"Neubauer was the best team director and Mercedes was the most complete team." - Juan Manuel Fangio
"Fangio raced like a bull, a bull with a mass of troubles in his head, and he drove with enormous strength." - Alfred Neubauer
The main talking point of 1954 was the much-anticipated World Championship debut of Mercedes-Benz, though the German team's Silver Arrows cars were not expected to be ready until about a third of the way through the season. Juan Manuel Fangio (then driving for Maserati) had been approached late in 1953 by the Mercedes team manager Alfred Neubauer and offered the then quite staggering stipend of $2,250 per race. In addition to the attraction of a sum that was substantially larger than any racing driver had yet earned, Juan was impressed by the mechanical potential of the first new Silver Arrows racing cars to be built in 14 years. Neubauer had explained in loving detail the plans for the new car. The 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 featured a 2,496cc, 8-cylinder engine, bristling with sophisticated technology and developing well over 200bhp, and a 1,600lb chassis with fully-enclosed, aerodynamically-efficient bodywork or an open wheel version, which Fangio came to prefer and in examples of which he would lead the team to a one-sided domination of the 1954 and 1955 seasons.
At the Daimler-Benz factories in the Stuttgart suburb of Unterturkheim, where the employees numbered some 35,000 people, the 1,200 technicians in the racing department had for over a year been concentrating on the W196 Formula 1 car. This enterprise was effectively paid for through publicity gained from success in sportscar racing where in 1952 the gullwing Mercedes 300SLR had won both the Le Mans 24 Hour race and the Carrera Panamericana. The publicity paid off and in 1953 the increased sales of its road cars enabled the Daimler-Benz company to achieve a turnover of $112 million, about 10 percent of which was ploughed into preparing cars for the 1954 Formula 1 campaign. The plan was to not just win, but to dominate, a state of affairs to which Mercedes had become accustomed in the past.
As usual, and as had been the case for 30 years, the racing enterprise was presided over by the flamboyant team leader, Alfred Neubauer, renowned for his tyrannical leadership qualities and his histrionic antics while carrying them out. A larger than life character (he sometimes tipped the scales near 300 pounds) Neubauer was born in Austria in 1891 and, according to legend, was already organising and directing local races for horseless carriages when he was ten years old. As an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, he at first handled horses then was placed in charge of a battery of motorised armoured vehicles, which were designed by Ferdinand Porsche. When Porsche went to Daimler-Benz in 1923 he took Neubauer with him. The ex-artillery officer soon whipped the race troops into shape and under his leadership the Mercedes blitzkrieg (funded mainly by Adolf Hitler's Nazi government, as was the rival Auto Union equipe) stormed victoriously through the racing world until the start of World War 2.
Though a rather forbidding figure - and certainly a strict disciplinarian with a military bearing, a strutting walk, a brusque manner and a commanding voice to boot - he also had a sense of humour, though more often jokes were made at the expense of the sometimes comically officious Herr Neubauer.
Stirling Moss, Fangio’s team mate at Mercedes in 1955, had this to say about their boss: Neubauer “was an amazing character, who could have everybody snapping to attention if necessary, but also show great thought and understanding. In relaxed moments he could have us all rolling about with laughter.”
 Ferrari and Neubauer (Allsport photo) | ||||
Enzo Ferrari (writing in his memoirs): ‘Seemingly in pace with the increasing strength of Mercedes and Germany, Neubauer grew steadily fatter and fatter and became increasingly more authoritarian and dictatorial. He was to be seen by the pits, casting scornful glances at his rivals and barking out commands in his Wehrmacht officer's voice, whilst his staff jumped to his orders as though on a parade ground. Very soon, he was a well-known personage in our little world, generally disliked-although this did not worry him in the slightest - yet he was highly esteemed and feared for his efficiency.
‘I thought quite often of Neubauer during the war: indeed, I could not help thinking of him every time a German mechanized column passed in front of my workshops and some officer or other alighted and started shouting orders.
‘In 1954 Alfred Neubauer turned up once more at the head of a team of sleek, silver cars. And he was fatter and more dictatorial than ever. I watched him grow stouter and stouter with increasing concern: he and Mercedes and Germany seemed to grow as though they were one, pound by pound, success by success, Deutsche mark by Deutsche mark. This unhalting progress could not help making me think: if Neubauer doesn't stop putting on weight, it looks as though Germany is getting ready for another war.’
Commanded by the corpulent Neubauer the Silver Arrows team featuring the Maestro Juan Manuel Fangio dominated the 1954 and 1955 seasons, winning 12 of the 15 Grands Prix it entered. Fangio scored eight of these victories to secure his second and third world championships. Having so emphatically made its point, and finally in response to the terrible 1955 Le Mans disaster, Daimler-Benz withdrew from Formula 1, the W196 cars were placed in the factory museum and Juan Manuel Fangio went to work for Enzo Ferrari, in whose cars he would win the 1956 driving title.
- excerpt from FANGIO The Life Behind The Legend by Gerald Donaldson
https://www.amazon.com/Fangio-Behind-Legend-Gerald-Donaldson/dp/1852270837
No comments:
Post a Comment