The Big Man
Alfred Neubauer (1891-1980) was the larger-than-life ringmaster of racing at Mercedes-Benz for nearly three decades.
Article by Graham Robson
Images courtesy of Daimler Archives
Any good Hollywood blockbuster biopic that involved motor racing with a character similar to Alfred Neubauer would dub the main character “The Big Man” and everyone would speak in hushed tones when he was nearby. And in this instance, fiction for once represents fact because that was exactly the situation for nearly 30 years in Mercedes-Benz racing.
From the 1920s when Mercedes-Benz was winning races with the SSK sports cars to the halcyon Silver Arrows days of the 1930s – and the final flourish with Juan Manuel Fangio and the streamlined W196 race cars after World War II – The Big Man, Neubauer himself, was running the team.
Pacing the past
Interestingly, Neubauer was not, in fact, German-born, for his family lived within the Austro-Hungarian Empire at Neutitschein – what is now the Czech Republic. If the motor racing bug had not bitten him at an early age, Neubauer might have become a cabinetmaker in the family’s furniture-making business. His first job, however, was as “officer of automobiles” in the Austrian army, after which he joined the Austro-Daimler factory in Vienna, becoming manager of the automobile test department under no less a figure than Ferdinand Porsche.
Although he had dabbled in motor racing, Neubauer followed Porsche in 1923 when he moved to Daimler in Stuttgart, Germany, where he once again managed the vehicle test center. While Neubauer originally thought he might make his fame and fortune as a racing driver, he was soon disillusioned and, as Mercedes-Benz archive records note: “But now he was under no illusion that there were far more talented drivers than him around, and he realised that his true ability lay in smoothing their path to success. He was aware of the loneliness the driver suffered out on the racetrack. This was what inspired him to devise a system involving flags and signal boards to transmit the technical information to the drivers.”
The Neubauer system – for such it was – would be retained and developed over the next 30 years, closely copied by many rivals, modernized and used continuously long after Neubauer retired. Even with pit-to-car radio communications, the system is still used in professional racing today.
The Rennleiter
For the next three generations, Neubauer was the indispensable link between ever-resourceful race cars engineers at Mercedes-Benz, the race team, and the drivers. Although he was certainly no intuitive engineer – the company had other talented personalities such as Rudolph Uhlenhaut to fill such responsibilities – he was the ideal conduit between design, office and racetrack.
Almost by definition, Neubauer’s self-elected title of Rennleiter (or team manager) meant that he could – and did – impose team orders. Up until then, some drivers could get away with out-racing their teammates on occasions when top bosses did not want it that way. Neubauer, on the other hand, could enforce bosses’ wishes during a race (woe betide anyone who thwarted The Big Man), and would chastise culprits for errant behavior in front of the public. The flag he always carried, they said, could be used as an offensive weapon.
This strategy could misfire, of course – and so it did in one hilarious case at the Nürburgring in 1938 when Manfred Von Brauchitsch’s W154 caught fire in the pits: By the time the fire was extinguised, Dick Seaman’s car was behind it in the pit lane. Neubauer was furious, venting his spleen at the wealthy young Englishman, who looked directly at him and replied, “But before the race, you told me that I was not to pass Von Brauchitsch today!”
On the other hand, Neubauer’s policy worked well when the cars were dominant, particularly in the Silver Arrows golden era 1934-1939; but it occasionally allowed him to embrace his bosses’ chauvinistic policies and stage-manage victory for a German driver when a non-German teammate might have done better.
Style and stigma
Although time and a relish for good eating would eventually take its toll, Neubauer wanted to be in charge at all times and made sure that he usually got his way. No way was he ever going to move with the times or dress up in trendy kit. In the 1950s, as in the 1930s, the on-duty Neubauer would be seen in the pit lane, striding back and forth, wearing a grey suit and a hat. If it was a hot day, he would be perspiring freely, mopping up the damage with what looked like an over-sized handkerchief and usually carrying a flag of some sort or other, while several hand-operated stop watches hung from around his neck.
By 1939 when World War II broke out, Neubauer was 48 years old and too old to be recruited in the activities that followed. There is evidence, though, that instead of fading smoothly into the background – as did others in the motor racing firmament at the time – Neubauer was drafted into the Luftwaffe to oversee workshops looking after aircraft repair, then sent to Berlin to manage the army’s heavy-transport repair programs.
Later, American occupying authorities accused Neubauer of being a Nazi “fellow traveller,” which was certainly unfair in that he was obliged to join Germany’s National Socialist Motor Corps – Nationalsozialistischen Kraftfahrkorps – which was partly financing the Silver Arrows race programs in the 1930s. In 1948, this accusation was quashed and no more was heard of it.
Back in Stuttgart, Neubauer – slimmer, sadder and wiser – became involved in clearing up the city’s devastation, helping to rebuild Mercedes-Benz’s Untertürkheim factory and earning his keep as workshop manager. The urge to get back into motor racing never died, but it was not until 1950 that managing director William Haspel invited him to re-open a racing department.
Tragically, some of those involved in the legendary Silver Arrows period were killed during the war, but by finding and inviting the survivors to join him again and renewing his firm friendship with the technical genius Uhlenhaut, Neubauer soon had a great team around him and was ready to challenge the world once again.
Although several successful 1930s-type cars survived the war, new Grand Prix regulations meant that the famous 3-liter W154 cars could not be used again and the little 1.5-liter W165s of 1939 were too obsolete; Neubauer had to start again. Told not to worry about money – it was not his job to balance the books, but it was his job to deliver victories – he set out on a four-year program that completely restored the brand’s motorsporting reputation.
The 50s’ final flourish
First there was 1952 when 300SL prototypes won at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and in the Carrera Panamericana race in Mexico; already, Neubauer was planning the return to Grand Prix racing (now Formula One). It was Neubauer who looked beyond Germany’s borders to sign up the world’s best racing driver – Fangio – and it was through his organizing talents that the team won its very first race, had both open-wheel and streamlined types of cars before the end of the first season, and made every other race car quite obsolete. The company and Uhlenhaut’s engineers ensured that he had competitive cars and enough money. With such backing, Neubauer was expected to deliver.
And deliver he did, for unless the cars let him down, such as the engine failures at Monaco in 1955, cars and drivers would be on the way to winning, all stage-managed by the massive man with the flag who was pacing around the pit lane.
To see Neubauer in action in 1955 – either with the F1 cars or with the all-conquering 300SLRs – was to see the clock wound back 20 years to the mid-1930s and see a maestro, a ringmaster, in charge of everything he saw. The Rennleiter was back.
Team members, from the illustrious – Fangio and Rudolf Caracciola, favored German drivers like Hermann Lang and Karl Kling, or imported superstars like Stirling Moss – to the lowest ranked mechanic, would all be expected to do what they were told, instantly and without argument.
Nowhere was this more aptly demonstrated than in October 1955, just before the works team’s last race of the year. A last-minute change in plans led to M-B entries placed for the Targa Florio in Sicily after all the drivers had dispersed, many of them already on holiday. Then, as my colleague Karl Ludvigsen once wrote: “Neubauer gained in intensity what he lacked in time for the preparations for his return to Sicily. A flurry of telegrams rounded up his drivers from all over the world. The team arrived in Palermo with eight sports cars (300SLR race cars), 15 private cars, eight heavy trucks and 45 mechanics. ...” – all of this achieved at a time when details which we now accept as normal – international telephone networks, frequent airline services, the Internet and credit cards – had yet to be invented.
Moss and Peter Collins would win the Targa Florio race in a battered 300SLR, but it was the last occasion at which the irascible Neubauer presided as Rennleiter, for Mercedes-Benz was about to withdraw from motorsport. Neubauer, by then 64, elected to retire the team but remained in Stuttgart, busying himself with the location, retention, and display of the company’s sporting heritage.
How to sum up the life of this remarkable character? He was big, he could be arrogant, he could be a bully, and he demanded absolute observance of his wishes, even if the people involved were world champions. On the other hand, he was incredibly faithful to those whom he trusted and loyal to Daimler-Benz. Moss once told me that Neubauer could be frightening – he was known to have towering rages – but that he could also be the greatest possible supporter. It was also clear that there were two (very large!) sides to him: one, the ultra-serious working person who could not be diverted; the other when off duty, a jovial party animal, who loved to eat and drink with a chosen few.
“They don’t make them like that any more?” Of course not.
French Grand Prix, Reims, July 1954. Using the pitboards he invented, Mercedes-Benz team leader Alfred Neubauer [in hat] flashes position and time information to his drivers. Neubauer’s system of flags and pitboards was to be universally adopted.
Nurburgring, 1931: In hat and trenchcoat Neubauer confers with race winner Rudolf Caracciola in his Mercedes-Benz SSKL. 
With Caracciola who took second in the W125 at the Nurburgring in 1937 Grand Prix of Germany.
July 1938: A hatless Neubauer rushes to aid Manfred Von Brauchitsch, as a gasoline fire engulfs his W154. 
Grand Prix of Italy, Monza, 1954: From left: Hermann Lang, Neubauer, Juan Manual Fangio, Karl Kling, and Hans Herrmann
With hat and flag, Neubauer talks to Caracciola who went on to take second in the W125 at the Nürburgring in 1937 Grand Prix of Germany.
Grand Prix of Switzerland, Baumgarten Circuit near Bern, August 1954: Juan Manuel Fangio listens attentively to final words from Mercedes-Benz racing director Alfred Neubauer just before the start of the race. Fangio led from start to finish in the W196, lapping the entire field. Teammate Stirling Moss was second until engine trouble dropped him to eventually finish in 6th, while Karl Kling tood 3rd of the team. Fangio's win at Baumgarten clinched the 1954 Driver's Championship for him.
At the close of his career, Neubauer supervised the placement of the Silver Arrows in the Daimler Museum. Here he's describing one of the cars to a group of bicycle racers on a tour of the facility.