Hubert Le Blon was a French automobilist and pioneer aviator. He drove a steam-powered Gardner-Serpollet motorcar in the early 1900s, and then switched to Hotchkiss for both the world's first Grand Prix at Le Mans in France and the inaugural Targa Florio in Sicily. At the Vanderbilt Cup races on Long Island he competed for the US driving a Thomas.
Le Blon circa 1906–1910
The 1906 Vanderbilt Cup at Long Island. Hubert Le Blon in an oversteering Thomas, the first car to start, encounters a dog.
Hubert and Mme Le Blon at the 1906 Targa Florio driving a Hotchkiss 35 hp
Hubert and Mme Le Blon with their Serpollet "Oeuf de Pâques" (Easter egg) at the Gaillon Hill climb in 1902
The 1906 Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France, commonly known as the 1906 French Grand Prix, was a motor race held on 26 and 27 June 1906, on closed public roads outside the city of Le Mans. The Grand Prix was organised by the Automobile Club de France (ACF) at the prompting of the French automobile industry as an alternative to the Gordon Bennett races, which limited each competing country's number of entries regardless of the size of its industry. France had the largest automobile industry in Europe at the time, and in an attempt to better reflect this the Grand Prix had no limit to the number of entries by any particular country. The ACF chose a 103.18-kilometre (64.11 mi) circuit, composed primarily of dust roads sealed with tar, which would be lapped six times on both days by each competitor, a combined race distance of 1,238.16 kilometres (769.36 mi). Lasting for more than 12 hours overall, the race was won by Ferenc Szisz driving for the Renault team. FIAT driver Felice Nazzaro finished second, and Albert Clément was third in a Clément-Bayard.
Léon Théry, the winner of the 1904 and 1905 Gordon Bennett races, in his 1904 Richard-Brasier
Renault driver Ferenc Szisz, the winner of the Grand Prix, leads the Hotchkiss of Elliott Shepard
J. Edmond in his Renault before the race. He retired after melting tar from the road surface seeped past his goggles and into his eyes.
Ferenc Szisz crosses the finish line at the end of the race