Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR ‘722’
Celebrating the life and career of Sir Stirling Moss
The Mille Miglia took place in the years between 1927 and 1957, over 1000 miles of Italian public roads. Fearless drivers hurtled through villages and open countryside sometimes at speeds of over 150mph. The race was incredibly dangerous both for competitors and spectators, and was ultimately brought to an end in 1957 following an accident which killed eleven people.
Stirling Moss’s remarkable victory in the 1955 Mille Miglia marked the first and only time the race was won by a British driver, and was the result of weeks of preparation and planning. To give themselves an advantage, Moss and his co-driver Denis Jenkinson – ‘Jenks’, a well-known journalist on Motor Sport magazine – developed a system for categorising the entire thousand-mile route. The most important part was knowing each of the different corners, which they graded as “saucy ones”, “dodgy ones” and “very dangerous ones”, each with an individual hand sign to indicate each type.
The two embarked on multiple recces of the Mille Miglia route, and Jenkinson later said that during that time he and Moss ‘lived and breathed Mille Miglia day in and day out, leaving no idea untried.’ In order to get through the copious quantity of pace notes and instructions the two had compiled, Jenkinson used a revolving scroll of paper nicknamed the ‘toilet roll.’ He also made a note of every opportunity where they could travel at maximum speed, even if visibility was restricted, meaning Moss could drive over blind hill crests at terrifying speeds approaching 170mph, with extreme confidence in the notes he and Jenkinson had compiled.
The two had another advantage: the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, which was, in the words of Moss, ‘probably the greatest sports car ever built by anybody any time.’ Based on Mercedes-Benz’s double World Championship-winning Formula One car, the W 196 R, the 300 SLR had a 3.0-litre, straight-eight engine capable of reaching 170mph with ease, Moss depended on its strength heavily during the Mille Miglia. The car’s spaceframe construction meant it was extraordinarily light which, when combined with Mercedes’ trademark reliability, made for an unbeatable machine that took victory in every race it entered in the 1955 season.
The seats in the 300 SLR were made to measure for Moss and Jenkinson, ‘like a tailor would make a suit, while every detail in the cockpit received our personal attention, and anything was altered to our desire without question.’ Mercedes-Benz left no stone unturned in its own preparation for the Mille Miglia, and by 1 May 1955, after weeks of preparation, the stage was set for Moss, Jenkinson and Mercedes-Benz. As Jenkinson later wrote, ‘when we went down to the start at 6.30a.m., on the morning of May 1st we were both feeling ready for anything…’
Thirty seconds before 7:22am, their allocated start time, Moss started the engine. The thousand-mile route was to take them from Brescia to Rome and back again, a journey of over ten hours – if they even finished. The resulting thousand miles was undoubtedly the finest race of Moss’s career, although according to Jenkinson for the majority of the race ‘he was sitting back in his usual relaxed position, making no apparent effort.’ Blistering through villages at well over 100mph, Moss and Jenkinson thundered towards Brescia, only once coming close to ending their race when Moss failed to avoid a hay bale. The two rejoined the race shortly after and scarcely looked back for the remainder.
Jenkinson later wrote that, for the entire race, he ‘sat fascinated, watching Moss working away to keep control, and [he] was so intrigued to follow his every action and live every inch of the way with him, that [he] completely forgot to be scared… Moss was driving absolutely magnificently, right on the limit of adhesion all the time, and more often than not over the limit… nothing was going to stop him winning this race.’
Their 300 SLR crossed the finish line at over 100mph, having completed the journey in ten hours, seven minutes and forty-eight seconds, with an overall average speed of just under 98mph. By the end of the race, Moss and Jenkinson’s faces were completely dark from the oil and dirt of a thousand miles of Italian roads, but they had made history. Moss was the first British driver to win the Mille Miglia, Mercedes-Benz claimed its own victory at the race, and the 300 SLR earned its rightful place in history as one of the finest racing cars ever built.
On loan courtesy of Mercedes-Benz Classic, from Thursday 9 to Tuesday 21 May.