NOW THAT WAS A CAR

No.90 MERCEDES W196

After tottering, stop-start, make-do-and-mend beginnings, top-level motor racing snapped into focus in 1954 as a new set of technical regulations came into force. Their purpose, explicitly, was to encourage more manufacturers to get involved; the first two years of the world championship had been dominated by pre-war dinosaurs and then, once lack of funds and willpower shuffled those into extinction, two further seasons followed in which F2 cars filled the grids.

But the radiant ambition of Formula 1’s new dawn was tempered by the return of a pre-war force which delivered a powerful lesson: be careful what you wish for. One of the manufacturers drawn back into the fray was Mercedes-benz, and the cast of characters it deployed would have prompted its rivals to shiver with apprehension by reputation alone.

The voluminous figure of team manager Alfred Neubauer was a familiar one to those versed in the 1930s grand prix racing scene, in which Mercedes and Auto Union had humiliated all opposition. Superintending the development of the new W196 was Fritz Nallinger, protégé of Ferdinand Porsche, and head of the experimental department which had produced the seminal supercharged straight-8 and V12 which powered those 1930s monsters. Chief engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut had developed the W125, which turned Mercedes’ racing fortunes around in 1937; for an engineer he was unusually competent behind the wheel, equipping him to gain deeper technical insights in an era in which racing drivers generally just got in the car and drove.

In the tangled scene of post-war reconstruction, Mercedes’ activities had been circumscribed by the occupying Allied forces. By the early 1950s it was itching to return to its position of pre-eminence, and the W196 was the apex of a burst of activity which also begat the Le Mans-winning W194 sportscar and the ‘gullwing’ 300SL.

Reliable power ranked among the highest design priorities, and it was in the engine bay that the W196 made its biggest departures from convention. Having set the benchmark for

supercharging in the 1930s, Mercedes had generally kept the faith with blown engines whenever the formula was amended during that decade. But F1’s new regulations for 1954 capped the displacement of forced-induction engines at 750cc – half that allowed in 1950-51 – and at the same time enshrined a minimum race duration of three hours. Factoring in reliability and relative thirst, the calculations fell unequivocally in favour of natural aspiration.

To that end, Mercedes built what it saw as the ultimate engine design for the 2.5-litre unblown formula, one that would rev higher than any of its rivals and feature direct fuel injection for the first time in an F1 car. Many of the senior team working on the engine came with aerospace experience: Hans Scherenberg had been involved in the development of the pioneering DB601 engine which had powered the likes of the Messerschmitt 109; and Karl-heinz Goeschel had worked on the DB601’S successors before teaming up with Scherenberg to develop the first fuel-injected production-car engine (a two-stroke unit in the diminutive Gutbrod Superior). Ludwig Kraus had been an eminent designer of marine diesel engines. Johannes ‘Hans’ Gassmann, tasked with drawing the layout of the engine, was a time-served Mercedes-benz employee with his name on many of the company’s patents.

This talented group outlined a straight-eight which was in effect two conjoined in-line fours, with the power take-off in the middle rather than at the end, the rationale being that two short crankshafts would be more resilient to torsional forces than a long one. The central take-off also drove the camshafts, and the water and oil pumps. This was by no means a unique arrangement, but the engineers found a clever way to mitigate one of its key weaknesses, which is that engines laid out in this way usually have to be mounted higher in the chassis frame. By inclining the block 53 degrees to the right, the engineers maintained a low centre of gravity, made more efficient use of space in the engine bay, and facilitated an aerodynamically advantageous low-profile bonnet.

Mercedes already held the patent for a desmodromic valve system designed by Gassmann and Manfred Lorscheidt in 1952, and the two engineers returned to this idea when initial testing of the engine – on a one-cylinder rig – revealed a tendency for the valves to ‘float’ beyond the 8000rpm threshold, a typical problem with the type of valve springs used at the time. By removing the springs entirely, and using a single cam to open and close each valve, the Mercedes designers could specify just two valves per cylinder, made from heavier and more durable materials.

While the Bosch mechanical fuel injection was sophisticated for its time, systems such as this were limited in their range of adjustments, and it was a challenge to calculate the

“MANY OF THE SENIOR TEAM WORKING ON THE ENGINE CAME WITH AEROSPACE EXPERIENCE”

NOW THAT WAS A CAR No.90

MERCEDES

“WHILE THE W196 WAS A HANDFUL TO DRIVE, IT ENJOYED A POWER ADVANTAGE OVER ITS RIVALS AND WAS OPERATED BY A CONSIDERABLY MORE ORGANISED TEAM”

optimum fuel pressure and mixture. Having engineers versed in aerospace and diesel engine technology helped, as did a consistent fuel blend supplied by Esso: the so-called RD1 fuel was 25% petrol, 45% benzene, 25% methanol, the remaining 5% being acetone and nitro-benzine – probably the most potent cocktail of volatile hydrocarbons on the grid.

The W196’s spaceframe chassis was conventional but thoroughly engineered, each element scrupulously weighed and stress-tested, while the suspension was an unusual combination of torsion bars up front with swinging axles at the rear. Uhlenhaut’s rationale for preferring the swing-axle layout to a De Dion tube was arcane: he had long felt that many racing cars were too stiffly sprung and under-damped, and that independent rear suspension, properly controlled, would yield better overall traction than any live-axle configuration. On the W196 he specified a single pivot point – under the differential – for the rear suspension in an effort to mitigate the swing-axle setup’s greatest shortcoming, an inherent lack of wheel-camber control. Mercedes was already in the process of incorporating this change into its flagship road cars, which might also have been a driver in the decision to prove its value on track.

In common with its contemporaries, the W196 was retarded by drum brakes all-round, though these were mounted inboard to reduce unsprung weight. Unlike them, it featured a fivespeed gearbox as opposed to four, offering a greater spread of ratios to capitalise on the engine’s rev-biased nature.

Mercedes wasn’t ready for the start of the 1954 season, the Argentine GP in January, but then again neither were many of its rivals. Maserati had conjured a compellingsounding package in its 250F, overseen by ex-ferrari engineers Gioacchino Colombo and Valerio Colotti, but it was insufficiently resourced to deliver on its pre-season promise of full works support for every customer. Lancia, behind on its promising D50, would not be seen until the end of the season.

When Mercedes arrived in July it did so in force, fully prepared, with three W196s for the fourth of nine rounds, the French GP on the super-fast public roads south of Reims. Two of those opening races had been won by Juan Manuel Fangio in a Maserati, and the third was the Indy 500, so Fangio already enjoyed a lead over his rivals as he now appeared in a Mercedes, flanked by fellow works drivers Karl Kling and Hans Herrmann. At flat-out Reims, cloaked in loophole-exploiting enclosed bodywork, the W196s were untouchable and Fangio left with the winner’s trophy and several cases of champagne, the traditional bonus awarded in champagne country.

The next round, at Silverstone, was an outlier in an otherwise uncompetitive season for Ferrari, as José Froilán González led team-mate Mike Hawthorn home for a 1-2 finish. Fangio set the fastest lap but could only finish fourth, plagued

by the W196’s understeer balance and struggling to place the car accurately in corners because of the ‘streamliner’ bodyshell. From now on, except at high-speed circuits such as Reims and Monza, the W196 would race in conventional single-seater bodywork with exposed wheels.

While the W196 was a handful to drive – initial understeer would give way to snap oversteer as the action of the swing axle diminished the rear tyres’ contact patch – it enjoyed a power advantage over its rivals and was operated by a considerably better organised team, thus enjoying a reliability premium. Power was claimed to be 256bhp at 8260rpm, while developments for 1955 took that to 290bhp at 8500rpm. Of its rivals, the four-pot fielded by Ferrari in its 625 and 553 cars was (implausibly) claimed to deliver 250bhp at 7200rpm; the Maserati six-pot 220bhp at 7400rpm.

A hat-trick of victories at the Nürburgring, Bremgarten and Monza brought Fangio’s total to six wins in a season in which only a driver’s best five results counted towards the championship. But at the final round, Lancia’s D50 appeared and set pole position in the hands of Alberto Ascari, who led until his brakes failed.

Having bagged the 1954 championship at a relative canter, then, Fangio could then reasonably have expected 1955 to be a tougher slog. Lancia’s D50 was in many ways more innovative than the W196, carrying its functional fluids in panniers between the front and rear wheels for better aerodynamics and weight balance, and its compact V8 acted as a partially stressed element of the chassis as well as producing a claimed 260bhp. But it was stymied by malaises typical of Italian automotive engineering at the time: organisational disarray, lack of resources, and poor-quality materials. Lancia’s bankruptcy took the car off the table until it ended up in Ferrari’s hands.

So Fangio claimed four victories for Mercedes, and new team-mate Stirling Moss one, in a seven-race season curtailed by the fallout from the Le Mans disaster which also prompted Mercedes to withdraw from motor racing. Their 1-2 finish at Monza would be Mercedes’ last for 59 years. In 2013, shortly before Mercedes comprehensively ended that hiatus, the car photographed here – Fangio’s 1954 Nürburgring and Bremgarten winner – fetched a record-breaking £19,601,500 in the Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed auction.

SPECIFICATION

Chassis Aluminium spaceframe

Suspension Double wishbones with torsion bars (f), single-pivot swing axles with torsion bars (r)

Engine: Mercedes M196R inline-8

Engine capacity: 2496cc

Power 256bhp@8250rpm (1954), 290bhp@8500rpm (1955) Gearbox Mercedes five-speed manual

Tyres Continental

Weight 835kg

Notable drivers Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss,

Karl Kling, Hans Herrmann, Piero Taruffi