1954 From Maserati to Mercedes-Benz, and a second title

Buenos Aires, 17 January

On the night before the Argentine Grand Prix of 1954, Fangio went round the pharmacies of Buenos Aires buying castor oil. With him were Maserati’s chief mechanic, Guerino Bertocchi, and the man Bertocchi called Direttore (director), Orsi. The engines of the new 250Fs had been failing in practice, their oil frothing, and the mechanics had spent a week of nights rebuilding them; on the Saturday Fangio’s had broken again. Bertocchi wanted castor oil. They bought 30 kilograms of it in half-litre bottles, tasting each one to make sure it was fresh, and at four in the morning Bertocchi was on the circuit, running the rebuilt engine in.

The car was just over three weeks old. For 1954 the championship had a new formula, for engines of 2.5 litres unsupercharged or 750 cc supercharged, and most of the new cars were not ready. The 250F had been begun by Gioachino Colombo, who left Maserati in November 1953 before the prototype ran, and completed by Giulio Alfieri: a 2.5-⁠litre straight-six with a de Dion rear axle, on Pirelli tyres. After a sports car spun into the unpainted prototype in testing, the works spent Christmas morning 1953 finishing two cars for the boat that left for Buenos Aires on 26 December. Fangio, who was 42, had signed to drive for Mercedes-⁠Benz, but its new car, the W196, would not be ready until July, and he was allowed to race the Maserati until it was. What Mercedes-⁠Benz paid him is disputed: all his starting and prize money, according to Karl Ludvigsen, or half of it and a large salary, as Ferrari’s secretary, Romolo Tavoni, remembered it. At Maserati, Bertocchi had his own version: “He was kidnapped twice — I tell you — once in Cuba by the Castro lot and once by Mercedes for 70 million lire!” Cuba meant Havana, in 1958.

Farina took pole from González, with Fangio third on the grid. González led from lap 15. On lap 32 a storm broke over the autodrome: González spun off, Farina stopped for a visor, and Hawthorn spun and was later disqualified for being helped after a second spin. Fangio took the lead, was passed again as the track dried, and led again when the rain returned.

On lap 61 he stopped for tyres with hand-cut treads. Ferrari’s Nello Ugolini protested that Maserati had used too many mechanics at the stop, and Ferrari, expecting to win on appeal, signalled Farina and González to take no risks. Fangio passed them both. The organisers rejected the protest, and so, later, did the FIA.

He won by 1 minute 19 seconds from Farina, with González third, and the 250F had won its first race. Alfieri added a reason of his own. The first space-frame chassis was weak in torsion, and in the wet that did no harm: “it made our car perfect for the rain — very pleasant, very special … very lucky!”

In March he drove a Lancia D24 with Eugenio Castellotti in the Sebring 12 Hours. He and Ascari swapped the lead many times, until theirs became the first of the Lancias to fail.

Spa, 20 June

His first Grand Prix since January was at Spa-Francorchamps. He was on the pace of the Ferraris at once, and a few minutes before the end of practice he went out again and, trying so hard that he electrified the onlookers, lapped in 4:22.1: the fastest of the session, and faster than his own record with the Alfa Romeo 159.

In the race he made a poor start and was hemmed in. He passed Hawthorn on lap 2 and Farina at Malmedy on lap 3. On lap 10 the strap of his visor broke; he slowed at his pit, threw the visor away and put on the goggles he had been wearing round his neck. It took him 2½ laps to catch Farina again, and just before the end of lap 15 Farina’s engine burst. Motor Sport’s hand-timing on the Stavelot curve showed him gaining more than a second there on most drivers. He won by 24.2 seconds from Trintignant, with Stirling Moss third in his own 250F, and he set the fastest lap and a faster race average than Farina’s Alfa Romeo in 1951. It was his last championship race for Maserati until 1957.

A week later, in the Supercortemaggiore at Monza, he shared a new 2.5-⁠litre Maserati sports car with Onofre Marimón, who was about to become Maserati’s first driver now that Fangio was leaving. Marimón drove through a 10-minute downpour from fourth place to second, and Fangio later caught and passed Maglioli’s three-litre Ferrari. Near the end the transmission stripped, and Marimón could not drive the last 10 yards to the line. The car was not classified.¹

The Mercedes-Benz W196

The W196 came from the Daimler-Benz engineering department under its technical director, Fritz Nallinger, with Rudolf Uhlenhaut running the racing department, and Hans Scherenberg’s design office; Alfred Neubauer ran the team. Its straight-eight of 2,496 cc had direct fuel injection and two plugs a cylinder. It had a five-speed gearbox, a low-pivot swing axle at the back, drum brakes mounted inboard and Continental tyres, and for its first race it wore an enveloping streamlined body.

It first raced at Reims-Gueux on 4 July. Ascari, whom Lancia had lent to Maserati for the race, was in a strange car too, and Motor Sport remarked that the two acknowledged masters were nonetheless lapping faster than anyone. It found an air of confidence about the team there, from Neubauer down to the newest mechanic. Fangio and his team-mate, Karl Kling, talked the car over in Spanish and in German, and Neubauer, in the end, interpreted.

After Reims, Silverstone

Only the two Mercedes-⁠Benz had finished on the lead lap at Reims, and only six of the 21 starters had finished at all. Afterwards, Motor Sport noticed, the two drivers took the win differently:

At Silverstone a fortnight later he took pole by a second from González and Hawthorn; the works Maseratis arrived too late for practice and started from the back. It rained, and from the cockpit of the streamlined car he could not see the corners. He dented the body on the oil drums that marked the course, breathed fumes, had trouble with the gearbox, and was passed by Moss and by Hawthorn. González won for Ferrari. When Moss’s axle broke, Fangio was classified fourth, a lap down.

Twenty-five years later he still remembered the oil drums. The Mercedes-⁠Benz cars, he said, were usually the fastest and remarkably strong: “To win with them was easy.” The streamliner on the small circuit at Silverstone, in the rain, was the only trouble he could recall.

The lap times were taken to the second, and seven drivers went round in 1:50: Fangio, Moss, Hawthorn, Jean Behra, Ascari, Marimón and González. Each was given a seventh of the point for the fastest lap, and Fangio’s fourth place was worth 3 1/7 points.²

After Silverstone two open-wheeled cars were built, at his request, Motor Sport said later. One of them, chassis 00006/54, won his next two races.

The Nürburgring, 31 July and 1 August

Marimón had raced beside Fangio at Maserati since the summer of 1953, and at Monza that September he had come back into the race 3 laps down to help him. On the Friday at the Nürburgring he was 10 seconds outside 10 minutes for the lap, and Fangio told him to wait, so that they could go round together the next day and he could show him the lines. On the Saturday morning, 31 July, Marimón went out early. His father, Domingo, was timing him from the pits; Onofre wanted to lap in under 10 minutes before the rain came. On his third lap he left the road before the bridge at Wehrseifen, near Adenau, went through a hedge and down a bank, and died minutes later. He was 30.

The news reached the pits slowly. González took a sports Ferrari round to the place, and Fangio sent Roberto Mieres out to look for him. Maserati withdrew Luigi Villoresi’s car as a gesture, and Marimón’s place on the third row of the grid was left empty. Years later Stirling Moss remembered the next day: “He was weeping – but he got into his car, and won the race.”

That Saturday morning Fangio had lapped in 9:50.1, the fastest lap yet of the Nordschleife, beating Hermann Lang’s record of 1939. For the race the W196s had open wheels. González led for half a lap; Fangio passed him on the straight and led at the end of the first. Kling, who had set no official time and so started last, was tenth after one lap and fourth by lap 4.

After 13 laps the Mercedes-⁠Benz pit showed its drivers a slow sign, a white disc marked “Pi”, for pianissimo, on one side for Fangio, and “L”, for langsam, on the other for Kling. Fangio lifted at once. Kling pressed on and passed him at the Südkehre to lead lap 15, then slowed, pointing at his left rear suspension; at his stop the mechanics refuelled the car and wired up a broken torsion-bar mounting, and he finished fourth. In 1996 he said that a fuel leak from the early laps meant a stop for fuel, so that he had been racing the clock, not Fangio, and that the orders had been right: “If the main thing was that Mercedes should win it was quite correct that the team orders should be in Fangio’s favour, because he had the best chance to win the championship.” González, who had not felt like racing since the accident, handed his Ferrari to Hawthorn, who finished second, 1 minute 36.5 seconds behind. A crowd estimated at 300,000 watched Fangio win the German Grand Prix, which also carried the title of European Grand Prix.

Bremgarten and Monza

At Bremgarten on 22 August the cars’ rear suspension had been strengthened where Kling’s had broken. Fangio started second, 0.2 seconds slower than González, and led from start to finish in poor weather. Kling spun into the straw bales on lap 2; Hawthorn, Moss and Trintignant retired. Fangio won by 57.8 seconds from González, with Herrmann third, and set the fastest lap, and with two rounds to go his 42 counted points were out of anyone’s reach: he was World Champion for the second time. Motor Sport wrote that the race proved his mastery, and proved, for the third time in four races, that the new Mercedes-⁠Benz was not such a bad car after all. It was the last Swiss Grand Prix. After the Le Mans disaster of 1955 Switzerland banned circuit racing.

At Monza on 5 September he found the streamlined body 2 seconds a lap faster than the open one, and chose it. Before the race, a German yearbook reported, he told the Mercedes-⁠Benz management: “If the Ferraris and Maseratis fight us hard, they won’t get beyond two-thirds of the distance!” Ascari, lent by Lancia to Ferrari for the day, was the driver Motor Sport thought most likely to out-drive him. Kling led the first laps and Ascari led from lap 6. On lap 22 Ascari and Fangio crossed the line together; on lap 23 Fangio led and on lap 24 Ascari, and for 6 laps more they were never more than 2 seconds apart.

Then Moss, in his own 250F, painted red with a green nose and run with works support since the German Grand Prix, passed Fangio and then Ascari and led from lap 45. Ascari dropped a valve on lap 49. Moss built a lead of 20 seconds until his oil ran out; he stopped on lap 68, and later pushed his car over the line to be classified tenth. Fangio won by a lap from Hawthorn.

Pedralbes, and the end of the year

At Dundrod on 11 September, in the Tourist Trophy, his own Lancia, shared with Castellotti, lost its oil, and he shared Piero Taruffi’s D24 to second place. At the Avus in Berlin on 19 September, in a race outside the championship, three streamlined W196s finished together: Kling a few feet ahead of Fangio, and Herrmann right behind him.

The last round was the Spanish Grand Prix at Pedralbes, in Barcelona, on 24 October. Lancia’s new D50 made its first appearance there, with Ascari on pole by a second; the streamlined Mercedes-⁠Benz body had been given up, and Fangio started second in an open car. Hawthorn won for Ferrari. Fangio ran a lonely second, lapping with a clock’s regularity, until with 12 laps to go hot oil began to spray over his left arm and shoulder. Soaked in it down his left side, he was passed by Luigi Musso 6 laps from the end, and finished third, a lap down.

He had won 6 of the 8 Grands Prix he started, four of them for Mercedes-⁠Benz, and the title by nearly 17 counted points from González.³ At home the Argentine sports journalists gave him their first Olimpia, as sportsman of the year. The museum in Balcarce calls 1954 an unforgettable year for Argentine motor racing, with Fangio and González leading the Mercedes-⁠Benz and Ferrari teams; but after Marimón’s death González, at his family’s urging, largely gave up racing in Europe. For 1955 Mercedes-⁠Benz signed Stirling Moss, the young man who had led him at Monza in a Maserati of his own, to drive beside him.