To put it mildly, all three were underdogs.

It was the 1930s, and the French automaker Delahaye was struggling to stay afloat. Compared with the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union teams generously financed by the Third Reich, Delahaye’s entries into racing competitions were underfunded and underpowered.

Then, as it is now, auto racing was dominated by men, but the American heiress Lucy O’Reilly Schell had a passion for it. And a bank account to back it up.

And René Dreyfus, a French racer who had notched key victories, and a Jew, was losing opportunities as Nazi-bred anti-Semitism spread across Europe.

But together, these unlikely elements — financed by a highly determined Ms. Schell — formed a team that not only won a million-franc race for French automakers in 1937 but beat Hitler’s much more powerful cars in a celebrated Grand Prix event the next year, at least temporarily restoring French pride.