The Mercedes-Benz W196 was a Formula One racing car campaigned by the company for the 1954 and 1955 seasons. It is said to be the successor to the W194 – but that was a sports car with six cylinders in line and with the famous gullwing doors; it won Le Mans and the Carrera Panamerica in 1952.
The W196 was very different. Its naturally aspirated M196 straight-eight engine displaced 2.5 litres in the Formula One car and 3 litres in the sports racer, the 300 SLR, that won the 1955 Mille Miglia driven by Stirling Moss with Denis Jenkinson as navigator. To avoid the torsional vibrations of a straight-eight the power take-off from the engine was in the middle, making it necessary to cant the engine over to one side. Like the W194’s engine it was dry-sumped and therefore sat low in the chassis, but there were two significant innovations: desmodromic valve operation (positive drive of the valves both down and up, to remove the need for springs and therefore to eliminate the risk of valve bounce at high engine speeds), and mechanical direct fuel injection adapted from the DB 601 high-performance V12 used on the Messerschmitt Bf 109E fighter during World War II. The 2.5-litre engine delivered 256 PS at its introduction at the 1954 French Grand Prix at Reims.
For that race on the high-speed Reims circuit the W196 was clad in an aerodynamic closed-wheel alloy“Monza” body. Juan Manuel Fangio and Karl Kling claimed a 1–2 finish, and Hans Herrmann posted the fastest lap. The same body was later used only three more times: in the 1954 season at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where it picked up its nickname, and in the 1955 season again at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. In total the “Monza” won three races (the 1954 French Grand Prix and the 1954 and 1955 Italian Grands Prix), all driven by Fangio. These remain the only races won by a closed-wheel car in Formula One history.
The Monza may have been beautiful, but its streamlined body was only suited to high-speed tracks made up of straights and slow corners, leading to defeat at its second race, the 1954 British Grand Prix at Silverstone with its many high-speed corners. Our Snapshot shows Karl Kling’s W196 “Monza” at that British race. Kling finished in 7th position and even Fangio was only 4th, illustrating the unsuitability of the streamliner at this sort of circuit.
Mercedes-Benz introduced a conventional open-wheel-version for the most important race on the calendar for Mercedes, the German Grand Prix at the twisty and long Nürburgring. Fangio, who had already won the first two GPs of 1954 with a Maserati in his home city of Buenos Aires and at Spa, won this and the two following Grands Prix: in Switzerland with the open-wheeled version and Italy, as already mentioned, in the closed-wheel streamlined “Monza”, securing his second World Championship.
Image displayed with the kind permission of the Haynes Motor Museum.
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