Faster, page 10
Time slowed to a crawl. He cranked down through the gears. Calculating that he was more likely to survive a smash into Tabac Corner than a leap into the water, he steered away from the parapet. Hands tight on the wheel, he tried to regain control.
He was moving too fast.
His car snaked left, then right, on the road.
The stone steps came closer, and closer.
At last Rudi regained control, but it was too late. There was nothing to do.
The Alfa Romeo struck the wall first by the right wheel, then the whole side panel. The white metal body collapsed against the stone. Then the car propelled sideways for a few dozen feet before coming to a juddering stop.
Rudi was stunned, but he thought he was okay. He did not feel the streams of blood coursing from his temple, nor realize that his thighbone was completely crushed. He wanted only to be free of the car that seemed to have molded itself around his body. With strength born of shock, he wrested himself out of his seat.
Several people were dashing down the steps from the upper road toward him. He was fine, Rudi thought. No trouble here other than a wrecked car. Behind him there was a squealing stop. Louis jumped out of his own Alfa.
Rudi tried to take a step forward, and an explosion of pain overwhelmed him. His right leg gave out, and only Louis’s arrival at his side kept him from collapsing onto the road.
In the pits, Charly and Baby waited for the two Alfas to finish their twenty-fifth lap. They should have come by now. A shroud of worry that something terrible had happened fell over them.
Rudi was carried away from the track in a simple wooden chair taken from a café. He sat upright in the chair in a state of shock. Blood ran into his eyes. The whine of race cars circling the track was deafening. Finally the ambulance arrived. Its crew placed Rudi on a stretcher and jostled him inside. Each bump and turn through the streets of Monte Carlo sent ripples of pain through his leg. Something was very wrong with it. Rudi dared not ask what.
At the hospital, he was carted first into the X-ray lab, then into the surgery ward. Waiting for the doctor, he stared through the high windows at the treetops waving in the wind. Everything in the room around him was sterile white and glass. The pain he had felt earlier was only a fraction of the agony that swallowed him now. His face was lacerated in several places, sweat beaded on his forehead, and the grim lock of his jaw spoke of his suffering.
Finally, a Dr. Trentini arrived. He was short and sallow-skinned. Rudi disliked him instinctively. Neither spoke more than a few phrases in the other’s language, and they had trouble conversing. Rudi just wanted him to get on with setting what was assuredly a broken leg. He wondered what was the delay.
Dr. Trentini and his assistant stood by the window, examining the X-rays, when Charly came into the room with Louis and Baby. “Tell them to pull my leg as hard as they can,” Rudi urged. He had known other drivers to come out of such injuries with one leg shorter than another, which would have been unacceptable to him.
Dr. Trentini drew Charly from the room and raised the X-ray into the light. “Look, madame: The femur and the entire tibia bone are completely smashed. Your husband will never be able to drive again.”
Charly almost fainted. Baby did when her friend told her what the doctor had said.
Three days later, on Sunday afternoon, Rudi was lying in his hospital bed, his right leg in an ill-shaped plaster cast up to the hip. Charly sat beside him, and flowers from well-wishers covered every available space. They were listening to a radio broadcast of the race, trying to decipher the commentary in French about the feverish contest between Nuvolari and Varzi.
In the final lap, near the finish, the engine of Nuvolari’s Alfa Romeo engine died and caught on fire. He leaped out and tried to push it toward the finish, enveloped in billowing black smoke. Driving a Bugatti, Varzi won easily, followed by Mario Borzacchini, with René Dreyfus in third. Louis Chiron was a distant fourth.
Despite everything, including the hurried consultation from an Italian specialist who had saved his leg from the saw, Rudi was stunned that he had not recovered in time. He belonged in the race. That was his place in the world.
The plain fact was that his legs would never be a balanced pair again. He would have a permanent limp and was likely to only be able to take a few hobbled steps at a time. Racing looked like but a glory of the past.
At the Monte Carlo Casino, René and his Bugatti teammates, including Varzi, dined on lobster and celebrated their pooled winnings. A reporter broke into their revelry, but they said nothing about Rudi Caracciola. It was always sad to see one of their brethren crash, but dwelling on such calamities only heightened the chance that they might suffer their own doubts. When the reporter asked what they did to keep in shape, Varzi hurried off, a cigarette angled on his lips.
“Do not ask him about winter sports,” René said dryly. “He’s too afraid to break his arms and legs.”
The table erupted in laughter, and the night carried on.
After his third-place finish at Monaco, René returned to the track at the Belgian Grand Prix. Again he placed third. At Dieppe and Nice, second. First place eluded him, chiefly because the Bugattis in the Pur Sang (thoroughbred) stable were simply behind the times when compared to the Alfa Romeos and Maseratis.
Between competing and spending time at Molsheim, René fell in love. Nicknamed “Chou-Chou” (in French, the equivalent of “sweetheart”), Gilberte Miraton was one of a coterie of wealthy young women who frequented the racetracks and modeled the latest fashions while competing in Concours d’Élégance events—Chou-Chou with her grand white Delage.
Chou-Chou and René crossed paths in early 1933. Vivacious, funny, and whip-smart, she was impossible to overlook. She was short and dark-haired and had the kind of presence that drew the attention of everyone in the room. René had dated other women, but she was the first to hold his interest. Whenever possible, he visited her at her home in Châtel-Guyon, a spa town near Vichy in central France, or they met at races.
As his first season with Bugatti neared its end, René was happy and content. He did not like what he was hearing about the political situation in Germany, but any effect it would have on his life seemed distant. He had seen Fascists and their work firsthand while living in Mussolini’s Italy. One evening in May 1931, he and the Maserati brothers were sitting on the terrace of the Caffè San Pietro in Bologna when a crowd of theatergoers poured into the streets from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The journalist Corrado Filippini, who was also sitting at the Maserati table, went off to learn what had happened. He returned with a disturbing report. The conductor Arturo Toscanini had refused the order to start the evening with the official hymn of the Italian National Fascist Party, “Giovinezza,” as was now expected at public performances. Irked by his act of defiance, one of Mussolini’s ministers who was present ordered a gang of toughs to attack the aged maestro when he left the theater. They surrounded Toscanini and hit him until he fell. René had lived in Italy for long enough to experience the strutting Fascists but had believed them to be harmless buffoons. The Toscanini beating made him see the uniformed blackshirts in a very different light.
The Nazi variety of the species looked to be much worse, particularly toward Jewish people. France had its own deep threads of anti-Semitism that pervaded its culture, most pointedly seen in the trial of French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who, against clear evidence, was accused of selling military secrets to Germany and convicted of treason in 1895. The “Dreyfus Affair” was far from ancient history by the 1930s, and prejudice against the small population of Jews remained the standard. A Jesuit in France described it as “anti-Semitism of principle—latent and quite general.” Historian Eugen Weber added: “One did not have to think ill of them, to prefer to avoid them, and, of course, not to want one’s offspring to marry one.” Jews may have had French passports, but they were viewed as “other” by many of their compatriots.
Despite this underlying anti-Semitism, and even though he shared the surname of the most famous Jew in France (they were not related), René had rarely faced much prejudice. In his upbringing, he was insulated by his tight-knit community in Nice. Although his father came from a conservative Jewish family, he did not attend synagogue. René was never bar mitzvahed. If anything, he had a closer association with his mother’s lapsed Catholicism by virtue of the fact that he and his siblings mostly spent time with her side of the family. Neither religion made any impression on him, and he might have called himself an atheist if he had given any thought to it, but he hadn’t. As a driver, his heritage had never affected his prospects, nor could he imagine it ever would.
“They know there is a menace,” one French essayist said of his fellow Jews at the time, “but they bury heads in the sand.” René was in this camp, his focus only on motorsport.
If René perceived any danger from Germany, it was on the race track, where disaster soon signaled the terrible cost of the endless quest for faster cars. On September 10, he and Costantini were eating lunch at the Molsheim canteen and listening on the radio to the heats before the main race of the Monza Grand Prix.
The Autodromo Nazionale Monza, north of Milan, was a very fast oval track that already had the reputation as “The Circuit of Death.”
Suddenly, the announcer went quiet. René thought the reception had cut out; it had been static at best up to that point. Costantini was certain there had been an accident. A short while later, a phone call from Monza brought news of a crash on the autodrome’s south curve. Giuseppe Campari had lost control of his Alfa Romeo P3, swerved left, and launched over the banked curve. The much-loved Italian was killed instantly.
Attempting to avoid Campari, Mario Borzacchini hit the brake pedals hard. However, his mechanics had removed his front brakes, and they had fitted his Maserati with smooth-tread tires to increase his speed. He never had a chance. His car slewed over the concrete retaining wall, and he was thrown into a tree, which broke his spine. He died in the hospital.
Despite protests to stop the heats, the final one was run that afternoon. In the eighth lap, Count Stanisław Czaykowski was in the lead when he flipped over the embankment and was trapped under his burning Bugatti. Some spectators tried to drag him from the car, but they were too late to save him.
The next day, Benito Mussolini laid flowers at a hastily built memorial at Monza for the three Grand Prix champions. The Italian leader was a fervent fan of sport. In 1928, a bank controlled by his Fascist government had taken over the struggling Milanese automobile manufacturer Alfa Romeo from its founder, Nicola Romeo. Mussolini owned his own fleet of Alfas and subsidized their racing in part through contracts to build aero engines and military equipment. He established the model of state support that Hitler was keen to follow.
If anyone had any questions about who was really in charge of the Alfa Romeo team, events at Monza two years before had answered them. During practice, Alfa Romeo driver Luigi Arcangeli died when his car shot off the track and smashed into a tree. His teammates wanted to withdraw in homage to “The Lion of Romagna,” but Mussolini squashed the act of sentiment: “Start—and win!” he ordered his drivers.
Now three more lives had been lost in this mad pursuit of victory, and their black-veiled widows suffered through the funeral scene, which journalists described as the passing of the old guard and the worst catastrophe in racing history.
René had been closest to Count Czaykowski, and his death struck him deeply. Czaykowski was a merry, generous bon vivant who golfed as well as he drove, and they had often traveled together on the road. The following week, René attended his friend’s funeral. The family had placed his car’s charred steering wheel, wrapped in French and Italian flags, on the coffin. The sight spooked René.
Also listening to the race that day, his right leg bound in plaster, was Rudi Caracciola. He was in his room at the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute, in Bologna, which was housed in an ancient hillside monastery south of the city. Its director, Dr. Vittorio Putti, was the preeminent Italian surgeon in his field.
Over the previous five months, Rudi had mostly lain in bed, playing cards with Charly or gazing out his window. Every time there was a race, he listened to it on the radio. Midseason, Louis Chiron had joined the team started by Enzo Ferrari. Since Alfa Romeo had abandoned its own factory team, it had commissioned Scuderia Ferrari to field its cars. Piloting the monoposto P3—emblazoned with the soon-to-be-famous prancing-horse badge—Chiron won the Spanish Grand Prix and two other races. Missing out on such an opportunity was torturous to Rudi. He wanted nothing else but to drive again.
His progress remained unclear. After each inspection of Rudi’s leg, Dr. Putti would only declare, “Well, it’ll be all right . . .”
At the end of September, Putti cut off Rudi’s plaster cast, and two nurses rolled him into the X-ray lab. He hoped that the long struggle might soon be over, but Putti declared later that evening that more time in plaster would be needed. In late October, he removed this second cast. Rudi attempted to walk on crutches, but the effort was too much. X-rays revealed that the cartilage in his right leg was healing improperly. Having made sure that Charly was in the room, Putti recommended surgery. Rudi refused. He was convinced that he just needed to get back on his feet. The thought of more surgery and more months in plaster was intolerable.
“You won’t be able to drive anyhow!” Charly exclaimed. Her declaration stunned Rudi. Since Monaco, nobody had dared say that his smashed thigh bone was career-ending. Although his right leg was now two inches shorter than his left, Rudi was certain that he could overcome this challenge. When Putti advised that walking was likely ambition enough, Rudi felt a coldness spread inside his body.
Charly tried to tell him that there were other things in life, that they could be happy without racing. He silenced her. “No surgery,” he told Putti. However, he consented to returning his leg to the plaster tomb on the condition that he could immediately leave the Institute.
They moved to a friend’s house in Lugano, Switzerland. Between periods of rest on the terrace overlooking the lake, Rudi tried to spend more and more time on his feet. Despite using crutches, each swing of his leg sent a shot of pain through his hip. Charly walked beside him in case he stumbled.
In mid-November, Neubauer paid him a visit. Rudi hid his plaster cast under loose trousers. The Mercedes team manager gave him a great hug, then they retired to the terrace. Rudi sensed that his every move—and facial expression—was under inspection.
As always, Neubauer got straight to the point. Hitler was supporting Daimler-Benz in developing a new race car for the 1934 season. Brau-chitsch and Italian champion Luigi Fagioli had already signed on to the team. Neubauer wanted to know if Rudi could drive again. They needed him.
“Of course, I can,” Rudi said, before brazenly asking about the contract. Neubauer waved away the question. Rudi needed to come to Stuttgart to discuss that—perhaps in January. The two then spent a pleasant afternoon together. Little was said about the car the company was developing, or about its sponsor, who had already firmed up his grip on absolute power. That was not their world, not their concern. They only hoped that support for Mercedes would continue.
After Neubauer returned to Germany, Rudi learned through a friend that the team manager had reported to Kissel that there was little chance Rudi would compete again. Writing him off, they were looking for younger, fitter drivers.
Doctors removed the plaster cast in December. Every day, Rudi tried to walk a little farther, cane in one hand, Charly holding the other. He was gathering strength, but his uneven legs made for an awkward gait, and the pain in his hip never faded.
In early January 1934, he and Charly traveled to Stuttgart. She was resigned to the idea of him racing again. Rudi had pushed for a meeting with Kissel to tell him he was healthy enough to drive. The Daimler-Benz CEO was unconvinced but promised that Neubauer would sit down with him later that evening to discuss it.
Neubauer came directly to Rudi’s room at the Graf Zeppelin Hotel. “Fit and well again?” he asked. As he had done with Kissel, Rudi masked his limp and gritted his teeth through the strain. He swore he was up to driving again. Neubauer reminded him of the strength needed to brake and accelerate hundreds of times during a race. “What guarantee is there that you won’t crack up in the middle?”
Charly lost her temper, suggesting that their new car might “crack up” first. At last, Neubauer offered Rudi a compromise. In May, when the car was ready for testing, Rudi would have to participate in a practice run. If he passed muster, he could be on the team.
The next day, Neubauer brought him to the Untertürkheim plant to show him the new car. They passed a series of huge workshops and arrived at a small building surrounded by a high, barbed-wire fence. A guard checked their identification before allowing them through the gate. Everything about their work was top secret, Neubauer warned. Inside the workshop, Rudi got his first look at the engine and the overall design of their new Grand Prix car: the W25.
The theory behind the 1934 formula was straightforward: if factory teams wanted more powerful engines, the chassis and other gear needed to be heavier to hold them to the road; with weight limited to 750 kilograms, speed would therefore also be limited. Dr. Hans Nibel, head of the company’s design department, figured differently. In his interpretation, the formula basically allowed an unlimited engine size if one could design a lightweight chassis and running gear with the ability to corner, brake, steer, and hold to the road while traveling at very high speeds. Achieving such driving performance was no small matter. As Ferrari historian Brock Yates wrote, up until then, “cars, even the somewhat advanced P3, were merely crude four-wheeled platforms upon which to plant [huge] engines.”
