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Karl Ludvigsen

After his dramatic 1926 victory at the Avus circuit, the young Rudolf Caracciola proved his worth to the Mercedes racing team behind the wheel of Ferdinand Porsche’s massive supercharged sixes – from S to SSKL

According to Mercedes-Benz racing team manager Alfred Neubauer, “By September 1926, Rudi Caracciola – famous throughout Germany since his sensational Avus victory – had invested in a Daimler-Benz showroom in the Bond Street of Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm, and married Charlotte, attractive daughter of a wealthy Berlin restaurateur, who later became known to the motor-racing world as “Charly.” In due course the famous couple and Moritz, the nation’s favorite dachshund, took up residence in the Swiss resort town of Arosa where skiing, Rudi’s sport of choice, passed the winters. 
 
With the 1924 Mercedes straight-eight no longer eligible for Grand Prix racing and no more pure racing cars being built, the newly christened Daimler-Benz had to rely on its 2½-ton supercharged 6.2-liter Model K six-cylinder as the basis for competitive entries. Having created the Model K, Ferdinand Porsche now set to work to make a racing car out of it. His first effort was the Model S, drastically lowered, lightened and boosted. Rudi and his former appraiser, Christian Werner, ruled the sports-car roost in this and its successor the SS.
 
The birth of the 'Ring
 
A great car deserved a great track, and the track for the Mercedes Model S was completed early in 1927. “When we first came with the Model S to the newly-opened Nürburgring,” Rudi recalled, “our eyes bugged out. We had never experienced anything of the sort. There lay, in the middle of the Eifel mountains, a road, a closed loop with almost 200 corners distributed along sixteen miles. A road with upgrades that sharply tested an engine’s lungs but also with incredibly fine views over the countryside, of valleys and villages, woods and hillsides.”
 
For the opening race on June 19, 1927, flagged off at 10:23 a.m., Alfred Neubauer fielded his team from the AVUS the year before. Caracciola won ahead of Rosenberger. On July 17th in the German Grand Prix, Rudi led early but retired on the fifth of 18 laps, leaving the podium to winner Otto Merz with Christian Werner and Willy Walb second and third for Mercedes. There they raced for the first time with broad colored stripes over their white hoods for quick recognition from the pits. Neubauer was in the process of inventing modern team control.
 
Rudi Caracciola then won his second German Grand Prix in 1928, relieved during the demanding 313-mile contest on the ‘Ring by Werner. Said Alfred Neubauer of his 1928 success, “Young Rudi Caracciola and the veteran Christian Werner shared 18,000 marks, a gold cup and as grueling an experience as any racing-driver could have.” 
 
Outstanding success came in the 1929 Tourist Trophy on country roads near Belfast, over which Caracciola drove 410 miles in five and a half hours with an elegance and precision that won wide acclaim. This was a wet-weather success that bolstered his growing reputation as a Regenmeister or Rain Master. 
 
SSK: Porsche’s final Benz
 
Before leaving Daimler-Benz in 1928, Ferdinand Porsche’s last creation was the Model SSK, shortened to a two-seater sports car scaling 3,750 pounds with 6.8 liters and 200 horses under its hood. This machine was more like it for the popular hill climbs in which Rudi often ruled the roost. With an SSK, Rudi returned to Ireland in 1930 to compete in Dublin’s Irish G.P., which he won. 
 
In 1930 Caracciola and Werner were paired in a lone SSK at Le Mans against a phalanx of Bentleys, which took turns in challenging their lead. The Englishmen loved hearing the wild shriek of the supercharger of the big white Mercedes because it meant that its engine was being stressed. After an hours-long contest against Tim Birkin and Sammy Davis, the German machine finally retired. In addition, said Rudi, he had “seven starts and seven great wins with new track records and the European Hill-Climb Championship for Sports Cars.” 
 
Remarkably, among a mass of Italians in red machines in the finishers of the 1930 Mille Miglia, appeared the team of “Caracciola/Werner” driving a white Mercedes-Benz SSK, in sixth place. This was a daring invasion by Germans into Italy’s classic thousand-mile race. “The Italians had greater knowledge of the route,” Rudi avowed. “They also had entries that comprised up to fifty vehicles of one marque, so it was no problem for their representatives to set up spare-parts depots all the way from Brescia down to Bologna, to Florence, Siena, Rome, over to Ancona and back via Treviso.”
 
A new kind of racing team
 
This effort by Caracciola and Werner taught lessons that would be useful next year. Next year, however, looked like it would not happen for Rudi. In November 1930, Caracciola received a letter annulling his contract. 
 
The Great Depression dictated cutbacks. Daimler-Benz would not be entering a team in 1931’s events, so it had no need for racing drivers. Passionate sportsman that he was, Alfred Neubauer said that the issue “kept me awake at nights. Then at long last a plan occurred to me.
 
“I asked Rudi and Charly to call at my office,” Neubauer said, “and showed them a draft of a new type of racing contract. We would provide mechanics, co-driver and racing manager. We would also cover the overall cost of transport, repairs, tires and fuel. You’d have to buy the car—but at a special price, of course. About 20,000 marks for the new SSK.”
 
“That seems a reasonable proposition,” replied Charly. Neubauer stated that of the two she had much the better business head. “But what do the works want in return?”
 
“Rudi’s a top-class driver,” Neubauer replied. “Over the last few years he’s taken something like 100,000 marks a year in prizes. I suggest the following: the works pay all expenses. Prize money, premiums and starting money will be shared between us fifty-fifty.” With Rudi’s assent, they called on Daimler board chairman Wilhelm Kissel.
 
“Dr. Kissel reacted cautiously,” said Neubauer. “He quoted falling sales, labor difficulties and rising costs but in the end he was not difficult to persuade. So, in the winter of 1930 a one-man racing team was formed. It consisted of Rudi Caracciola and his wife Charly, co-driver Sebastian, the mechanic Zimmer and myself as racing manager.”
 
Enter the SSKL
 
In 1931 Rudi and his mechanic-driver Wilhelm Sebastian received a new SSKL, one of a handful of 3,500-pound factory racing specials with “Elephant” superchargers giving as much as 270 horsepower. Caracciola made good use of it, winning in Czechoslovakia, the Eifelrennen, the German GP, the big AVUS race and enough hill climbs to be European Champion. However, his white SSKL was a rank outsider among the swarms of red racers entering the Mille Miglia. Riding shotgun was Sebastian, for his 1930 partner Christian Werner was unwell. He would die in June 1932 at the age of only 40.
 
“With a map of Italy spread out in front of me I felt like Napoleon before the Battle of Waterloo,” recalled Neubauer, “until I thought of Alfa Romeo’s ninety mechanics and seventeen repair trucks and went hot and cold all over.” He had only three mechanics for four refueling depots, so one of them had to handle two in the north. Once the race was underway he had to count on reports relayed from checkpoints that disappointingly confirmed Nuvolari as the leader when the cars reached Rome. 
 
“For sixteen hours we thundered lengthways and across Italy,” Caracciola related. “We felt our way through the night in the beam of the headlamps and drove into the dazzling glare of the spring day. For sixteen hours I was in the huge field of several hundred cars, not knowing how I was lying. My loyal Sebastian burns his hand on the glowing exhaust pipe when changing the spark plugs… gets back in the car in silence. When the engine loses power, he fixes the link to the supercharger. The last hours of the howling compressor whip the car over the dead-straight streets of northern Italy.”
 
“Hour after hour…clouds of dust…the finish,” Carraciola recalled. “Neubauer is over the moon, performing a completely insane Indian dance. What’s he playing at? I don’t understand…but then it dawns: I’ve won the thousand miles!” The Mercedes team won outright by a margin of 11 minutes in a race lasting 16 hours and 10 minutes, 70 minutes less than it had taken Caracciola the year before. It was the first time a non-Italian had won the Mille Miglia and remained so until Stirling Moss’s 1955 win – again in a Mercedes-Benz.
 
Success and a move to Alfa
 
“When we came to reckon our team’s winnings for 1931,” said Neubauer, “they amounted to 180,000 marks—$41,500 at the 1931 exchange rate—in premiums, starting money and prizes. Half went to Rudi Caracciola, half to Daimler-Benz. It was the equivalent of more than $700,000 today. Rudi was now fully committed to racing, saying, “I do not believe that a man without order in his private life is capable of dedicating himself entirely in this manner. I gave up the showroom in Berlin because one cannot serve two masters.”
 
“Caracciola invited me and my wife to spend a month at his villa at Arosa,” said Neubauer. “One evening I returned from a long solitary walk to come face to face with Aldo Giovannini, the Alfa Romeo racing manager. Before I could ask him what he was doing here he muttered something about a train to catch and left.” The Mercedes man’s highly honed paranoia kicked into gear. His greatest fear was losing the supremely gifted Rudi to Alfa Romeo. Although Mercedes was resting, he was sure it would return to racing again. He knew he would need Caracciola then. 
 
Rudi had indeed found a seat with Alfa Romeo of Milan. He was the newcomer in a team that already fielded Nuvolari, Campari and Borzacchini, who had agreed  between themsleves to pool their winnings and share them out. Fearing that the newcomer would never adapt to their delicate machines, the work of Vittorio Jano, they denied Rudi entry in their club. Indeed, they insisted that his car be painted white! 
 
Caracciola relished his acquaintance with the Alfa Monza, “everything so feather-light, clutch, steering—I could shift with my fingertips—and she took the curves like a dancer.” Then he and his team-mates were introduced to the new Tipo B, one of the first European racing cars to have central seating, a true monoposto. In their first drives at Monza…they didn’t like it! Lost was their relationship with the roadside, perfected over years. But when they returned to the car later they were enthused, leaving the Monza’s lap records in shreds.
 
Rudi’s first drive for Alfa was the Mille Miglia. He led until suffering a crushing retirement by a broken valve spring 30 miles from the finish. For the first major Grand Prix of 1932 at Monaco the Alfa Romeo team turned out four-strong. Rudi caught up from a poor grid allocation to chase the leading Nuvolari near the end. Having trouble with his fuel feed, Tazio drifted back toward Rudi. 
 
“He had difficulty,” Rudi said. “If I had overtaken under those conditions it would not have been comradely, for the success of the marque was not at stake.” They finished 2.8 seconds apart. After the race, Tazio silently pressed Caracciola’s hand in thanks for his gentlemanly action. His gesture paid off handsomely, for the Italians now welcomed him into their profit-sharing club.
 
A winning formula
 
Alfa racing chief Aldo Giovannini was well-placed to assess the very different styles of his pair of outstanding racing drivers. “Look,” he said, “Nuvolari – he drives fast, very fast, 9 minutes 30 seconds for the course so-so-so!” At the same time Giovannini’s expressive hands twitched wildly like lightning. “Caracciola needs maybe 9 minutes 32 seconds but sooooo” and he made a round, gentle gesture with both hands. “There is something that can be learned,” the youthful Rudi Caracciola observed, “although some old hands can’t and don’t know it. The big secret is soft driving!
 
“Youthful impetuosity and courage are not enough,” Rudi declared, “nor is the will to succeed. To be a driver means that one must be part of the machine for hours, hands at the wheel and gear lever, feet on throttle, clutch, and brake and eyes on the rev counter, water and oil gauges. God help the man who loses control for even a fraction of a second or who is mastered by emotions and thoughts concerning matters other than racing. The machine will kill him without doubt.
 
“Woe betide those who succumb to an overwhelming passion,” Caracciola  added, “be it women, alcohol or any other mania. They will become uncertain and lose mastery over the car. Their fate will be retirement or death. For whenever man wishes for greatness in life – and mastery over 400 horsepower is greatness – only he who pledges his all achieves his goal.
 
“Only the wholehearted, who are prepared to risk everything, can hope for success. I drove a lot in those years. I won occasionally and suffered defeat. Now and then I came up against a great driver. Such meetings always forced me to summon up all my last reserves.”
 
In a great July with his new Tipo B Caracciola finished third in France, last of an Alfa trio, and won the German Grand Prix at the ‘Ring at the head of three Alfas. He finished his stint with the Milan firm by winning the Monza Grand Prix in September. 
 
A life-changing event
 
Early in 1933 Caracciola was given notice by Alfa Romeo and Louis Chiron was released by Bugatti. The two friends decided to set up their own racing team, the “Scuderia CC”. They bought two Alfa Monzas and hired two mechanics from Milan. During practice for the first big race of the season in Monaco, with one of its front wheels locked, Rudi’s Alfa crashed sideways into a stone stairway. Although Caracciola tried to climb out of the cockpit to show he was all right, he collapsed. He had a compound thigh fracture and broken hip joint. 
 
“It seemed as if my youth, my cheerful past full of struggles and adventure, had passed me by forever, never to be seen again,” Rudi  Caracciola would say later. After many months in plaster casts at a Bologna hospital housed in a former monastery Rudi eventually emerged with his right leg two inches shorter than his left. The pain would remain with him for the rest of his life.