.jpg)
The 1932 Grand Prix season marked the second year of the AIACR European Championship. It saw the debut of Alfa Romeo's sensational new Tipo B (also called the P3) and with it, Tazio Nuvolari won the Championship driving for the Alfa Corse works team. The 40-year old Nuvolari won two of the three rounds and was second in the other. Still running to a Formula Libre (open formula) rules for the cars, the regulations were revised to set the races to be between five and ten hours. However, all three national committees ran their races to the minimum time-limit.
The other title contenders, Bugatti and Maserati continued to develop their models from the year before but they were rarely a match for the Alfa Romeo with its combination of high speed and light weight giving excellent balance for cornering. Nuvolari was dominant through the year, also winning the non-Championship Monaco GP and Targa Florio. His German team-mate Rudolf Caracciola won the other championship race, the German Grand Prix, along with the Eifelrennen and Monza GP. Bugatti did have some successes, with Achille Varzi winning the first major race of the year, at Tunis and Louis Chiron the Masaryk Circuit in Czechoslovakia.
It was a barren year for Maserati, compounded by the untimely death in March of their team manager and lead designer, Alfieri Maserati. His last design, the big new Maserati V5 bimotore won the Rome GP with Luigi Fagioli. There was still room for the talented privateers to succeed, with Manfred von Brauchitsch causing a sensation winning the Avusrennen in a Mercedes-Benz with a bare metal, aerodynamic bodyshell that gave him the world’s fastest victory yet achieved, at an average pace of 194.5 km/h. At the end of the season French rising star, and this year's Le Mans winner, Raymond Sommer took a surprise win at the Miramas oval near Marseille.