To liven up this blog and social networks, we could take pictures on the street corner, but I don't think that would inspire anyone. And we do this job to ride, experience adventures, share simple moments with friends, or create memorable memories that we want to be contagious and inspiring! Not everyone works at Gentlemen's Factory ;) so follow us on the road.
We wanted to give you a great photo tip, a car and motorcycle circuit too long abandoned or criticized, the
Circuit de Gueux in Reims. If I tell you that this circuit has become a national road that every day trucks, sales reps, and mothers of families cross with indifference, people will think I'm crazy, but it's the strict truth! Here, once vibrated the heart of champions and aces of the wheel on
Bugatti from July 1926...
Indeed, we have to go back in time to July 1926 when the first racing cars on 2 and 4 wheels took the start of this fast circuit with a length of 7826 m. To say that this circuit hosted the first Formula 1 race counting for the world championship in 1950,
imagine the bowl helmets, the sunglasses, the white or blue overalls, the fingerless gloves, and the drivers with a cigarette in their mouths!!!
Until 1952, the circuit ran through the village, which is impossible today except on the Isle of Man. It was therefore transformed to avoid pit stops, at the village bistro or for taking orders at the only butcher's shop in the village of Gueux!
In short, the new layout now bypassed the adjacent villages and drew a track of 8301 m with 5 bends and three straights. Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lotus, Kawasaki, Norton, Honda, Gordini left rubber, sweat, blood and tears until 1972. This circuit experienced the golden age, real drivers, daredevils without safety nets, without electronics, with rudimentary equipment, an era whose aestheticism and values still animate and inspire us. I would have loved to see Fangio in his Alfa Romeo or Mercedes, Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins or Tony Brooks on Ferrari, Jack Brabham, Gian-Carlo Baghetti. To see Tchernine on Yamaha, or Rougerie or Bourgeois, Guili or Roca tearing around with their knees on the ground, chin in the wind and nose glued to the tank.
All that remains is a ghostly mirage of the circuit emerging from the winter mist in the southwest of Reims. Grandstands that now only host birds, desperately empty stands that a few idiots come to defile with their warm piss, caring little about the stakes that were played out here. Portions of the circuit that lead nowhere, hosting a few tractors and our motorcycles for too rare photo shoots.
There are indeed madmen, daredevils, lovers of cement with vanishing hand-painted advertisements. There are men for whom past victories still resonate in their memory, for whom the ghosts of the past still inhabit the 8301m of asphalt with their souls. These men who refuse this reasonable and sanitized world fight to revive this piece of automotive/motorcycle racing heritage. Here passions and dreams were born in the eyes of children now adults who give their time so that we can enjoy it.
Let's thank the Gentlemen drivers and curators of
"l'Association les amis du circuit de Gueux" who work to keep the legend alive ... of the Circuit de Gueux.
We set up our cameras and motorcycles there and invite you to visit to feel the ever-present soul of races from another era.
Text and photos: Laurent Scavone
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circuit-de-gueux-Reims- Ducati 900SS[/caption]
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Steve Suede Jacket Gentlemen's Factory[/caption]
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Old advertisements on the grandstands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims, photo Laurent Scavone[/caption]
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Old advertisements on the grandstands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims, photo Laurent Scavone[/caption]
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Old advertisements on the grandstands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims, photo Laurent Scavone[/caption]
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Old advertisements on the grandstands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims, photo Laurent Scavone[/caption]
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Suede jacket and trucker cap Gentlemen's Factory[/caption]
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Grandstands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims[/caption]
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Vintage Racer Sweater, vintage motorcycle sweater[/caption]
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Grandstands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims[/caption]
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Old advertisements on the grandstands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims, photo Laurent Scavone[/caption]
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Old advertisements on the stands of the Circuit de Gueux in Reims, photo Laurent Scavone[/caption]
