it's a jolly good thing too

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.

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Author Marcus Simmons

Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.

Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.