Faster, page 20
On the afternoon of June 25, while the German teams were crossing the Atlantic, the Delahaye 145 arrived at Montlhéry for the first time. Lucy Schell called no press for the event. There was a chance that her self-financed new Delahaye might sputter and die—the gearbox might break, or the tires might even fling off—if recent experience in the 135 was any guide.
Over the past couple of months, her team had been bedeviled by accidents and mechanical failures, leaving Bugatti and Talbot to dominate the French sports-car races. One of the few bright spots was the tenacity of her team captain.
At Le Mans, the week before, René had fallen back to the middle in the twenty-four-hour endurance challenge because his co-driver had bizarrely broken the door during a pit stop and the fix had taken almost an hour. Telling Monsieur Charles that he would claw his way back into position by racing “as if this were a Grand Prix,” René proceeded to pilot his 135 at a delirious pace for ten hours straight, much of it in the dark, through the wheat fields lining the course. He had placed a remarkable third.
The Écurie Bleue transporter rumbled into the Montlhéry autodrome. Lucy was there to greet it, along with René and Jean François. Weiffenbach and some board members showed soon after. Besides this small crew and a couple of track officials, the grounds were empty.
The 145 rolled down the transporter’s ramp onto the concrete track. There were no cheers, no champagne corks, barely even a murmur. Those who had never seen the car at the factory were shocked by its appearance. The 145 looked nothing like its trim, elegantly shaped predecessor, nor like any other Delahaye they had seen before. Outfitted with mudguards mounted high above the wheels for the upcoming sports-car-only French Grand Prix, it looked even more an anomaly.
“Gone was the classic shield-shaped radiator surround,” a Delahaye aficionado later observed. “In its place was a broad blunt snout . . . Gone, too, was the slim tapering profile of the old ‘Six’; the V12 body maintained the same ample girth all the way from the front to the back of the cockpit, its sides thereafter drawing in only slightly toward the flattened tail. The car seemed to hug the ground, its extraordinary low build making it look even longer and wider than it was.”
Some thought the 145 must have been inspired by Lucy’s bulldogs. Or an electric lightbulb tilted on its side. Or the “pug-nosed dumdum bullet.” One critic figured that the inclusion of the mudguards in the design would appeal only to an etymologist keen on praying mantises. It was called “weird,” “brutal,” and “downright ugly.” René thought it “the most awful-looking car [he] ever saw.” Aspersions aside, its shape was utilitarian, from the bulbous nose that housed the extra engine width to the elevated mudguards that reduced drag.
All that mattered to Lucy was that it ran—and fast.
ADATTO ARCHIVES
Presentation of the Delahaye 145, mudguards and all, in the summer of 1937
Jean François insisted that he first test the 145 on the track. Lucy might have written the checks—and alternately cajoled and threatened him to push forward—but the car was his creation after all. As he tucked himself into the cockpit, incongruously dressed in a sport jacket and tie, the intrepid Georges Fraichard arrived with a photographer. He must have been tipped off.
“How is she going to behave?” the L’Intransigent reporter asked.
“She has never been driven before,” François replied.
His mechanics started the engine. There was no deafening yowl as the V12 took life. It was more of a sharp, pulsating rasp that broke the monastic quiet on the track. As François drove away, switching through the gears, the pitch of the engine grew deeper, more authoritative, like it was settling into its own distinctively aggressive voice.
René smiled as François thundered past. Any thoughts about the car’s ugliness vanished. Turning to Fraichard, René whispered, “She’s pretty, is she not? She rides low and gives a beautiful impression of power.”
When François finished a couple of laps of the autodrome, he gave over the pilot seat to René. Envious of his former Grand Prix colleagues competing in the Vanderbilt Cup, he knew that the 145 was his only path back into that arena. Before he set off, he pulled his white linen cap down onto his head and secured his goggles. On the first lap, he went slowly, the steering wheel vibrating from the power of the engine. Then, as he began to get a feel for the car—the stiffness of the reinforced chassis, the almost featherlight gear change—he pressed his foot down all the way on the accelerator.
The Delahaye leaped ahead and banked around the autodrome, steady and sure as a ball just launched around a roulette wheel. René covered a lap in 126 mph, then did several more, never exceeding 4,000 rpm. Finally he pulled up beside the huddle of onlookers and stopped sharply. The brakes were powerful too. There were congratulations and handshakes all around. Lucy was very pleased. Her car ran. It ran very well indeed.
After the celebrations, René returned to the track to put the Delahaye through its paces. A half hour later, the engine overheated. François returned the car to rue du Banquier and made some refinements, notably expanding the air scoop at the front. Then the car went back to Mont-lhéry, and René tested it again. More trouble with ventilation. It was back to the factory to cut louvers in the hood. More tests. More problems. More modifications. They were on a rushed schedule—perhaps an impossible one.
On July 4, when the 145 returned to Montlhéry for the French Grand Prix, many questioned whether it was a race car masquerading as a sports car—or, once stripped of its road gear, vice versa. Monsieur Charles and François replied that it had been built for both events. Versatility was a hallmark of the overall design.
A slate-gray sky looked down on a dismally attended event. The French Grand Prix, in its second year as a straight sports-car event, was a shadow of its former self: a meager eleven entries, no foreign-built cars, few spectators, and disdain from the international motorsport scene, particularly Adolf Hühnlein, who chided, “Some countries would like the engine of the race car to be abandoned in favor of that of the sports car. We will not let ourselves be dragged down this path.”
Scoffs and bemused gazes welcomed René when he brought the Delahaye 145 into the pits. Autocar reported that the new car looked like a “winged beetle” with its headlights and elevated mudguards. Few of them knew what to expect of its performance. Even René had his doubts. Since its first test run two weeks before, he had worked almost every day with François to ready it for the race. Unresolved problems persisted.
“Obviously, it would be miraculous if it did well,” Weiffenbach told a huddle of journalists before the start. “But for all those who stayed up all night to finish it before the Grand Prix, they deserve that we at least participate.”
By the second lap, René already knew there was trouble. The engine was off-pitch. One of the cylinders was misfiring. He was losing speed. Moments later, he came into the pits and climbed out, shoulders sagging. The mechanics rushed to replace the twenty-four spark plugs. René returned to the circuit, far off the lead. Next, flecks of oil spat from the engine. Something significant was wrong. He returned to the pits after the seventh lap. More new spark plugs. The 145 limped back onto the track. The oil pressure plummeted. He barely made it back to the pits to abandon the race.
Louis Chiron won in a Talbot. He had joined Lago’s team shortly before the race, and it was his first competition since his accident on the Nürburgring in July 1936. Talbot took second and third place as well. René wondered again if he had left the team too soon, replacing its early stumbles with the same ones he now endured with Écurie Bleue. But he knew there was no turning back. He had chosen his horse and would now have to ride it. Notably, in his best lap at Montlhéry, René finished thirty seconds behind the pace he would need on the same circuit to have a chance at “the Million.”
Two weeks later, René skirmished with Jean-Pierre Wimille in the first laps of the Grand Prix de la Marne. The Bugatti driver had won at Le Mans, cementing his reputation and further stoking his ego. In a postrace interview, he declared that he intended to win every race from that point forward. He certainly followed that strategy on the triangular circuit at Reims, setting off at a rapid clip on a track that was blistering from the hot sun. René hung tight, his 145 running well. In the third lap, only a couple of car lengths back from the Bugatti, he surged down a straight at 120 mph to overtake Jean-Pierre. Suddenly, the steering wheel jarred in his hands, and the back tail of his car swung to the right. A blown tire.
The Delahaye spun three times until the rear wheels struck the curbstone. René was almost flung out of the car, the brace of his knees against the cockpit all that kept him inside. The 145 leaped into a neighboring field and then pirouetted at high speed several more times before grinding up a ridge to a halt. Dazed, surrounded in a swirl of dust, René crawled out. His arm felt wet. He looked down at his wrist. Blood was pouring from a cut, and he bound it quickly with his scarf.
When the dust settled, he inspected the blown front tire. Its tread was frayed, and the inner tube peeked out. His team had recently switched sponsorship from Dunlop to Goodrich, and their tires clearly weren’t able to handle the heat of the track coupled with the weight of the 145.
René walked back to the pits, cradling his wrist. Unlike in accidents past, he was not unnerved. Rather he was mad at losing the chance to win. He went straight to the Goodrich representative and launched into him, saying that he had almost been killed because of his damned useless tires. How could they dare sell such junk? Before he could throw a punch, his brother Maurice interceded. “Shut up, René,” he said. “You’re not being fair.”
Jean-Pierre won the day, and René and Écurie Bleue departed Reims for Paris.
Lucy detested losing, but she knew any competition that summer was merely a testing ground. She aimed to stake her ownership of the best French race car by winning the Million against the arrogant Bugatti boys and then knocking the Germans off their perch in the next year’s Grand Prix formula season. Nothing less. Nothing more. The accolades the Nazi drivers and their cars won in America—and then exploited back home—fueled her intensity.
René doubted that they would accomplish the first of her ambitions. Delahaye’s chances of achieving the 146.5 kph average before the deadline, or besting any increase over it made by Bugatti, looked slim. Against the Silver Arrows and their two leading drivers, Caracciola and Rosemeyer, who would boast speeds far surpassing anything the Delahaye could manage, René believed they stood no chance whatsoever.
On July 25, almost half a million fans lined the Nürburgring for the German Grand Prix. Tens of thousands crammed the grandstands and the Karussell, the banked switchback turn halfway through the course. One writer noted that “the whole of sporting Germany seemed to have descended” into the Eifel Mountains to watch the race.
The “cream of the European drivers” were there, competing in the fastest of cars. There was no mistake: the German Grand Prix had usurped the French as the season’s premier event.
“Make a perfect start—a perfect start,” Rudi repeated to himself from his position in the second row of the grid. Left foot on the clutch, he watched for the signal to go. On green, he stabbed the pedals and lurched forward, bursting through the first row, past Bernd, before they headed into the first curve, then Rudi dove down into the forest.
During the practice sessions, the Auto Union driver had astonished everybody by landing his own airplane on the track, climbing into a car, and then clocking the best times. Rudi intended to impress on the only day that mattered. After his quick jump off the grid, he ran a steady, cold-blooded race over the twenty-two laps.
Bernd was slowed by tire trouble and tried recklessly to recover his lost time. Ernst von Delius and Dick Seaman sparred down a straight at 155 mph and crashed terribly. Others bowed out because of mechanical problems, and Tazio Nuvolari simply could not keep up in his Alfa Romeo.
Rudi, sticking to his plan of two pit stops and an uncompromising pace, won with a long lead over his teammate Manfred, followed by Bernd. On the victory stand, Rudi raised his arm in a Sieg Heil salute when his name was called, then received the Hitler Prize with a smile. The trophy, a huge bronze bust of “The Goddess of Speed” with windswept hair and lightning bolts affixed to her temples, was quite a weight in his hands.
Bernd stood beside him on the podium, drawing heavily on a cigarette. Seaman would recover from his injuries, but Bernd was very shaken that Delius, his teammate and best friend, had been rushed to the hospital—and would soon die. Rudi assumed that Bernd’s obvious despair was over losing to him again.
The next morning Hans Bauer, Hitler’s personal pilot, flew Rudi and Manfred to Bayreuth, the Bavarian town where the Nazi leader had his country home. Goebbels welcomed them, and then there was a round of hearty handshakes with Hitler before a photographer took their pictures.
Later that afternoon, Bauer told Rudi that some party higher-ups had heard a rumor that he had taken Swiss citizenship; after all, he was building a house for his new wife there. Was it true? Rudi dug into his pocket and presented Bauer with his German passport. He was a patriot, Rudi implied, same as anyone at Bayreuth. He lived on Lake Lugano because the dry, warm air was good for his leg. This satisfied the pilot. Emboldened by his recent win, Rudi cheekily countered, “Now, I must ask you something. Do you suppose you could fly us to Stuttgart?”
After they landed, Rudi was paraded through the streets on the bed of a Mercedes truck that had been bedecked with flowers. At the gates of Untertürkheim, a banner read HEIL DEM SIEGER (HAIL TO THE VICTOR). A brass band and rousing chanting of his name welcomed him. At the party afterward, Wilhelm Kissel handed him a diamond-and-sapphire medallion fixed with a Mercedes star.
Rudi followed his German victory with wins at the Spanish and Italian Grands Prix, where he continued to drive the superb W125 with a mix of aggression, focus, and seasoned experience. At the end of the season, Rudi was named European Champion, toppling Bernd from his throne.
For four years running, the Silver Arrows had absolutely monopolized the Grand Prix, fulfilling one of the promises Hitler made at the 1933 Motor Show. Production figures at Mercedes and other manufacturers were growing by double digits every year, exports were rising, and profits were fat. The national autobahn project was also making huge strides. Hundreds of thousands of workers, fleets of trucks and machinery, tons of iron and steel, and enough concrete to fill 100,000 railroad cars—all went into creating 4,287 miles of “Hitler’s Highways.” The Führer was also moving forward with his dream of putting every German family in their own automobile, with the Volkswagen (the People’s Car), a project spearheaded by Ferdinand Porsche. NSKK membership was on the rise as well.
Victory in the Grand Prix was the pinnacle and the inspiration for all these efforts to motorize Germany, and Rudi was once again at its apotheosis, the hero of the new Germany. He was constantly lauded as “Caracciola, the man without nerves,” and his every victory was played out in newsreels, his arm always raised in salute to the Führer. Never was he seen limping on his shortened leg.
He published a best-selling memoir, Rennen – Sieg – Rekorde!, which set him up as an unlikely champion and praised the role of Hitler in reviving his country’s fortunes in motorsport. “The driver fights for victory and honor,” Rudi wrote, “and the law of fighters is to burn oneself out to the last spark.” Further stoking the Nazi rhetoric, the Goebbels machine proclaimed him to be a “frontline” soldier in the “racetrack battle” aided by the “brave, small army of mechanics.”
Rudi supported the party line by taking part in advertising campaigns, speaking at the annual motor show, and appearing beside Hitler and other high officials at public events and private parties. He was, de facto, a standard bearer of the Third Reich, a regime whose growing military footing gave teeth to its veiled threats of “total war.”
10
“Le Drame du Million”
IN LATE JULY, Lucy and her Écurie Bleue team established base camp at the Montlhéry track. They brought a mechanics’ shop of equipment and spare parts and a stack of Dunlop tires—everything apart from sheets and beds. They were staying until they won “le Million.”
Lucy wanted René to practice at Montlhéry until he knew the 12.5-kilometer course, including the road section and the autodrome, like his own bedroom in the dark. While Jean François was at the factory, building a new iteration of his V12 that capitalized on what they had learned from its performance throughout the season, René was at the autodrome with a 145 stripped to its race car essentials and running an earlier version of the engine. Its body was a thin, unpainted aluminum shell that looked like it had been hammered out by a half-blind panel beater. To reduce weight, François stripped out its second seat.
As August progressed, reporters flocked to Montlhéry to see who was practicing and who might make the first attempt. Would it be the fabled house of Bugatti? At the beginning of the decade, they had owned the Grand Prix, and they had already claimed the fund’s first prize. Was this to be their comeback, championed by that dashing driver Wimille? Would Émile Petit, the noted engineer of SEFAC, produce a winner after a string of unfulfilled promises? Might Tony Lago, who talked a good game, build off his success at the French Grand Prix and field a Talbot contender, with Louis Chiron, three-time winner at Montlhéry, as its pilot? Or could the Delahaye firm, which had dazzled of late with its revolutionary 135, prove that the old French house was indeed a renewed force in motor racing? The presence of René Dreyfus and that American spitfire Lucy Schell at the autodrome showed that they were serious indeed.
Such was the drumbeat of questions, stirred keenly by frequent newspaper dispatches. With the French on their annual August holidays, there was plenty of time for predictions. “In bars and cafés, on beaches and golf courses up and down the country, it was a matter of fierce discussion,” chronicled one writer. “[The Million] was a gloriously newsworthy, complex, emotional mélange—part entertainment, part chauvinism, part Russian roulette, as irresistible to the press as it was to the public.”
