2009 will be known as the year of come backs in the racing world, Lance Armstrong and Michael Schumacher. Schumi though will not resume racing in the scarlet Ferrari but in the Silver Arrows from 2010! Kunal Ghate expresses his view and takes you back in time...
Right from 1996 it was engraved in most F1 fans minds that Michael Schumacher will not race for any team but the Scuderia Ferrari. For him to change teams after such a long relationship with Ferrari was a bit difficult for many to comprehend. But Ferrari is not above all in F1, there is another team which has as rich a success story, if not better than Ferrari in motor sports. Welcome to the Silver Arrows aka Mercedes Grand Prix.
The year was 1934 when no such thing as Formula 1 existed (not until 1950) but the world of motor racing was very much active and governed by Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR) or more commonly known as the FIA which in 1934 introduced a formula limited mainly by the weight of the car. Funnily, the regulation was that a car could weigh a maximum of 750 kgs as opposed to today’s minimum weight rule.
Back in those days the car livery used to be just solid colours, representing the manufacturer's country of origin. Italian cars were painted with the famous Rosso Corsa (the Ferrari red to put it simply) French with blue and German with white. Okay, so the white Mercedes Benz car ‘W25’ was just overweight and nothing could be done except to scrape off the white paint to save a kilogram and make it 'legal enough' to compete.
The bare aluminium body of the cars and championship winning design made the German press name them as ‘Silver Arrows’. A lineage which is visible in today’s on-road Mercedes Benz cars as well, being offered in the ‘smoke silver’ colour.
Based on the Mercedes SSK, an acronym for Super Sport Kurz, the W25 was developed by Ferdinand Porsche who later went to form his own company that of course was named Porsche. It was a 4.3-liter supercharged inline-8 design and produced a max of 300 bhp.
The successor was W125, debuted in 1937 was quick enough to win 6 out of 12 races of the season and got Rudolf Caracciola his second European Championship. The car was largely based on the W25 but had a much larger 5.6-liter supercharged inline-8 engine which produced a maximum of 637 bhp, a figure which was not matched in Formula 1 till the 1980’s when ‘turbo-charged’ engines were made legal. W125 was also used to set land-speed records and it managed a 432.7 kmph!
1938 was when the rules were changed yet again, this time to allow a maximum of 3-liter engine and a maximum of 750 kg weight limit. In order to comply, W125 would’ve had to go under some serious modifications; instead Mercedes Benz decided to develop a new car, the W154.
Supercharged 3000cc V12 producing 425-474 bhp and Rudolf Caracciola’s combination yet again won the 1938 European Championship. To compensate for the smaller engine as compared to the W25 and W125, a fifth gear was added to the transmission.
After a the second world war, Mercedes Benz returned to GP racing in 1954 which was then known as ‘Formula 1’ with their new car the W196. The team had immediate success and Juan Manuel Fangio won the championship. In 1955, Fangio and Sterling Moss finished 1-2 in the championship.
So success was normal and the German engineering of Mercedes Benz cars seemed unbeatable, so what made them pull out of racing?
11th June 1955, at the 24-hour Le Mans in Switzerland, a Mercedes car crashed and landed in the crowds, killing around 85 spectators and the driver Pierre Levegh. This by far is the most notorious accident in the history of motor racing.
Mercedes Benz was deeply affected by this accident and the least they could do was not to race ever again. Something that I feel was also the reason behind the German car manufacturers inclination to develop new standards of safety in their on-road cars.
The video below shows how horrific the accident was; note that the engine of the car actually flies across the grand stand!
The company only made a return to racing in 1994, by officially supplying engines only to the Sauber Formula1 racing team. In 1995 however, Mercedes Benz bought a minority stake in McLaren and exclusively supplied engines to them till 2008. A relationship that only became stronger with McLaren's success in the late 90’s. Without much of wonder, the McLaren's started painting their cars in silver since then.
In 2009, Mercedes High Performance Engines department went further to supply engines and drive-train of Force India F1 team, publicly stating that the two teams will receive exactly the same components and support from Mercedes.
So the Germans were getting their kicks from motor racing by unofficially running as McLaren thanks to their increased stake by the end of 2009, while maintaining their distance from the racing world post the 1955 accident as well. So what made them come out of their shell to buy out Brawn GP and sign Michael Schumcher and Nico Rosberg?
The trigger was a political one, like many things in F1! Or maybe we all like to think of it like that.
Mercedes held a 40% stake in McLaren and the two companies work closely to benefit each other. Together they created the Mercedes McLaren SLR and the McLaren Mercedes F1 car. The rule is simple in such a business partnership, you scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours, as long as you don’t compete against me.
By introducing their new road car MP4-12C, McLaren crossed that line, since they had secretly developed their own engine for the car and not opting for a Mercedes engine breaking their more than a decade old relation.
It’s a move that says a lot about McLaren's business strategy, they used to just build cars and now can build the engines required for them as well. They have now become direct competitors of Mercedes Benz, the car ‘Mercedes Benz SLS’ to be specific! McLaren will even buy back their 40% stake gradually by the end of 2011, making it an independent corporate body by then. Though Mercedes will still continue to supply engines to the McLaren F1 team “For the benefit of both Mercedes and McLaren, we will continue our partnership cooperation in the future,” said Dieter Zetsche, Daimler CEO and head of Mercedes-Benz.
McLaren F1 team signed the 2009 Formula1 champion Jenson Button to be the only team on the grid with two world champion drivers, which could spell disaster for them or may be for others, who knows. The move made McLaren a completely British team with a British driver line up.
The Germans seem to have taken all this a bit seriously and hence we have Mercedes GP. Brawn GP was available for sale at the right time in 2009, just when the MP4-12C was launched and McLaren suddenly wanted to be independent from Mercedes.
Things that compel us to think F1 is also linked to the automobile industry and plays a bigger role than just entertainment as many think of it. “I’ve often stated that it’s my belief that, in order to survive and thrive in 21st-century Formula 1, a team must become much more than merely a team,” Dennis explained. “The next few years will be a very exciting time for McLaren, during which period we intend to become an ever-stronger technological and economic force.”
“We will be rivals on-track but, off-track, we will cooperate with McLaren and the other teams in order to create the best possible product for spectators worldwide.” Said Dieter Zetsche. Yeah, right!
It’s a fact that Adolf Hitler was deeply involved in financing Mercedes Benz back in the days to make the Silver Arrows better, but once the Nazi rule was brought down the British took away most of the engineering inventions and technology from Germany, and so the British automobile racing industry flourished.
These series of events also opened the gates for Michael Schumacher to announce his come back to F1, some say he had unfinished business and I would agree. It’s in his blood to compete in racing as opposed to develop road cars. Ferrari is no longer, under the rule of Luca, able to provide Michael a better role than his current one and why would a seven time Formal 1 World Champion develop road cars?
So to fill the only remaining seat in the German team as the number one driver, the legendary Silver Arrows against the British McLaren, to once again tag along with Ross Brawn and create history, to prove that he was pushed out of F1 and didn’t retire willingly at the peak of his performance, if not with Silver Arrows then with whom? If not in a German team then where? If not now then when? And of course to show McLaren what Mercedes is made of.
Welcome Michael Schumacher! Welcome Silver Arrows!
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