The Alfa team went to Monte Carlo. Nuvolari led from the start, running away from the field. Caracciola, who had fluffed his start, worked his way up slowly. He was gaining on Nuvolari, lap by lap, trimming seconds from the Italian's lead. At last he was second, and still gaining. During the last laps Caracciola realized that Nuvolari's Alfa was sputtering. Caracciola gained ground at a faster and faster rate, and soon was wheel-to-wheel, so close he could see into Nuvolari's car.
The crowd was wildly excited, watching the race between the factory Alfa of Nuvolari and the "independent" Alfa of Caracciola.
But now Caracciola began to worry about the understanding that exists between all drivers on the same team. They must not fight it out among themselves. He who leads at half distance shall win. The other shall not press him, for to press might cause both cars to crash or blow up, letting some rival factory machine reap the financial and publicity rewards of victory.
Caracciola now was racing nose-to-tail behind Nuvolari's red Alfa. He saw panic in Nuvolari's movements; something was definitely wrong with the car.
Caracciola could have passed at any time. And why not pass? He was not a member of the team. He was an independent. The other drivers had refused to have him. He had no obligation either to them or to the factory.
But instead of passing, he slowed and let Nuvolari build up a lead again and cross the finish well in front.
When Caracciola stopped his car and got out, the crowd in the grandstand at the finish line rose in fury. The air rang with harsh, derisive whistling. There was yelling and threats and men waved handkerchiefs at him contemptuously.
The crowd knew he had let Nuvolari win and, noting that he was entered as an independent rather than a team driver, imagined he had lacked the guts to fight it out wheel-to-wheel through the dozen dangerous corners of the principality.
Caracciola had never been booed before. Now he stood there with his head down, wretched, listening to catcalls and worse. His mechanic came toward him.
"Why did you do that, Mr. Caracciola?"
"I don't know," Caracciola answered miserably.
The Alfa pit manager came up with outstretched hands.
"That was decent of you, Rudi," he said. "Really very decent. They want me to ask you if you'll join the team."
"And Campari?"
"It was Campari who suggested it. The other boys are all for it, too."
And so Caracciola won a place on the Alfa team.
The next year Alfa did not run as a factory. Caracciola had spent the winter skiing near Arosa with his wife and the Monegasque driver Louis Chiron. Chiron had just been dropped by Bugatti, so both drivers would be without cars for the 1933 season. They began to talk over a plan Chiron had. Why did they not buy Alfas from the factory and run under their own names? They could call their team "Scuderia C.C."
Finally they agreed. They bought the two cars. Mercedes lent Caracciola a diesel transporter to carry them around in. Caracciola's car was painted white with a blue stripe, Chiron's blue with a white stripe.
They went to Monte Carlo to practice a week before the 1933 Grand Prix.
Caracciola was familiar with the Alfa. Chiron had never driven it before, so Caracciola led the way around the circuit, increasing speed lap by lap. He was delighted with Chiron's quick mastery of the skittish little Alfa. As speeds went up, Caracciola watched Chiron in his rearview mirror, driving just as fast as he, hanging on to his tailpipe.
Then, passing in front of the Casino and dropping down the steep twisty street toward the tunnel, Chiron disappeared from the mirror.
Caracciola decided to slow, to wait for his partner to catch up. Along the harbor front he braked. Nothing happened. Then a front wheel locked and the car skidded toward the stone balustrade, at what is called Tobacconists' Corner. Caracciola reported later that his mind was functioning perfectly clearly. He steered into the skid, downshifted, estimated his speed at 65 miles an hour, even decided he was making only about 15 miles an hour too much to get around.
Then the car crashed against the stone balustrade, crunched into the stone, and stopped.
Caracciola, sitting in the half-crushed cockpit, breathed a sigh of relief. He had got away with it.
He began to hoist himself out of the car. Chiron screeched to a stop behind him. Others came running up to help. But Caracciola waved them back. He was okay.
He swung his legs over the edge of the car, jumped down into the street, and collapsed. Pain darted through his leg, then through his whole body. Chiron was holding him. He had never felt such excruciating pain in his life.
He was carried into the tobacco shop and placed in a chair. Sweat popped from his forehead and it took all his will to keep from screaming.
The ambulance came. It bumped toward the hospital with Caracciola inside digging his nails into the stretcher.
X-rays showed that the thighbone was crushed. The doctor was of the opinion that Caracciola might lose the leg, would certainly have a shorter, weaker, useless leg at best.
He was slapped into a cast that itched and bit into his flesh. He did not trust the doctor and was frantic with fear that they might chloroform him and operate.
The Alfa people arranged to have him sent to Bologna, where he sat for six months, listening to radio reports of races being won by other men, playing cards with his wife. He was not a man capable of losing himself in books or conversation. He was a racing driver and all day the engines roared in his ears. He was sometimes in pain, always frantic with boredom. He counted the days, one by one.
After six months the cast was removed. He tried to walk, but the agony was so acute he nearly fainted. They put him back in plaster for another month.
When he was discharged, he and his wife went to Switzerland. He walked with the aid of sticks, in great pain. Day after day he forced himself to do exercises. There was no progress that he could see.
Word came that Mercedes was returning to racing in 1934. Would Caracciola be ready to drive? He insisted he would be. An emissary was being sent down from the factory. Hearing this, Caracciola forced the doctor to remove the bulky bandages. He practiced walking in front of a mirror. When the emissary came he pretended that the leg was fine, allowed himself to be slapped on the knee, never once showed pain, grinned, and laughed. Would the fellow never go? He didn't know how much longer he could keep from screaming.
"Will you be ready?" the man asked, in leaving.
"Depends on the terms," answered Caracciola.
The emissary reported at the firm that Caracciola could not be counted on. Obviously his leg was not right.
Caracciola and his wife, Charly, went up into the mountains. They had both loved to ski, but now they played cards all day. In the evenings they went for long walks, Rudi leaning on his wife's shoulder. He would not go out until dark. No one must see him like this, unable to walk.
Some friends came by and urged Charly to come skiing.
"Go with them," said Rudi. "You need the exercise and the change. You have been too long with an invalid. I'll be all right for one day. I'll go down to the station at five to meet the train."
And he did, but she was not on it. He hobbled back to their chalet and sat waiting. The hours passed. The stars came out and a pale quarter moon.
The last train came in at nearly ten. From the window, Caracciola watched a figure walking up toward the chalet. At first he thought it was Charly, then realized it was a man, one of the ski guides. A premonition passed over him like a chill. He limped to the door. His voice cracked as he called, "Come in."
"Mr. Caracciola--"
"Yes. Yes."
"There's been an accident. An avalanche. Charly--"
"Oh no."
"She fell directly into it. She's-" He could not go on.
"Dead," Caracciola said.
The man nodded. He stood a moment, then, as Caracciola began to sob, turned and ran down the stairs.
Chiron got there on the first train. Caracciola lay on a couch in th
e darkness. He refused to go out, to eat, to see anyone. For days Chiron stayed with him, working hard to cheer him up, to interest him in living again. There was no funeral. Charly's body was never found.
Chiron was the closest friend he ever had, and almost the only one. They had no language in common. They conversed in pidgin versions of French or German, and by sign language. There was something between them that words might have spoiled-an understanding of what the other man felt.
This understanding helped Caracciola over the worst days. Then Chiron had to go.
A few weeks later he was back again.
"Bonjour, Rudi," he said cheerfully. "How would you like to drive a lap of honor at Monte Carlo before the Grand Prix? They wanted to write you about it, but I said: Never mind, I'll go up there myself and bring him along."
"I'd rather not," said Caracciola.
He had hardly moved from the room since Charly's death. Chiron bustled about throwing open the shutters, chattering cheerfully.
Caracciola was not listening. Suddenly, Chiron grabbed him by the shoulders. "You've got to get out of this hole," he cried. "You've had a tough break, but life isn't over. Her today, you tomorrow. If there was any justice in the world you would have been killed a long time ago. Life goes on. Do you know something: the births each day outnumber the deaths by over a hundred thousand?"
Chiron talked on and on in this vein. Caracciola understood little of it, or none at all. But he did understand that someone cared what happened to him, and at last he agreed to Chiron's offer. If it meant so much to Chiron, he would drive a lap of honor at Monte Carlo.
He arrived at Monte Carlo just before the race. A girl handed some flowers into his car and he began to tour the circuit. Wherever he passed, many people stood cheering and waving, as if they wanted him back. The day was sunny and warm, the sun shone on the sea, yachts bobbed in the harbor, the cliffs were dotted with color and people. To Caracciola the day smelled of spring and love and life, plus the special excitement that hangs over a circuit on race day.
It hurt his leg to drive even so slowly for a single lap, and at the end he was braking with his left foot. He stopped at the pits and got out. He inhaled the burnt castor oil of the race cars, listened to the swelling engine noise. Then the flag fell and the cars howled away, the exhaust smoke blossoming behind them.
Caracciola felt shaken. After Charly's death he had not wanted to live, much less drive, but now he knew that the world of racing was his world. Without it he was nothing. He ached to climb into a Grand Prix car again, to feel the power squirming and straining under him, to put his foot down and roar away, to feel himself again a giant among men. To race.
That season he went everywhere Chiron went, following the cars, cheering on his friend, trying to make himself useful in the pits. They were inseparable. Chiron was a good mimic, a natural comedian, and he kept Caracciola's spirits high with his buffoonery and cheerfulness, while the leg slowly mended.
In the fall, Caracciola was well enough to drive in and win the Grand Prix of Italy, though the pain was so bad in the closing stages that he had to hand over to Fagioli.
The winter passed. His leg still hurt sometimes, and he had a marked limp that he was to carry to his grave, for the right leg was now 2 inches shorter than the left. His leg muscles had to be shifted, reformed, strengthened, and he forced himself to exercise day after day, week after week, month after month, ignoring the pain, the boredom, the occasional despair, forcing himself on and on through sheer strength of will. Grand Prix races were longer in those days. The leg had to be strong enough to last a 5 hour race, to brake down from 150 miles an hour perhaps 2,500 times in a single Grand Prix.
Would it ever be that strong? The world insisted that champions never came back. But he, Rudolf Caracciola, would show them they were wrong.
And in 1935 he won the French, Spanish, Tripoli, Belgian, and Swiss Grands Prix, four of them in record time, plus some lesser races, and was crowned champion of Europe.
He must have been the best, for he won the most races, but he got little publicity because journalists considered him unapproachable. Instead they wrote about Nuvolari, Varzi, Chiron, and others. The legend Caracciola should have become faded even while he still raced.
He sat out the war in Switzerland. He had his prize money, plus a pension from Mercedes that kept coming in until the final collapse of Germany.
When the war was over he went to America to race at Indianapolis, crashed, and was in a coma for 10 days.
He recovered, at least apparently. But there were friends who said later that the crash aged him, that afterward he began to spend long hours reminiscing, steeped in the past.
In 1952, when Mercedes came back to racing in a limited way, Rudi was recalled to the factory team, and entered in the Monte Carlo rally. He was 51 but, driving a closed car, still managed to post the best times in spots. The old skill, unused since the crash in Indianapolis six years before, was still there.
Mercedes gave him another closed car for the Mille Miglia. He practiced over the route for two months, and sometimes would describe to younger men what the roads had been like when he had won the race in 1931. In the race itself he drove fast, was cool, and in control at all times. But he appeared to have misjudged the pace at which the Mille Miglia was being raced these days. He simply went too slowly and finished only fourth.
He went to Berne for a sports car race. He drove well for several laps, then the two other Mercedes passed him. They were driven by Herman Lang and Karl Kling, both nearly as old as he. Rudi seemed to be tiring fast. On lap 13 he missed a curve and slid off the road into a tree at 95 miles an hour. The crash smashed his left leg as badly as the right. He spent eight months in traction.
He never raced again.
His last appearance at a race was in 1958 at Le Mans when he drove a few laps in a retrospective pageant in a 1930 Mercedes. A few journalists who tried to talk to him reported later that he was as uncommunicative as ever.
He died the following year of a liver ailment that might have been cancer, or might have been, as some said, a lingering effect of the crash at Berne seven years before. He was 58.
After the funeral, one or two of the Mercedes people went to his house to see if everything was all right. Among their discoveries was a wine cellar where Caracciola had hoarded wines and champagnes of most of the vintage years since 1900. It was the cellar of a gourmet, suitable to a host given to delighting his guests with the taste and bouquet of fine wines.
But Caracciola never drank, and few visitors came to his house, believing he preferred to be left alone. Peering among the dusty, priceless bottles, it was possible to believe that Caracciola had always longed to move at ease in company, to please and amuse many kinds of people. But he never knew how. The only way he ever found to express himself in life was driving race cars, and he lived and died alone.
The history of the Grand Prix de Monaco is filled with spectacular sights: Nuvolari, in the lead in the 1933 race, emerging from the tunnel on the hundredth and last lap, his car on fire. Jumping out, leaning away from the flames, he pushed it more than half a mile, only to collapse from exhaustion and smoke poisoning 200 yards from the finish line; it was a race he had counted won, for he led by miles with only yards to go. But he did not finish at all.
Or Rosemeyer, in 1936, losing control of his tail-heavy Auto-Union on the hill toward the Casino, the car spinning round and round until it crashed into and half through the stone wall, below which the cliff fell six stories to another street. The car hung there, more than half of it suspended over air, the other part wedged (Rosemeyer hoped as he climbed gingerly out of the cockpit) in the wall itself.
Or Ascari in 1955, losing control in the chicane where the street bends left up onto the promenade, and becoming the first and only man ever to drive a Grand Prix race car into the Mediterranean Sea. Launches, which had been idling nearby with frogmen stationed on deck, roared up, the frogmen prepared to dive down for the driver
. For many seconds only bubbles and steam emerged from the embroiled water. Then out popped Ascari's round blue helmet, and in it his round fat face pop-eyed with shock and disbelief. He was hauled on deck, where he hid, too ashamed to show himself. The crowd, seeing that he was unhurt, laughed itself silly. It must have surprised the fish to see a Grand Prix Lancia settling slowly among them. Ascari had been leading the race, too.
Or the sight, a week or more before the 1959 race, of workmen knocking together the grandstands and pit counters. They had ranged the signs that were to identify the pits along a curb. They were the signs of the 1958 race, and I read the names sadly:
Musso-Ferrari
Collins-Ferrari
Hawthorn-Ferrari
Lewis-Evans-Vanwall
There had been 16 starters in the 1958 race. Now the signs leaned against a curb and I noted that four drivers, 25 percent, were already dead before the year was out that had started here so jauntily. I asked myself: how many more by this time next year, or the year after?
Yet there is a splendor to racing that no other work can match. If you do not believe in this splendor, come to Monte Carlo, for it is more obvious there than anywhere.
Chapter 4.
Man vs. Sicily
AT DAWN THE quiet Sicilian countryside erupts into the noise and motion of race cars. The first car in the Targa Florio goes off at five a.m. Others follow at 30-second intervals until all, usually 60, have started.
The race, which is a world-championship event for sports cars, roars south into the mountains, shattering the slumber of peasants and their flocks, waking entire villages with its thunder. The road climbs and twists into the wilds of central Sicily, reaching an altitude of 2,000 feet, then turns abruptly and plunges through meadows, vineyards, olive groves, and occasional villages back to the sea.
Along the sea is the one flat, straight stretch. It is about three and a half miles long and is the only place where a high-powered Ferrari can reach top gear. For a few seconds the car can scream proudly along at 170 miles an hour. Then the 45-mile lap is completed, the road begins to climb and turn, and all cars, on roads built for donkey carts, are more or less alike. On such roads cars as powerful as a Ferrari or Aston Martin are a handful to manage, and can hold an average speed of only about 60 miles per hour. Thus the race, 630 miles long, lasts 11 hours or more.
CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age Page 7
