A season with the Silver Arrows 
A European season racing team Mercedes-Benz seen and experienced by journalist Federico Kirbus.
Other commandments day ban at the same reporter both in racing as the horses. And of course we were. "We" were the three musketeers, who were four, Magazine Speed: Folco Doro great as editor, Gianni Rogliatti who now lives in Turin, the incomparable Ronald Hansen and the author of these lines. The rest were specialized technical publications such as engines, cars ...!! Sight and Ford World dedicated to the art and mechanics ("Do it yourself").
No, no journalist could live this profession, which in any case was a hobby. You had to have another job, another occupation, another job. Fees: zero. But anyone had paid to have their scores published. When January 1955 arrived in the country racing team Mercedes-Benz, the legendary Rennabteilung, I was the only local journalist to remain in contact with the press officer, Arthur J. Keser, fluids with my knowledge of German.
After living here, almost, for several weeks with the clan around the team manager Neubauer, Stuttgart Keser invited me to join the press department at the English section (there were, in addition to German, a division for French and one for English). In the short time I went with the Germans in Buenos Aires became good friends with several members and shared some of the gargantuan feasts of "Gordo" Neubauer, who knew in the heart of a restaurant run by Federico Bückert, who famously in Berlin in the '30s and '40s had been a place where I used to attend another gourmet chubby gourmand: Hermann Göring.
do things! Funny visits were also a country house with pool where Neubauer had to wear his pants as makeshift bathing trunks. One Grand Prix of Argentina 1955 is still considered today as one of the "race of the century" .. With good reason: the four best riders in the time machine of the four leading brands: Mercedes Fangio, Ascari, Lancia, Gonzalez-Ferrari-Maserati and Behra, Moss well. A blazing sun, unbearable heat. One after the other competitors were giving in calling for change of driver. Moss also fainted. But was reprimanded because his own Herr Neubauer was not only by the temperature on the track but outside the night before.
When I agreed to work in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim I should address the problem of travel costs, even though Germany had secured a good stipend. To be able to devote to journalism had a regular job, and that was in a cardboard factory in Lanús Oeste. The salary was fair but with every month that was spent was delayed settlement more and more and more until finally I had more than 12,000 pesos m / n. When the company took over the new owners offered me pay half of the debt: 6,000 pesos. I decided to spray and set fire to bonzo investing all this money on my trip to Germany, namely: 5,600 pesos in a round-trip passage aboard the Anna C line Giacomo Costa Fu Andrea, and the remaining 400 pesos train ticket Genoa-Stuttgart.
How were 6,000 pesos? Amounted to U.S. $ 200, or 800 DM. $ 1,000 (4,000 frames) you could buy a Volkswagen Standard. And here, about $ 6,000 then, a brand new family home pituca and fees. The same day I arrived in Stuttgart, was in early May, I found myself in my new office that had just arrived a newscast that showed the accident he had suffered Karl Kling with Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR at the Mille Miglia, by Ratico . In the small theater we saw the episode: a top, a Slap, and nothing else. Anyway Stirling Moss won the famous 722, Fangio was second half hour.
I often wondered what was the relationship between pilots and Neubauer. Well, Fangio was the undisputed number one, and it is likely that he has to apply what they have Twisty once said the same in the time of the Alfetta: "When you're the champion, you always have some donkeys under the hood" (the engine was officially W 290 R 196 HP, though it came time to generate some 314 HP, a fact never published elsewhere). But Fangio could hardly be understood, because babbled an Italian Balcarce, and Neubauer did not understand a knob. Ultimately communicated by signs. Stirling Moss was walking so well however, Sport and sometimes even better than Fangio, because Rudolf Uhlenhaut communicated with directly. Uhlenhaut was in charge of the preparation of the Machines (Versuchsabteilung), and although he was German, was born in England and spoke the language of Shakespeare with the same solvent as the language of Goethe.
Hence Moss cars always have the best set-up, at least for him. Kling was an engineer, but it certainly was not as fast as JMF and SM. Besides the camaraderie prevailed, and everyone knew what was his due, for example to Moss, as a bonus, winning at Aintree. Sport In competition testing was quasi-free. Incidentally, besides being virtuoso technician and a lovely human being, Uhlenhaut walked on the track during testing, the pair of Fangio or Moss, and some time even faster. For the rest, which Mercedes-Benz he wanted was to get the world title. And the natural candidate was Fangio.
remember one day, or rather one afternoon while I attended the Sindelfingen plant car assembly (in Untertürkheim engines were assembled), I found myself suddenly with a slim figure hoping not know what . Charlie was Menditeguy. I thought for a moment because of the multiple relations had reached a position of reserve driver in the team, but was waiting to remove a car, I think a 300 green, to take home.
From then on it was to my attention by English-speaking journalists. My direct boss was Count von Urach a gentleman. And my first race I attended was Monaco. Here was a series of improvisations and unexpected: Hans Herrmann that accidents and injuries in training, a Frenchman named Simon received while he was shaving, from Neubauer to replace and take over the team's fourth car, then race, successive departures from Moss, Kling, Fangio and when he began to tap, Alberto Ascari with his famous falling out with the Lancia Montecarlo Bay.
Bitito Mieres
to lead briefly reached that day. Finally triumphed "Petoulet" Trintignant Ferrari. Trintignant was always Burgomaster of his hometown in the South of France and excellent counter jokes. In some photos from that day I can see swaying, Leica and Rolleiflex in hand, between the boulevard near the rail 50 of the Gasometer and not-so-blue waters of the bay. The 200 runners who passed me looked at me bewildered. In fact intrigues had already begun on the eve of the race. The German team was staying at the Hotel de Paris in diagonally opposite the Casino, and while Fangio was accompanied by his wife, Beba, there was an attempt to sweeten the evening with a stunning blonde, but the rest chose Twisty. This off-road racing before. A Bitito still saw him briefly in the pits after of the race. He later took the express to Paris, where he owned a "whorehouse." It was that night in the almost empty train that had one encounter with a famous American actress who tells with cryptic words in his autobiography "Why be normal." For my part I went to the Mercedes-Benz 180 to take home for Grasse, Grenoble and Grand Route de Napoleon. At noon the next day the car was shattered in a Swiss city. There I learned that you can spend a night traveling and retain sufficient reaction time.
Back to Stuttgart we are preparing to attend the 24 Hours of Le Mans. We work Press rigor. The team concurred with three 300 SLR and three pairs of drivers. I took a test drive of Porsche and went through the French countryside covered with thousands of crosses of the extensive cemeteries with the dead of the battles in the trenches of the First World War. In the pits at Le Mans had arduous task because of the three pairs of drivers who alternate driving and only two were Germans. With the rest I had to act as interpreter when needed: Fangio, Moss, John Fitch, with Levegh less. Alongside Fangio Argentina fans had even more in particular I remember a young Oscar Cabalén. After the race with its dramatic initial alternatives to its tragic outcome. I was saved because he had gone through the drama scene two or three minutes earlier. I managed to take some photos of the eighties and many dead lying on the floor, not without some horrified spectators rushed out with blood stains me my jacket. The rest is known: Le Mans 1955 was really a fact hinge for world motorsport. As I dozed in the chair reclined Porsche 356. When I returned to the pits midway through the gray morning following Rennabteilung I learned that he had retired from competition at midnight. Headed back to alternative paths, and a gravel road in the countryside with gala and went skidding into the ditch. Excellent card professional, two test cars, and two consecutive Slap.
learned what was later applied with success and luck a hundred times during my travels in the interior of Argentina, that in a gravel road and speeding should be held right wheel steering and braking, and then turn . Brake and turn at the same time, it will not. In my work as head of the press I went with some frequency Neubauer's office, who called himself Oberingenieur. A title he invented nonexistent equivalent to "super engineer." Bad language to say "der Dicke" was so imbued with Mercedes-Benz that its navel was in the form of a three-pointed star. He was a genius anyway logistics. Their road maps for the Rennabteilung be moved from Stuttgart to a Grand Prix was simply remarkable: true scripts with directions for each person and each vehicle, step by step routes, supply points along the way (suppliers), but also high to eat and stay overnight.
better course would stop where they ate, and in this sense El Gordo still had the experience of his travels throughout Europe before the war. There had been much destruction, but the pate foie restorancitos special still exist ...
My stay in
Presseabteilung offered me, besides accumulating practice in the profession at the highest level, not confessed yet another possibility: to delve into the recesses of the office to collect historical material. Ronald Hansen planned to write a book about the business of Mercedes-Benz in major international races, but behind the scenes. Sniffing and tracking, one day I discovered several dossiers and correspondence relating to the powers in the Coastal and mechanical problems affecting the W 154 / M 163, Fangio, Kling and Lang. This episode had been forgotten, and I could then rebuild the real problems that caused the debacle of the German team against the Ferrari of Froilan Gonzalez at the Grand Prix Juan Domingo Peron, held on February 18, 1951. The downside came midway through the first race for reasons of Surging fuel or fuel outbreak, in plain, drowning the carburetors. The team from here in Extensis telephoned and telegraphed to Untertürkheim to reach a conclusion, closing one of the cables as lapidary as pathetic words: "Wir sind ratlos." A brutal and simple confession: "I do not know what to do."
At the factory, on the dynamometer, the technical replicate the climate of the Coast of Buenos Aires and found a solution: managed to prepare a carburetor with a different tuning to ensure a perfect stoichiometric mixture or too high ambient temperatures. But something unexpected happened: at that time there were no daily flight connections between Buenos Aires and Europe. Alitalia, KLM, SAS, BOAC and Air France had one, two, at most three services per week, 36 hours of flight! And while it would have been possible dispatch by air of carburetors modified in the lab, would not get time to reach their destination. That's because the second Grand Prix competition called Eva Peron was played on Sunday following the first, but now on Saturday 24 since February was inaugurated on Sunday in Buenos Aires the Pan American Games.
was the only time, and for that cause, that an event of this nature was held on a Saturday. And this was the day that he missed the Mercedes to get in terms modified carburetors. Bingo again to Froilan. Archival research during my stay in Stuttgart also managed to rescue a set of pictures that were a copy of the plans in ferroprusiato Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR with all the details. Half a century later Clemar Bucci could provide this material that allowed him to recreate three exquisite life-size models of this unique sports car career. As in general there were many technical details that German technicians had built their creations, apart from the revolutionary desmodromic command at a time when steel springs still allowed to produce valves that do not begin to float beyond 8500 rpm.
For example, it was aware that the W 196 R had its good extra kilos compared to competitive machines, and had to save weight wherever possible. (W Mercedes Werksnummer means, ie serial number, and 196 was the numbering). Thus, note how much detail, hex heads all the pins were slightly concave. If each of the hundreds of bolts of the vehicle it saves a few grams, the result was felt. At all times we took into account that the mass of the vehicle was a decisive factor in the performance on track. This golden rule states that the three vectors of forward movement of an automobile (speed, climb, advance the level) the maximum power is only required for the latter condition, to climb and accelerate what matters is the ratio of torque / mass. The matter was then extract the maximum torque and engine power while achieving the lowest possible weight.
To be well prepared, the team prepares before each race, and each circuit, a diagram (Renndiagramm) with clear indication where to put the different changes, where what speeds were reached, and so on. All calculated by hand. One thing: to change from one gear to another is guessed a loss in the acceleration time two-tenths of a second. For all drivers, except for Fangio, who was assigned to do a tenth gear. With ten changes per lap, pulled Twisty there again, although in theory, one second full rotation. Although Mercedes had a much larger budget workshops that Italians, French ateliers and garages English nothing is wasted. In the 1954/55 season, with a total of 14 races in Formula 1, built 14 units of W 196 R, in eight different versions (the W 196 S Sport cars apart). In comparison, Maserati, Ferrari or Gordini used the same vehicle, but with successive improvements, for a season or more times.
Among the various powers of calendar 1955 (Great Britain, Belgium, Holland) played as a special event Grand Prix of Italy. It was an important event because it not only meant for Silberpfeil
mouthed wolf (Maserati, Ferrari, Lancia), but because authorities Speedway Monza track had decided to modify the building a banked curve as previously had been another. Since the track and became the fastest to be replaced by the horizontal parabolic banked, it was decided to try his luck again with a full aerodynamic body. Gordini also introduced a streamlined version, but with much smaller engine and therefore no chance. To further speed up communication between Stuttgart and Monza, the engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut had built a very attractive truck, nice lines "aerodynamic" and the engine of a Mercedes-Benz W 300 S to take and bring vehicles between the two points.
The truck ran his good 160 km / h and attracted the interest of the public rather than race cars. Since the canted Satellite was to be used for the first time, pilots were familiar with it. Bread was made of concrete and was not very couple say. With Fitch, Moss and Taruffi Piero (who ran for the brand this time) went to the curve to see their bill. Even they agreed bets on who would be able to walk up the gradient, without using their hands in the upper. Although the slope appeared smooth, in practice it was impossible to climb on foot, even very clean.
In October 1955, after concluding the racing circus, returned to Buenos Aires. Had invested in the venture to the penny, but came back with some good savings. At year's end Borocotó retired and retired from The Graphic, and I was left as his replacement because my practice creating a more technical journalism where it matters most "multiple" of Emiliozzi that the circumstances in which he had been off Toscanito pure . Assisted by technicians from the likes of Don Pancho Lucius, engineers Sierra Rafael Antonio Bianchi and could help guide the racing vernacular into lanes safer.
Y also thanks to the experiences gathered over a full season in the Mercedes-Benz Rennabteilung. Ah, shortly after Ronald Hansen to write another book, not about the secret history of Mercedes-Benz but on none other than Juan Manuel Fangio. The first title related to Fangio in English and French.
