and navigator
Denis Jenkinson on the road Mercedes did not enter the first two overseas WC races, and used the time for an astonishingly thorough preparation for the 1955 Mille Miglia. Tens of thousands of miles were covered as the entire route was travelled on every training run and extreme punishment was dished out to a mixture of
Mercedes 220 Saloons,
Gullwings and the first two 300 SLR chassis Favourites to win were Moss and his navigator
Denis Jenkinson, a motor racing journalist and World Champion side car passenger of the
1949 Grand Prix motorcycle racing season. Despite this being Moss’s fifth attempt at the Mille Miglia, Moss was relying entirely on Jenkinson's
pace notes, a system used when Mercedes drivers
Karl Kling/
Hans Klenk won the 1952
Carrera Panamericana, now used ubiquitously in modern rallying. They had spent months before the race compiling while driving a 300SL on the route. Jenkinson's notes were written on a home-made roller scroll and signalled by hand. The others three works drivers did not use navigators, Fangio not since his had been killed in a crash. Kling also entered alone, while Hans Herrmann had a Mercedes mechanic on board, Herrmann Eger. Initially the race wasn't in favor of the Mercedes duo, as
Eugenio Castellotti streaked away from the field in his privately entered
Ferrari 735 LM with its powerful 4.4-litre engine. By the time the fastest cars reached the town of
Ravenna on the Adriatic Sea, Castellotti was two minutes ahead of Moss/Jenkinson, but Castellotti was driving very aggressively, sliding his Ferrari through the corners, his tyres leaving large black streaks on the road. As the cars streaked down the coastline towards
Pescara, Castellotti had pushed too hard, and his Ferrari suffered a mechanical failure. His teammate Marzotto had a promising start but disaster struck when a tyre blew as he was traveling at 174 mph. He was able to keep the car on the road but as he stopped to grab the spare, he noticed that it was a different size from the others, so he was forced into retirement. Moss surged into the lead as the fastest Ferrari expired, but there was still formidable opposition, this time from the
Scuderia Ferrari driver,
Piero Taruffi. Taruffi, who in No. 728 was the last driver to leave Brescia had averaged a stunning 130 mph on the sprint down to Pescara, shattering all previous Mille Miglia speed records with his 376 S. At this time, only a thin margin now separated the lead two cars as they refuelled, with Moss snatching the advantage thanks to a quicker stop. Fangio car at this stage began to develop engine problems. just outside the city when his Mercedes No. 701 ran wide in a right hand sweeper as he crashed avoiding some spectators. The car was in a ditch, up against a tree. Luckily, he only suffered broken ribs, but he could not race in the
1955 Monaco Grand Prix. Meanwhile, Fangio was still struggling with engine problems; his complaints were ignored by Mercedes pit personnel in Rome. Moss buckled down to tackle the most challenging and demanding section of the route. Constantly on his mind was a fierce desire to disprove one of the old sayings – ‘He who leads at Rome never finishes’. ==Classification==