The One that Got Away
The Silver Arrows and Prince Rainer are both gone, but Thomas O'Keefe pays tribute to the man and machines that made the modern Monaco GP the jewel in the Crown that it is today
What did 1954 Indianapolis 500 winner Bob Sweikert and the late French Grand Prix driver Maurice Trintignant have in common? They were the only drivers to win a race counting toward the 1955 World Drivers' Championship in something other than a Mercedes-Benz W196 - the resuscitated Silver Arrows unleashed on the Grand Prix world by Daimler-Benz AG on July 4, 1954, a world-beater of a race car that was destined to dominate the 1954 and 1955 Grand Prix seasons.
The Silver Arrows had been at the Monaco Grand Prix before, in the 1930s, the heyday of the Hitler-sponsored Mercedes-Benz/Auto-Union juggernauts, and Mercedes-Benz had swept the three pre-World War II Monaco Grands Prix in which the team had participated, even when the Other German team was present.
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