National Hill Climb Race – Lenzerheide 1951

After the Graubünden chapter of the Swiss Automobile Club repeatedly ran into difficulties with the Maloja Hill Climb—first held in 1938—not least because the route, while attractive, was too remote, they tried again in 1951 with a much more accessible 6.25-km course between Tiefencastel and Lenzerheide (elevation difference of 505 m). To mark this fresh start, the organizers decided to commission a poster—from Franz Gygax (1915–1998), who just one year earlier had designed three tourism posters for the Lenzerheide-Valbella Tourist Office.

His only racing poster, meanwhile, is by far his most sought-after—partly because Gygax placed the blood-red, strikingly featured Alfa Romeo Tipo 159 against the backdrop of the Lenzerhorn, a 700-kg, 8-cylinder race car that produced nearly 430 PS from a displacement of just 1.5 liters, and in which Nino Farina and Juan Manuel Fangio won the first two Formula 1 World Championships in 1950 and 1951 (after which Alfa Romeo withdrew—a move Enzo Ferrari knew how to capitalize on).

The fact that the Tipo 159 didn’t even take part in the race—who cares about that today? The day’s victory went to Rudolf Fischer of Zurich in a Ferrari 212, with an average speed of 106.3 km/h. However, the race in Lenzerheide didn’t turn a profit either; there was a shortfall of 4,000 francs in the end.

And finally, a fun fact: Did you know that in August 1900, the Graubünden government banned cars from all roads in the canton? The ban wasn’t lifted until 25 years later, following a referendum.