Jules Eugène Goux (6 April 1885 – 6 March 1965) was a French

racing driver Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. In North America, the term is commonly used to describe all forms of automobile sport including non ...

and

Grand Prix motor racing Grand Prix motor racing, a form of motorsport competition, has its roots in organised automobile racing that began in France as early as 1894. It quickly evolved from simple road races from one town to the next, to endurance tests for car and ...

champion. He was notable for being the first

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an driver to win the

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Biography

Influenced by the

Gordon Bennett Cup in auto racing In automobile racing, the Gordon Bennett Cup was an annual competition which ran from 1900 to 1905. It was one of three Gordon Bennett Cup (disambiguation), Gordon Bennett Cups established by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., millionaire owner of the ''N ...

, Goux began racing cars in his early twenties. Success came in 1909 on a circuit set up on roads around

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, near

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, when he won the Catalan Cup, a victory he repeated the following year. Because of his racing success, along with Georges Boillot, he was invited by Peugeot Automobile to race for their factory team. As part of a four-man design team led by Paul Zuccarelli and Ernest Henry, Goux helped develop a racecar powered by a radically new

Straight-4 A straight-four engine (also referred to as an inline-four engine) is a four-cylinder piston engine where cylinders are arranged in a line along a common crankshaft. The majority of automotive four-cylinder engines use a straight-four layout ( ...

engine using a twin

overhead cam An overhead camshaft (OHC) engine is a piston engine in which the camshaft is located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier overhead valve engines (OHV), where the camshaft is located below the combusti ...

. Goux won the 1912 Sarthe Cup at

Le Mans Le Mans (; ) is a Communes of France, city in Northwestern France on the Sarthe (river), Sarthe River where it meets the Huisne. Traditionally the capital of the Provinces of France, province of Maine (province), Maine, it is now the capital of ...

driving a Peugeot, and in

1913 Events January * January – Joseph Stalin travels to Vienna to research his ''Marxism and the National Question''. This means that, during this month, Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky and Tito are all living in the city. * January 3 &ndash ...

he traveled with the team to the

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to compete in the

. Goux won the race, becoming the first non-American Indianapolis 500 winner in history. Goux reportedly consumed four bottles of champagne while driving in the Indianapolis 500 (then known as the International 500-Mile Sweepstakes Race) and was later quoted as saying, ''"Without the good wine, I would have not been able to win."'' The following year,

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

broke out in Europe and Goux's racing career had to be put aside for service in the French military. At war's end, he returned to European Grand Prix motor racing. In 1921, driving for Ballot Automobile, he finished third in the French Grand Prix then won the inaugural

Italian Grand Prix The Italian Grand Prix () is the fifth oldest national Grand Prix motor racing, motor racing Grand Prix (after the French Grand Prix, the United States Grand Prix, the Spanish Grand Prix and the Russian Grand Prix), having been held since 1921 ...

at Brescia, Italy. For the next few years his racing career was marked by repeated problems and he did not return to the winner's circle until 1926. That year, driving for

Bugatti Automobiles Ettore Bugatti was a German then French automotive industry, manufacturer of high performance vehicle, high-performance automobiles. The company was founded in 1909 in the then-German Empire, German city of Molsheim, Alsace, by the ...

in a T39A model, he won both the French Grand Prix at Miramas and the European Grand Prix at the Circuito Lasarte,

Motorsports career results

Indianapolis 500 results

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goux, Jules 1885 births 1965 deaths People from Valentigney French racing drivers Grand Prix drivers Indianapolis 500 drivers Indianapolis 500 winners French military personnel of World War I Sportspeople from Doubs