Tam Got Me Thinking about Auto Racing

repost from my comment on her blog:

My favorite auto racing story is the 1935 German Grand Prix. Nine Nazi-funded state-of-the-art Goliaths versus one Italian Tazio Nuvolari in the David role, driving an obsolete, underpowered Alfa Romeo for Enzo Ferrari. Hitler was there, and eager to see one of the German cars to win. He'd heavily bankrolled Mercedes and Porsche. The German cars were technically superior in every way, and their teams were professionally organized in a way that would be recognizable to a racing team manager today (not so the disorganized French, British, and Italians). The track was the legendary Nurburgring, a 14 mile suicide circuit through forested mountains. Manfred Von Brauchitsch, nephew of the Generalfeldmarschall, held an apparently insurmountable lead going in to the the last few laps. Nuvolari drove brilliantly the entire race, just to keep his hopelessly outclassed car in the hunt, but going into the last few laps he began performing miracles, gaining on Brauchitsch, maintaining the pressure, and forcing Brauchitsch to out drive his tires. Nuvolari nipped him at the wire and stole the German GP from under Hitler's nose.

I can't believe this thing hasn't been made into a movie.

Here is a highlight reel of the race on YouTube:



The white (silver) cars are the Germans. The dark (red) one is Nuvolari.

Watch Nuvolari dirt track sideways at about the 43 second mark. Dude had some serious stones.