Notes:
The 1903 Paris-Madrid race was the last of the great town-to-town races in the early years of the 20th Century. The event was stopped at Bordeaux by the authorities in consequence of the number of fatal accidents which happened on the first stage, and not one of the competing cars got nearer than that to Madrid.

The distance, after deducting the portions of the road passing through towns which were neutralised, was 552 kilometers (343 miles) from Versailles to Bordeaux. Over this distance the winner proved to be Fernand Gabriel in the 70HP Mors #168, whose time was 5h14min31sec, and whose speed was about 105 km/h (65.30 mi/h); Louis Renault in a Renault light car was second and Jacques Salleron in another Mors, third. The length of the race was originally planned to be of 1,307 kilometers (812.3 miles), through the next stages Bourdeaux-Vitoria, 335 kilometers (208 miles) scheduled to be contested on Tuesday, 26 May and Vitoria-Madrid, 420 kilometers (261 miles) on Wednesday 27 May 1903, that actually were canceled.

The entries for the 1903 Paris-Madrid race totaled 275, but of these a fair number proved to be non-starters. In fact there were actually at the start 90 heavy cars, 49 light cars and 36 voiturettes, making a total of 175 cars of various kinds and an unspecified number of motorcycles, of which 15 reached the finish line.

The toll of the accidents was so high that the race passed to history as “The race to death”. Car development was progressing rapidly and speeds were rising, possibly beyond the abilities of some of the drivers and almost certainly ahead of the technology to make the cars braking and steering effectively. As in an old article written by Charles Jarrott, one of the Paris-Madrid racers: “There had undoubtedly been terrible accidents and I was horrified to learn people was killed...” Serious accidents took place on the blast down through France, involving competitors, spectators and by-passers, that resulted in the deaths of a total of seven people.

A gigantic crowd, estimated at more than 300,000 persons was spread along the first stages of the route, from the palaces of Versailles to the spires of Chartres, from the grey roofs of Tours to the winding roads of Libourne. Before the start of the race, one unnamed competitor struck two young bicyclists, named Levèque and Duvert who suffered fractures, near Ville d'Avray, a western suburb of Paris. At 03h45 on Sunday, 24 May 1903, the first car, a De Diétrich driven by the British driver Charles Jarrott, started from Paris (Versailles), then the rest of competitors followed at two-minute intervals and finally the motorcycles, in broad daylight. The stage went from the capital city to southwestern France regions towards Bordeaux. The course passed through Rambouillet - Chartres – Châteaudun - Vendôme – Tours – Châtellerault – Poitiers – Ruffec – Angoulême – Barbezieux Saint Hilaire – Libourne - Bordeaux.

Seven people were killed during the race – two drivers, three riding-mechanics, one policeman attending the race, one cyclist who was spectating the race - and about fifteen were injured.

According to some contemporary press articles, an eighth person was killed during the event, when one unknown woman was struck and killed while trying to cross the road just on the path of a competing car, in the village of Ablis, in Yvelines department. The circumstances of the accident were unclear, as it was not known the name of the victim nor the name of the driver involved. This casualty was listed in many Paris-Madrid race reports. But, after the end of the race, following an inquest by the organizers, that woman's death was denied.

This incorrect information was spread to other contemporary newspapers all over the world, and thereafter the mistake propagated to many other accounts, until today. This is not true, an article published four days after the race by French newspaper "Le Petit Parisien", issue of 28 May 1903, reported that actually an accident involving a private car with a man and a woman on board happened in Ablis one hour before the start of the race. The car hit a horse carriage and the lady was only slightly injured. It is believed that, due to the emotion caused by the other fatalities in the race, the news of the Ablis accident was amplified to become a racing-related death.

The first accident happened at Coignières, a village near Rambouillet, just 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) after the start, when the Mercedes #290 driven by the American F. Terry crashed into a tree, turned over and caught fire, without consequence for its occupants. And at 11h55, occurred the first fatality. A race official did not signal with a yellow flag to the British competitor Austin Leslie Porter from Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the Wolseley #243, a rail crossing in the small town of Benneval. Porter tried to steer at full speed into a field on the left side but crashed into the wall of the farmhouse where lived the gatekeeper Chaligny. The Wolseley overturned, Porter was ejected while his riding mechanic Willie Nixon also from Belfast, was pinned under the car, which caught fire and burned him to death. Porter who sustained minor injuries, was taken to Bonneval hospital. Although the first newspaper articles reported his death, Leslie Porter did not die.

Marcel Renault's tragedy took place a few hours later, in the small village of Payré near Couhé-Vérac, Vienne department. The well-known racer and automobile maker had left Versailles one hour after his brother Louis, driving his 650-kg 40HP Renault bearing the race number #63, entered in the light cars class. While proceeding in the dust raised by Léon Théry’s Decauville #4, who was traveling ahead of him, Marcel didn’t see the yellow flag announcing a dangerous curve and a rail crossing, and arrived too quickly to the place. He lost control of the car getting his wheel into the gutter and crashed against a tree, dislocating his shoulder and sustaining a frightful wound in the side of his head. Théry stopped his car in order to help Renault and his riding-mechanic René Vauthier, still trapped in their car, which albeit crumpled was not destroyed. No doctors were at hand, but Théry tried to find one at the next village and sent him pedaling back to the place of accident by bicycle. Dr. Malapert conveyed back the injured driver to the nearest hospital in the town of Poitiers, where Marcel Renault succumbed to his injuries two days later, on Tuesday, 26 May 1903. His riding-mechanic Vauthier eventually recovered.

After the death of his younger brother, Louis Renault who had finished the Bordeaux stage in second place overall, immediately abandoned the Paris-Madrid race and decided to quit racing for good. He followed the third brother, Fernand Renault, in managing activities for the Renault company.

The third fatal accident happened between Sillac and La Couronne, tree kilometers after passing Angoulême, the capital of the Charente department. While approaching a very fast turn before a small bridge, the Brouhot #23 driven by M. Tourand and entered in the heavy cars class, slid for several meters and hit a tree. The riding-mechanic Eugéne Normand leaning apart from the car, was killed, although he hung up the arm of the driver to avoid being ejected. According to the unconfirmed report by an eyewitness, Tourand lost control of the car trying to avoid two imprudent young boys who crossed the road. The car went off the road and struck a group of spectators, killing two of them. The victims were a territorial soldier from 107th Infantry Regiment, named Dupuy - given name unknown - and Mr. Caillon, a bicycle manufacturer from Angoulême who was spectating the race riding his bicycle.

Another car, the voiturette #26 Georges-Richard - the make which later became known as Richard-Brasier - crashed hard at Chapniers, eight kilometers from Angoulême, being the driver Georges Richard and his mechanician Henri Jeanot injured. They were taken to Angoulême hospital, Richard suffering hip injuries that left him an invalid for the rest of his life.

The final accident of “la course hécatombe” happened in the village of Arveyres, near Libourne, Gironde, at 13h40. The De Diétrich #5 of Claude Loraine Barrow, competing in the class for heavy cars, proceeded at full speed when it hit a dog along the straight line of “Port de Nouguey”, which follows the bridge over Dordogne river, towards a rail crossing. The dog remained embedded in the front axle of the car and Barrow, losing control of the car, was unable to get it back to the road and struck a tree nearly Bonsol's farm in Arveyres. Different accounts reported that in endeavouring to avoid the dog in the middle of the road, Barrow ran straight into the tree. The force of the blow was so fierce that the right-hand front-spring hanger was driven into the tree right up to the frame, the engine being torn out of the car and thrown several meters away. Pierre Rodez, the old servant Spanish mechanic, accompanying Barrow, was killed at the scene. Critically injured, Barrow was assisted by some by-standers before being evacuated to the Libourne hospital, where he underwent extensive surgery and one of his legs was amputated. Whilst recovering, almost three weeks later he died, on Monday, 13 June 1903, when pneumonia set in, becoming the seventh death in connection with the disastrous contest. He was 32 years old. The surname of the unfortunate riding-mechanic was reported to be Rosez or Rozet, depending on the source.

Barrow was buried with his mechanic Rodez in the Cimetière du Sabaou in Biarritz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, sout-western France. He was born in England in 1870 and lived in Biarritz, France, in his villa "La Romana", working as a car broker. From 1901 on he drove and worked for Emil Jellinek, managing the Mercedes cars agency for south-western France. Despite working for Jellinek, he drove a works De Diétrich in the 1903 Paris-Madrid race.

The French government stopped the event after the arrival of the 114 remaining competitors in the small village of Quatre Pavillons, near Bordeaux. All the vehicles were shipped from the closed park where the cars had to be locked up until the start of the second stage, back to Paris by train. The Spanish government sent to the border the order to prevent the passage of any competitor. After the end of the race, a large press campaign started in France, which resulted in an interpellation at the French Parliament. France and Spain banned racing on public roads, which forced the development of closed-circuits, where drivers and spectators could be more effectively controlled.

A long-standing question about the 1903 Paris-Madrid race, as commonly printed in many books, newspapers, magazines and websites, is the history of five other people killed during the race or for different causes in the same days. Being these deaths still not confirmed, or not related to the racing event, the Motorsport Memorial chose not to enter them in the database. The fatalities that, according to different sources referring the first controversial eyewitnesses reports from the race, could have happened during the race were:
- Britain's driver E. T. Stead, team mate to Barrow in the De Diétrich #18, who collided with Jacques Salleron’s Mors #96 at Coumbe-du-Loup near the village of Montguyon, in the Charente-Maritime department, a few kilometers before reaching Bordeaux. His car overturned ending his veering into a ravine. Stead was trapped under it and his unnamed riding-mechanic was thrown out, landing several meters ahead. Madame Camille du Gast who closely followed at the wheel of another De Diétrich, stopped her car to render first aid, refusing to leave until an ambulance took the injured men to Libourne hospital. E. T. Stead was reported as “so dangerously injured that he may die”, or definitely killed. This was not true, because as the riding-mechanic René Vauthier, the name of the Englishman E. T. Stead was in the entry-list of the French Gordon Bennett elimination race - Circuit de l'Auvergne in June 1905, at the wheel of a Brasier;
- according to Jarrott’s history, M. Tourand's accident did not happen near Angoulême but could be happened in the village of Châtellerault [so many kilometers before Angoulême, this seems incorrect], when a child had dashed in front of Tourand’s cars and a soldier had rushed to save it. The driver, endeavouring to avoid both, not only struck and killed them, but also dashed into the crowd which hemmed the course, killing another person. This different version has not yet been proved.

• Book "La Grandiose et Meurtrière Course Paris-Madrid 1903", by Jean-Robert Dulier, edited by Jean Paul Couty, Clermont Ferrand, France, 1966 [M1].
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• Newspaper Le Petit Parisien (Paris, France), issue of Thursday, 28 May 1903, page 3, article "La mystérieuse tuée d'Ablis", retrieved by website https://www.retronews.fr/journal/le-petit-parisien/28-mai-1903/2/85698/3 .
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• Website AUTOSPORT → Forums → The Nostalgia Forum → TNF's Archive, thread "The 1903 Paris - Madrid race", posting by “Roger Clark”, message http://forums.autosport.com/topic/20522-the-1903-paris-madrid-race/#entry369971 citing [C1].
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• E-mail by Jean-Louis Mathieu, sent on 31 January 2004, citing [M1].
• E-mail by Jimmy Piget, dated 06 February 2004, citing Loraine Barrow's death certificate issued by the city of Liboune and census of the British population, circa 1880 [surname: Loraine Barrow; full name: Claude Loraine Barrow].
• E-mail by Rick Kelly, dated 26 June 2004.
• E-mail by Rick Kelly, dated 21 February 2005, citing [K1].
• E-mail by Jean-Louis Mathieu, dated 14 April 2006.
• E-mail by Jesper Hvid Petersen, dated 23 December 2007, citing photographic evidence of the accidents.