1934 Italian Grand Prix

Lineup at the start of the race

Mercedes-Benz W 25 , winning car from Luigi Fagioli and Rudolf Caracciola

The plant - Maserati of Tazio Nuvolari

The XII. The Italian Grand Prix took place on September 9, 1934 at the Autodromo di Milano in Monza . The race belonged to the Grandes Épreuves category and was held in accordance with the provisions of the International Grand Prix Formula (racing cars up to a maximum of 750 kg curb weight; 85 cm minimum width; race distance at least 500 km) over 116 laps of 4.31 km each, which is a total distance of 499.96 km.

The winner was the driver pairing Rudolf Caracciola / Luigi Fagioli in a Mercedes-Benz W 25 . Fagioli had taken over his team-mate's car after his own early retirement during the race. It was Mercedes-Benz's first success at an official Grand Prix after returning to Grand Prix racing.

run

After the “Black Day of Monza” in the previous year, when three top international drivers were killed in accidents on the high-speed sections of the Monza racetrack , the route for 1934 was massively defused. What remained was a greatly shortened combination of essentially right-angled bends, two chicanes and a hairpin on the long straight, which was intended to reduce the speed of the cars significantly. Due to the many exhausting driving and steering maneuvers, this meant considerable additional physical stress for the racing drivers, especially under the extreme heat prevailing on the day of the race.

After the so far rather disappointing season, in which its main competitor Auto Union had recently achieved greater successes, Mercedes-Benz launched the first expansion stage of the Mercedes-Benz W 25 in the middle of the season , in which the displacement of the eight-cylinder in-line went from 3.4 to 3, 7 liters has been increased. Except for the Maserati 8CM from Tazio Nuvolari , in which the old 3-liter eight-cylinder was replaced by a new six-cylinder exchange engine with a displacement of 3.7 liters - which also changed the model name to Maserati 6C-34 - was the Grand Prix - The vehicle fleet has remained technically essentially unchanged compared to the previous races.

For the Italian Grand Prix, the starting grid was determined by lot, as is still common practice. First, a sequence was determined for the five represented manufacturers: Mercedes-Benz, Alfa Romeo (represented by Scuderia Ferrari ), Bugatti , Maserati and Auto Union . Each racing team was assigned a starting place among the first five, ten and fifteen participants, to which the teams were then allowed to distribute their drivers according to their own ideas. If a position remained vacant, the corresponding driver of the next team moved up. In this way it was ensured that the fastest drivers of the various teams had roughly equal opportunities. Accordingly, Rudolf Caracciola (Mercedes-Benz W 25), Achille Varzi ( Alfa Romeo Tipo B ), Tazio Nuvolari (Maserati 6C-34) and Hans Stuck ( Auto Union Type A ) gathered in the front two rows . The third starting position in the front row remained empty, however, because Bugatti had to withdraw the only Bugatti Type 59 reported by the factory for Antonio Brivio from the race due to a defect in the compressor.

After the start, Luigi Fagioli was briefly in the lead for Mercedes-Benz, but was overtaken by a driving error by Stuck, Varzi, Nuvolari and his own team-mate Caracciola. Once again, the Auto-Union racing cars proved to be the fastest in the field, so that Stuck steadily expanded his lead as the team continued, while the second man in the team, Hermann zu Leiningen , worked his way up the field one by one. Caracciola with his Mercedes also made up ground and was in second place after the fifth lap, now ahead of Varzi (Alfa Romeo) and Nuvolari (Maserati), while zu Leiningen had meanwhile reached fifth place. Up to the eighth lap the advance took him to third place and from the 19th lap the new rear-engined and mid-engined racing cars from Auto Union even took first, third and fourth place because the third driver in the team, August Momberger , is now also in the lead the two Italians had passed.

At Mercedes, however, worries increased again. Already at the beginning of the race, Ernst Jakob Henne , as a substitute driver for Manfred von Brauchitsch , who was diagnosed with a broken skull as a late consequence of his accident at the German Grand Prix , was eliminated by accident and Fagioli also had to park his car on lap 13. As it was rumored, he is said to have switched and over-revved the engine. So all Mercedes hopes rested on Caracciola, who was able to maintain second place in the midst of the three Auto Union racing cars, although he suffered from severe pain - a result of his injuries from the accident in Monaco last year .

With four German cars in the lead, the Italian teams initially had no choice but to “entertain” the audience by fighting for fifth place in front of their home crowd. With the new engine, Nuvolaris Maserati was obviously on a par with the Alfa Romeos again and since the beginning of the race he had been fighting a dogged duel with Varzi with multiple position changes, which was only ended by Nuvolaris' scheduled pit stop on lap 39.

In the meantime, however, the situation at the top had also changed. It started when Momberger had to come to the pits lying in fourth position with scorched feet. In order to save weight, the coolant in the Auto-Union racing cars was not routed through separate lines, but directly through the frame tubes of the chassis to the rear of the engine, which, under the extreme heat of the race day, meant that the entire construction was located in the cockpit area had heated up too much. Auto Union racing manager Wilhelm Sebastian , who had been registered as a substitute driver for the team, took over the helm in Momberger's place . In addition, Professor Porsche himself had to coordinate the race from the pits. A little later there was another setback when the third-placed man at Leiningen rolled out on the track with an empty tank because the fuel consumption of his racing car had been calculated too low.

The team's greatest concern, however, was that Stuck could no longer keep his lap times. In addition to declining brakes, he also increasingly suffered from increasing physical exhaustion because he was also experiencing overheating problems in the cockpit. However, since Caracciola could no longer maintain the pace due to his suffering, Stuck was even able to increase his lead over the runner-up. Finally, both cars pitted one after the other for their scheduled stops around halfway through the race. While Stuck had to resume the race despite his pain, because in Leiningen there was still somewhere out on the track on foot and no other reserve driver was available, Caracciola handed his car over to Fagioli, who had now rested again. In addition, thanks to pressure refueling and without changing tires, the Mercedes pit team brought the car back into the race in front of Auto Union.

Fagioli had all advantages on his side and was able to slowly but steadily expand his lead. Nevertheless, the final decision was not made until Stuck came in again on the 74th lap to hand over the steering wheel to zu Leiningen, who had meanwhile arrived at the pits. According to the rules, the engine had to be switched off when stopping at the pits and there were then difficulties in starting it again. In the meantime, Varzi and Carlo Felice Trossi were able to drive past the standing Auto Union with their two Alfa Romeos. But the two Italians were no longer able to cope with the rigors of the race and had to hand them over to their reserve drivers. In the meantime, Stuck had received medical care so that he could take over his racing car again on lap 95 and finished the race one lap behind Fagioli in second place. Out of ten cars at the finish, only four participants had managed this extremely strenuous race to the end without releasing at the wheel.

Results

Registration list

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Daimler-Benz AG	02	Rudolf Caracciola	Mercedes-Benz W 25	Mercedes-Benz M 25 A / B 3.7L I8 compressor	C.
	12	Luigi Fagioli
	22nd	Ernst Jakob Henne
Scuderia Ferrari	04th	Achille Varzi	Alfa Romeo Tipo B / P3	Alfa Romeo 2.9L I8 compressor	E.
	14th	Carlo Felice Trossi
	24	Louis Chiron
	30th	Gianfranco Comotti
		Attilio Marinoni
		Mario Tadini
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti	06th	Antonio Brivio	Bugatti T59	Bugatti 3.3L I8 compressor	M.
Tazio Nuvolari	08th	Tazio Nuvolari	Maserati 6C-34	Maserati 3.7L I6 compressor	P
Auto Union AG	10	Hans Stuck	Auto Union A	Auto Union 4.4L V16 compressor	C.
	20th	August Momberger
	28	Hermann zu Leiningen
		Wilhelm Sebastian
Earl Howe	16	Earl Howe	Bugatti T51	Bugatti 2.3L I8 compressor	D.
Officine Alfieri Maserati	18th	Goffredo Zehender	Maserati 8C-3000	Maserati 3.0L I8 compressor	P
Whitney Straight	26th	Whitney Straight	Maserati 8CM	Maserati 3.0L I8 compressor
Hans Ruesch	32	Hans Ruesch	Maserati 8CM	Maserati 3.0L I8 compressor
		Guglielmo Sandri

Race result

Item	driver	constructor	Round	Stops	time	begin	Fastest lap	Failure reason
01	Rudolf Caracciola Luigi Fagioli	Mercedes Benz	116		4: 45: 47,000	1
02	Hans Stuck Hermann zu Leiningen	Auto Union	115		+ 1 lap	5	2: 13,600 1
03	Carlo Felice Trossi Gianfranco Comotti	Alfa Romeo	114		+ 2 rounds	7th
04th	Louis Chiron	Alfa Romeo	113		+ 3 rounds	12
05	Tazio Nuvolari	Maserati	113		+ 3 rounds	4th
06th	Gianfranco Comotti Attilio Marinoni	Alfa Romeo	113		+ 3 rounds	15th
07th	August Momberger Wilhelm Sebastian	Auto Union	112		+ 4 rounds	10
08th	Whitney Straight	Maserati	112		+ 4 rounds	13
09	Earl Howe	Bugatti	104		+ 12 rounds	8th
-	Hans Ruesch Guglielmo Sandri	Maserati	105		DSQ	16		Outside help
-	Achille Varzi Mario Tadini	Alfa Romeo	97		DNF	2		Gearbox damage
-	Hermann zu Leiningen	Auto Union	54		DNF	14th		no more fuel
-	Goffredo Zehender	Maserati	45		DNF	9		Brake defect
-	Luigi Fagioli	Mercedes Benz	12		DNF	6th		Compressor damage
-	Ernst Jakob Henne	Mercedes Benz	1		DNF	11		Radiator damage
-	Antonio Brivio	Bugatti			DNS	3		Compressor damage before the start of the race

¹ Hans Stuck

Web links

Commons : Italian Grand Prix 1934  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• XII Gran Premio d'Italia. www.teamdan.com, accessed on August 10, 2014 (English). 
• Leif Snellman, Felix Muelas: XII ° GRAN PREMIO D'ITALIA. www.kolumbus.fi, April 9, 2013, accessed August 10, 2014 (English). 

References and comments

1. ↑ The type designation of the Auto Union racing cars was only introduced later by specialist authors to differentiate between the individual models