The "Coupe" was a famous and annual race for small sports racing cars and the cartoon showed the 1956 event when Colin Chapman entered his brand new Team Lotus XI models and the cars swept places 1,2, and 3. This cartoon caught my attention because the XI I own also raced at Rouen, in the 1957  "Coupe Delamare Deboutteville" race.

The owner and driver was Peter Ross.  He had raced the car in Vienna earlier in the Spring of '57 and then drove (!) the car to Rouen from Vienna,where he qualified the car and earned starting money. He told me that he surprised himself by being faster than some of the LeMans model Elevens." 
 

"During the race he found himself chasing another XI and eventually got by it  on the hill after the hairpin turn. In passing, he found out it was "only" a 750cc Lotus and in fact was being driven by Lotus Team driver Cliff Allison, who'd won the Index of Performance at LeMans the month before in the same car. Anyway, Peter could pass the 750cc car going up the hill but Allison would later pass Peter by breaking later at the hairpin. Twice Peter  put off breaking until the very last moment, only to end up on the escape road while Allison gave him the two-fingers-up Victory wave as he disappeared up the hill.

Peter said he thought he was doing well anyway until, as he was going flat-out in 4th gear down the sweeper just above the hairpin, which I would guess would have been in excess of 120 mph, Chapman in the Team XI and de Tomaso in an OSCA passed him on the outside of the sweeper. "It almost made me want to quit racing," Peter told me.  In fact, he did quit the following year after dumping this XI upside down in a ditch at a German hillclimb. He sold the car in 1959 to a Colorado driver for "$1500 FOB Liverpool."  The car remained in SCCA racing for some 20 years. I bought it in 1999 in Atlanta."

They closed the track several years ago.  With a good Michelin map you can find your way around the track and locate, and drive, the downhill sweepers that lead to the hairpin. Halfway up the hill the old course veered off to the right but that part could be walked.  The paddock has been dug up and the grandstands torn down.  Perhaps the greatest indignity to this historic old track, not counting the weeds that grow out of the pit's asphalt, is found at the hairpin: They've stuck a stop sign just a few meters away from the apex."

Bob Engberg