Mercedes Racing History
1937 Mercedes W125
Benz was involved in Grand Prix motor racing from 1923, when the Benz Tropfenwagen (described as having a teardrop shape) was introduced to motorsport at the European Grand Prix at Monza. These, the brainchild of Benz chief engineer Hans Nibel, were inspired by the Rumbler Tropfenwagen and were intended to increase public acceptance of mid-engined cars. They resembled the later Auto Unions (also built in part by Rumpler engineers), and used the virtually-unchanged Rumpler chassis. They were fitted with a 1,991 cc (121.5 cu in)DOHC inline six producing 80 hp (60 kW) and demonstrated “impeccable roadholding” at 90 mph (140 km/h) and above.
Despite a promising start, with a fourth and a fifth (and one retirement) in their debut, they did no better in three years of Grands Prix and hillclimbing, and the expected public acceptance did not materialize. Financial difficulties led to a merger with Daimler.
In the 1930s, the new joint company, Daimler Benz, with their mighty Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows, dominated Grand Priz racing in Europe together with its rival, Auto Union. In fact the colour of the cars, which was later to become legendary, was unintentional – they had initially been painted white as was traditional for German cars, but the paint was stripped away to reduce weight. The cars set speed records up to 435 km/h (270 mph). The team was guided by the greatRennleiter (racing team manager) Alfred Neubauer until the company ceased racing at the start of WWII.
1950 Mercedes W196
In 1954 Mercedes-Benz returned to what was now known as Formula One Racing (a World championship having been established in 1950), using the technologically advanced Mercedes Benz W196 which was run in both open-wheeled and streamlined forms. Juan Manuel Fangio, a previous champion (1951) transferred mid-season from Maserati to Mercedes-Benz for their debut at the French Grand Prix on 4 July 1954. The team had immediate success and recorded a 1-2 victory with Fangio and Karl Kling, as well as the fastest lap (Hans Herrmann). Fangio went on to win three more races in 1954, winning the Championship.
The success continued into the 1955 season, where the same car was used again. The team’s drivers, Fangio and the young Stirling Moss, won 6 of the 9 rounds between them, and finished first and second in that year’s championship.
1953 Mercedes 300SL
It was in 1952 that Mercedes-Benz returned to racing after the war, again with Alfred Neubauer as team manager. Their small and underpowered gull-winged Mercedes Benz 300SL, won several races in 1952 including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana, and did well in other important races such as the Mille Miglia.
Mercedes-Benz was also dominant in sports car racing during the 1950s. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR was derived from the W196 Formula One car for use in the 1955 World Sportcar Championship season . At Le Mans that year, a disasteroccurred in which a Mercedes Benz 300SLR collided with another car, killing more than eighty spectators. The team went on to win the two remaining races of the season, and won the Manufacturer’s championship, but it had already been planned at the beginning of that year that the company would retire its teams at the end of the 1955 season. In fact in the aftermath of the Le Mans disaster, it would be several decades until Mercedes-Benz returned to front line motorsport.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mercedes returned to competition through the tuning company AMG (later to become a Mercedes-Benz subsidiary), which entered the big Mercedes Benz 300SEL 6.3 V8 sedan in the Spa 24 Hours and the European Touring Car Championship.
Mercedes W109 6.3 Touring car
In 1985 Mercedes-Benz returned to the World Sportscar Championship as an engine supplier for the privateer Sauber team. The first cars produced by this relationship, the Sauber C8 and C9 were not particularly successful.
Sauber C9 – Winner of the 1989 24 hours Le Mans
After the Sauber team parted company with their sponsor Kouros at the end of 1987, Mercedes-Benz increased their involvement with Sauber for the 1988 season to become a factory entrant under the Sauber-Mercedes name. Still using the C9 the team won 5 races but came 2nd to the TWR Jaguar team in the championship. However, 1989 was to be a different story with Sauber-Mercedes winning all but one championship race to become world champions (including coming 1st and 2nd at the 24 Hours of Le Mans - all achieved with the C9. For the 1990 World Sportscar Championship season the C9 was replaced by the all-new C11, while the team was renamed Merecedes-Benz (though the outfit was still run by Sauber). The team dominated the season, again winning all but one race to become world champions. Mercedes-Benz eventually withdrew from sportscar racing after a dismal 1991 season.
Mercedes-Benz eventually withdrew from sportscar racing after a dismal 1991 season.
Mercedes CLK GTR
Mercedes-Benz returned to sportscar racing in 1997, with the CLK GTR which was entered in the new FIA GT Championship world championship series. The successor to this car, the CLR was a spectacular failure. It was entered in the 1999 Le Mans race, but a series of accidents involving the car flipping brought about the cancellation of the CLR project and Mercedes-Benz has not participated in sportscar racing since.
2006 DTM Touring Car
It was intended that Mercedes-Benz would enter rallying with the Mercedes Benz W201 in the early 1980s. Yet, as all wheel drive and turbochargers were introduced by the competition (Audi Quattro) at that time, this was cancelled. Instead the W201 ended up being used in the DTM Touring Car series from 1988, with the car again being prepared by AMG, who became an official partner and continue to enter the new DTM to the present day. Mercedes currently competes in the new DTM championship.
2006 Formula 3
In the five years since Mercedes-Benz began its involvement in Formula Three, it has developed into the formula’s most dominant engine supplier. Its engines, which are built and serviced by H.W.A GmbH, have so far contributed to a total of four drivers’ and four teams’ championship titles in the Formula Three Euroseries and British Formula Three Championship.
The H.W.A Mercedes-AMG M271 was based on a 1.8 litre 4-cylinder from the C-Klasse, bored out to the regulation 2.0 litre capacity. Formula Three engine regulations demand a naturally-aspirated, 4-stroke, 4-cylinder, production-based specification, with a capacity of not more than 2000cc. The M271 made its competitive debut in the 2002 German Formula 3 Championship in two of Mücke Motorsport’s three Dallara F302 chassis, driven by Marcus Winkelhock and Marcel Lasse. Winkelhock achieved Mercedes’ first F3 win at the Nürburgring in August 2002.
In 2003, Mercedes expanded its Formula Three program by supplying three teams in the inaugural year of the F3 Euroseries. Its engine powered the seven cars of Mücke Motorsport, Team Kolles, and ASM Formule 3. Speiss-Opel was dominant, thanks in part to Ryan Briscoe and Prema Powerteam, but Mercedes was winning by the eighth round. Its most notable win was provided by Christian Klien at Zandvoort in the non-championship Marlboro Masters.
Between 2004 and 2006, Mercedes-powered cars have dominated the drivers’ and teams’ championships in the Euroseries, due in part to its close relationship with ASM Formula 3, which is one of France’s most successful F3 teams. It has brought drivers’ titles for Jamie Green, Lewis Hamilton and Paul di Resta. 2006 also saw Mercedes’ first participation in the British F3 Championship, when it partnered with Double R Racing, co-owned by Kimi Raikkonen, and two other teams. Double R Racing’s lead driver, Mike Conway, dominated the championship. In the 2007 British F3 season, Mercedes now powers the majority of the Championship field.
1995 McLaren Mercedes MP-4 Formula 1
Following the 1955 Le Mans disaster, Mercedes-Benz withdrew from all factory-sponsored motorsport. Mercedes made its return to Formula One in 1993 as an engine supplier to Sauber, with whom they had already enjoyed success in sportscar racing, in its debut F1 season, with a V10 engine manufactured by Ilmor. The Sauber C12 made a good debut at the 1993 South African Grand Prix, with drivers JJ Lehto and Karl Wendlinger qualifying within the top ten and the team left South Africa with two points thanks to Lehto. Mercedes supplied Sauber for 2 years, scoring twenty – four points during their partnership.
1995 saw the normally aspirated Mercedes-Benz-Ilmor F1-V10 moved to the Woking based McLaren team, replacing Peugeot who moved to supplying their engines to the Jordan Team. In a season dominated by the Renault powered Benetton B195s and Williams FW17s, the McLaren-Mercedes partnership produce thirty points with 2 podium finishes from Miki Hakkinen. 1996 produced similar results to ’95 with the team finishing behind the trio of Williams, Benetton and Ferrari, but the team still scored three times as many podium positions in comparison to the previous year. Outside Formula One, Mercedes-Benz had increased its shareholding in the Ilmor company in 1996 and took full control nine years later. They have continued to design and build engines for McLaren.
n the opening race of the 1997 Fomula One season, David Coultard produced victory for McLaren and ushered in a new era of success for the British based squad. Coincidentally this was the first race in which McLaren had competed with a silver livery due to West replacing Marlboro, who moved to Ferrari, as title sponsor. The colour drew inevitable comparisons to the Silver Arrows of a previous era, and the nickname was applied to the McLarens. This was a significant result in F1 racing, McLaren’s first victory for three seasons and the first win for Mercedes-Benz since Juan Manual Fangio’s success at the 1955 Italian Grand prix. McLaren and Mercedes-Benz still, however, finished fourth in the Contructors’ Championship behind the same three teams as the previous two seasons, but they had collected more than twice as many points in ’97 as they had in ’95.
With an Adrian Newey designed MP4/13 for 1998, McLaren went onto win both the Drivers’ Championship with Häkkinen and the Contructors’ title, their first in seven years, by twenty – three points to their nearest rivals Ferrari. Häkkinen went onto win the title for the second time in succession the following season, however, the team failed to retain their Contructors’ title, losing it to Ferrari by four points.
2000 and 2001 saw McLaren and their drivers play second fiddle to the dominant partnership of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari, as the Italian-German partnership won nineteen of a possible thirty – four races. Häkkinen retired from Formula One before the 2002 season, although he would later represent Mercedes in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters series. Fellow Finn Kimi Raikkonen replaced him. McLaren dropped down the in order in terms of Constructors’ Championship position, losing its second place position to the BMW-Williams team, with the season still being dominated overall by Schumacher and Ferrari. For the following four years McLaren proved to be one of the fastest cars in the field but lacked in reliability, most notably in 2005 and 2006; the 2006 season marked the first since 1996 in which McLaren had failed to win a race. In 2007 McLaren’s drivers finished second and third in the Drivers’ Championship, only 1 point behind Champion Kimi Räikkönen. In 2008 Lewis Hamilton won the Drivers’ Championship by 1 point from Ferrari’s Felipe Massa.
In 2003, this partnership was extended into the production of a Mercedes-McLaren roadcar, the SLR. Mercedes also supplies the cars to the FIA for use as safety cars and other race official roles, such as the medical car, at Formula One races.
On November 16, 2009, it was announced that Mercedes would part ways with McLaren, and instead purchase a 75% contolling stake in the 2009 championship winning team Brawn GP. The team, reimaged as Mercedes GP had its restart at the 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix, with an all-German driver line-up of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher.
2010 Mercedes F1 – W01