Robert Newman examines the history and scandals that defined Africa’s first Grand Prix.

The Italians are nuts about motor racing and have been for 100 years. So in 1925 it came as no surprise that, as they were going to be in the desert for another 25 years occupying Libya, they started up their very own race through the sand dunes and palm trees. But nobody expected such an obscure, friendly little race to grow quite as much or as fast as it did. Nor did anyone think for a minute that the race would become the subject of a huge scandal, involving two of the world’s greatest racing drivers.

Three years after the first 14 cars rattled and rolled over a 44-mile washboard of a dusty, unsurfaced desert track in the hands of occupying military amateurs, the Circuito Automobilistico della Tripolitana became a round in the Italian national motor racing championship. It was also given a much grander name – the Grand Prix of Tripoli, which made it Africa’s first Grand Epreuve.