#Mercedes kompressor cars drivers

These cars, painted in Germany’s traditional white racing colour, were big, strong and powerful – but there the comparison with the mighty beast ended. This was the somewhat unflattering nickname – at least on first glance – given by the racing community to the heavyweight models from the S to the SSKL, with which Mercedes-Benz totally dominated the racing scene in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This enhancement of the K racing touring car is regarded as the first of the ‘white elephants’. The Mercedes-Benz 26/170/225 hp S model racing touring car from 1927 was the first Kompressor sports car in this family to be fully developed by Mercedes-Benz as a racing car. The K, S, SS, SSK and SSKL models were used for racing events, but were also available for use on the road.ġ927: the Mercedes-Benz S model, the first of the ‘white elephants’ The K was the first member of the legendary family of heavyweight Kompressor cars that enabled Mercedes-Benz to dominate the racing scene in the years from 1926 onwards.

This car had a displacement of 6242 cc and developed 110 hp (85 kW) with a Roots mechanical supercharger, or 160 hp (118 kW) with the Kompressor supercharger. However, the star of the racing year was clearly the Mercedes K racing touring car based on the Mercedes 24/100/140 hp. His average speed of 89.8 km/h gave Caracciola another record, and also his third Semmering ‘Wanderpreis’ trophy, which he was therefore entitled to retain permanently. Caracciola also won the racing car class, in a 1914 Mercedes 4.5-litre grand prix racing car with a Kompressor supercharged engine. On the very same day, Rudolf Caracciola won the Semmering event, also in a Mercedes-Benz K, with an average speed of 74.7 km/h, in the class for touring cars with displacement of up to eight litres. The ‘over five-litre sports car’ class of the Solitude race was won by Willy Walb in his K model, first introduced in 1926. Neubauer first used his communication system in the ‘Solitude’ race on 12 September 1926.

#Mercedes kompressor cars drivers

It was at this time that Alfred Neubauer, who now saw himself more as an organiser than a racing driver, first formulated his idea for detailed communication between drivers and the pits with a system of flags and sign boards, and for a meticulously planned process during pit stops. While the Monza racing car did not play any major role in the new company’s involvement in motor racing, the first German Grand Prix did mark the beginning of a new era in motor sport. In order to race as a sports car, the Mercedes-Benz racing department converted the body of the grand prix design into a four-seater. Caracciola completed the distance of 392.3 kilometres with an average speed of 135.2 km/h. It was in one of these cars that Rudolf Caracciola won the first German Grand Prix for sports cars on 11 July 1926, at the Avus track in Berlin. The most powerful of those vehicles was the eight-cylinder Monza car of 1924. Mercedes had already been making racing cars with mechanical superchargers of this kind for some years. This was also the background to the focus on the Kompressor vehicles made in Stuttgart in the two years before the 1926 merger, and after the completion of the transaction. Victory in Mille Miglia 1931 as the first non-Italian winnerĪhead of the merger, Benz and Daimler had agreed that the racing activities of both brands would be continued for the time being by DMG.Impressive vehicles dubbed ‘white elephants’.1926: debut of Mercedes-Benz Kompressor cars on the racetrack.