Marcel Balsa

An enthusiastic amateur, Balsa plugged away throughout the late forties and early fifties with a BMW special, restricting himself in the main to events on home soil. He was a distant fourth in the Luxembourg GP in 1949 and third at Cadours the following year, an event overshadowed by the death of Raymond Sommer.

His machine was neither particularly speedy nor for that matter reliable, though he did scrape a sixth place at Cadours in 1952. On paper his finest moment was in winning the 1953 Coupe de Printemps at Montlhéry, but the quality of the opposition was meagre to say the least.