Was Caracciola better than Nuvolari?
Ninety years ago this week, Rudolf Caracciola became the first non-italian to win the epic Mille Miglia. We look at how he stacks up to the most famous pre-war ace, one of the drivers he beat that day
“What altered this struggle was Caracciola’s crash in Monaco in 1933”
Rudi Caracciola was the Alain Prost to Tazio Nuvolari’s Ayrton Senna – except when it rained and roles were reversed. Their 1932 season spent as rival Alfa Corse males was muddied by prearrangements permitted by the superiority of their machinery. It was perhaps the German, however, who burnished his reputation the more.
For it was he who paused at Monaco rather than seize victory by taking advantage of his team-mate’s fuelling problem. It was he who should have won, by order admittedly, the Grand Prix de
L’ACF at Reims, only to be gazumped by a disobedient, faster on the day and frustrated Nuvolari. And it was he who obeyed orders at Pescara’s Coppa Acerbo and the non-championship Monza GP, though he would win the latter when Nuvolari suffered another fuelling hiccup.
This loyal Mercedes-benz lieutenant had arrived at the Milanese marque a mistrusted outsider – his cars for the Mille Miglia (he led at Rome after Nuvolari crashed under pressure) and in Monaco were painted German white – but he left it at the season’s end an appreciated team man capable of hustling the world’s fastest.
For Nuvolari, the newly crowned
European champion, held that vital edge still, according to most informed opinions. Animated, his appeal was obvious as he geed his cars as though they were horses. Ten years older than Caracciola and a latecomer to cars due to a long and successful career on motorbikes, he was a genius in a hurry. Teams, he believed, were to do his bidding and not vice versa.
Caracciola, the son of hoteliers from Remagen, and just 25 when he scored a surprise win in the 1926 German GP at Avus, was more measured – belying his family’s Neapolitan roots – and less magnetic. The libretto to Nuvolari’s aria, he pulled teams around him. Strategic rather than tactical, his speed stemmed from a style eschewing flashy crowd-pleasing moves. And though he had abandoned plans to study engineering to follow his dream, he was sympathetic to equipment. To underestimate him was to err.
Enzo Ferrari, definitively in Nuvolari’s corner – when they weren’t verbally sparring – wanted Caracciola as a calming counterpoint while his privateer team stepped into the Corse’s shoes in 1933. Nuvolari, incapable of ducking a fight, cared not a jot. Calculating Caracciola, however, sidestepped the issue by forming his own Alfa Romeo-based Scuderia CC alongside the more amenable Louis Chiron.
But what fundamentally altered the parameters of this era-defining struggle was Caracciola’s injurious crash – smashed right femur, crushed pelvis – due to brake failure during practice in Monaco in 1933. Out of action for over a year, he was still far from fit – and mourning wife Charly’s death in an avalanche – when he returned to a revitalised Mercedes-benz team led in speed and competitiveness by outsider
Luigi Fagioli – think ‘Nuvolari Lite’. By 1935, however, he had regrouped sufficiently to press home advantages provided by car and his number one status, reserved and now reassumed, to win the first of his three European Championship titles.
Meanwhile, Nuvolari’s failure to secure a seat in a Silver Arrow until mid-1938 – Achille Varzi had beaten him to the
Auto Union punch for 1935, and Bernd Rosemeyer’s unanticipated rise promptly sealed off another opportunity there – triggered the handful of overwhelming underdog performances, albeit generally at venues that levelled the playing field somewhat, which secured his legacy forever.
But an unhampered Caracciola – that leg would ‘heal’ 5cm shorter – had been capable of miracles, too. And his 7.1-litre Mercedesbenz SSK was the elephant blower in the room in Monaco in 1929 when he battled the nimbler Bugatti of eventual winner ‘Williams’ until a churn-ing 4m30s refuel. He eventually finished third, and had so frightened the locals that his entry for
1930 would be refused.
Operating as the favoured Mercedes-benz independent of 1931, his SSKL (when leicht meant 1500kg) being prepared by a factory supposedly withdrawn from racing, he established an early lead over the Alfa Romeos – two new works 2.3-litre 8Cs for Nuvolari and Luigi Arcangeli, plus 26 sundry others! – in the Mille Miglia by averaging 95.7mph from the Brescia start to Bologna. This was sufficient for him to cling on grimly through the transappenines twists as night descended – he was just over a minute behind leader Nuvolari at Rome – before reasserting his 130mph authority along the Adriatic coast as a misty dawn broke. Tyre dramas befell others, and it was the mighty Merc that led at Padua (774 miles), Treviso, Vicenza, Verona and upon its triumphant return to Brescia. (The blueprint – minus pacenotes – for Stirling Moss in 1955.)
July’s German GP at the Nurburgring did not count towards the maiden European Championship but attracted a quality entry nevertheless: four works Bugatti Type 51s backed by four privateer versions; two works Maserati 26Ms; and Nuvolari, his Scuderia Ferrari 8C now in ‘Monza’‘sprint’ form.
Fagioli’s Maserati led briefly but Caracciola, SSKL sitting squarely on capable Continentals in a downpour, moved ahead and, running non-stop, remained there despite the track drying from lap six (of 22) onward and the rain having stopped entirely by lap 13. (The blueprint for Moss in 1961.) Nuvolari and the Bugattis of Varzi and Chiron, giving chase, proved superior to all bar one SSKL – others were driven by Hans Stuck, Otto Merz and Manfred von Brauchitsch – and thus could not better fourth, third and second respectively.
The inaugural European champion, decided over three two-driver GPS of 10 hours’ duration, was Italian veteran Ferdinando Minoia, a reward for consistency that belied his 47 years. Few judges, however, looked beyond ‘Nivola’ and ‘Caratsch’. Nuvalari had won the Italian GP at Monza, co-driven by Giuseppe Campari; the Targa Florio; and Livorno’s Coppa
Ciano. Caracciola was victorious at the Nurburgring’s Eifelrennen and the Avusrennen, and had successfully defended his European Mountain Championship
(for sportscars). It was nip and tuck.
Caracciola, available now because of the total withdrawal of Mercedes-benz due to Germany’s steepening economic decline, was an obvious candidate to drive Alfa Romeo’s Tipo B – the first fully resolved GP single-seater – in 1932. Designer Vittorio
Jano’s masterpiece was diametrically opposed to Caracciola’s previous mounts – the German reckoned it “as fleet-footed as a ballerina” – but he barely broke stride adapting to it. He was there to get the job done and possessed the tools to achieve it.
Politics would get in the way. Though Caracciola’s cars were painted red after his Monaco largesse, he wasn’t at the head of the queue for a Tipo B: Nuvolari got first dibs and won the Italian GP; Caracciola third in an 8C ‘Monza’ commandeered from an injured Baconin Borzacchini.
Following Nuvolari’s ‘confusion’ at Reims, the team made sure orders were followed two weeks later at the Nurburgring: Caracciola’s pitstop was almost a minute faster than Nuvolari’s, the Italian berating a go-slow crew, and he won his home GP by 31s.
At other times they were kept apart entirely. The works team did not attend the Eifelrennen, and Caracciola won in a lone 8C Monza; and Nuvolari’s Tipo B was victorious at the Coppa Ciano in Caracciola’s absence. The German in turn
“Politics would get in the way. Nuvolari got first dibs on the Tipo B”
romped to a third European Mountain title (for racing cars this time) by winning four of five rounds; Nuvolari’s campaign was partial.
They appeared to rub along – Nuvolari composed himself to congratulate
Caracciola after the German GP; and the gesture was returned with a silent consolatory hug at Monza – but truly they were bulls in need of separate fields.
Caracciola’s primacy at Mercedes-benz was challenged but never usurped, even though Hermann Lang proved his superior in 1939. Fagioli had left under an angry cloud, and Unterturkheim sought to avoid (not entirely successfully) disruptive influences thereafter.
Auto Union was less proscriptive and Nuvolari, at his wit’s end with Alfa Romeo, was the only driver capable of filling the void created by Rosemeyer’s death. He adapted quickly to having the engine at his shoulder and ended the 1938 season as its fastest. Caracciola, however, retained his title with four podiums, including one win, from four starts. (He had won thrice and finished second in the other in 1937.)
Both then proved themselves still capable of winning at the highest level in 1939, and neither could stay away when racing resumed post-war.
Despite his greater age and failing health, Nuvolari fared the better. His near misses in the Mille Miglia of 1947 (runner-up in an 1100cc Cisitalia) and 1948 held Italy’s radio audience rapt. The latter occasion – Ferrari falling apart around him as stubbornly he continued to press – proved to be a farewell tour. He would contest only three more races – though he never retired formally – and, paralysed by a stroke, and with lungs choked by the sport he had lived and breathed, died in August 1953.
Caracciola’s comeback almost ended before it began. A crash – reports suggest he was struck in the face by a bird – while practising a Thorne Special for the 1946 Indianapolis 500 might have killed him but for the protective helmet he was forced by regulation to wear in place of his trademark white linen skullcap.
Left comatose for days, once again he faced tiresome months of recuperation.
Tempted back by Mercedes-benz in 1952, he finished fourth in the Mille Miglia – dicing with Moss’s disc-braked Jaguar for a time – and was disappointed to discover that his ‘Gullwing’ had been of an inferior specification to that of his team-mates’. A fortnight later during the sportscar support race at Berne’s Swiss GP, he crashed again – more brake drama – and broke his good leg. He would never race again. Also blighted by ill health, he died of liver failure in September 1959.
You can argue which of them was the better – it’s Nuvolari for this writer – but it’s impossible to refute that theirs was a closely run thing and that both gave their all for and to the sport they graced.