Car · Mercedes · 1954–1955
Mercedes W196
The only closed-wheel car ever to win a World Championship race, and it won three. Mercedes ran the streamliner at fast circuits and an open-wheel body elsewhere after Fangio complained he could not place the front wheels at Silverstone. The programme ended abruptly after Le Mans 1955, where a Mercedes sports car went into the crowd and killed more than eighty people; Mercedes did not return to Formula One as a constructor until 2010.
- Seasons
- 1954–1955
- Entries
- 40
- Wins
- 9
- Poles
- 8
- Fastest laps
- 9
- Drivers' titles
- 2
Why it mattered
The idea. Aircraft engineering applied to a racing car: direct fuel injection, desmodromic valves, and a full-width streamliner body
New on this car. Direct fuel injection taken from Daimler-Benz aero engines; desmodromic valve gear, which closes the valves mechanically instead of with springs and so removes the rev ceiling that valve float imposes; inboard brakes; the Type Monza streamliner
What it did. 9 wins from 12 races entered. Fangio's titles in 1954 and 1955.
- Designers
- Rudolf Uhlenhaut
- Supersedes
- —
- Design life
- 1954–1955
- Confidence
- high
Specification
- Chassis
- welded aluminium tube spaceframe
- Suspension
- Front: double wishbone with torsion bars. Rear: low-pivot swing axle with torsion bars
- Brakes
- inboard drum
- Gearbox
- —
- Gears
- —
- Tyres
- Continental
- Fuel
- —
- Engine
- Mercedes-Benz M196
- Configuration
- I8
- Capacity
- 2,497 cc
- Aspiration
- naturally aspirated
- Power
- 290 bhp
- Power note
- 257 bhp on debut, developed towards 290-300 bhp; a 340 bhp target at 10,000 rpm was never reached in a race
- Weight
- —
- Wheelbase
- —
- Track, front
- —
- Track, rear
- —
A blank is a figure nobody published for this car. Where several teams quote the same number in a season it is usually the rule they were all built to rather than a measurement, so it is kept with the regulation limits instead of here.
Every entry 40 entries
Show all 40 entriesShow the first 10, Every entry
Photographs
From Wikimedia Commons, each shown with the photographer and licence its terms require.
A photograph marked unchecked has a file name that does not name the car it is shown for. Most are still the right car, filed under the driver rather than the machine — but nobody has confirmed these one by one.
Where this comes from
- Constructor
- Mercedes
- Predecessor
- Mercedes-Benz W195
- Successor
- Mercedes MGP W01
- Races (published)
- 12
- Wins (published)
- 9
- Poles (published)
- 8
- Confidence
- reference
- Specification source
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W196
- Register source
- https://github.com/f1db/f1db