1937 Grand Prix season
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The 1937 Grand Prix season was the fifth AIACR European Championship season. The championship was won by
Rudolf Caracciola Otto Wilhelm Rudolf CaracciolaBolsinger and Becker (2002), p. 63 (30 January 1901 – 28 September 1959) was a racing driver from Remagen, Germany. He won the European Drivers' Championship, the pre-1950 equivalent of the modern Formula One Wo ...
, driving for the
Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to as Mercedes and sometimes as Benz, is a German luxury and commercial vehicle automotive brand established in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a Mercedes-Benz Group subsidiary established in 2019) is headquartere ...
team. Caracciola won three of the five events that counted towards the championship. This season saw the most powerful
Grand Prix Grand Prix ( , meaning ''Grand Prize''; plural Grands Prix), is a name sometimes used for competitions or sport events, alluding to the winner receiving a prize, trophy or honour Grand Prix or grand prix may refer to: Arts and entertainment ...
cars so far,
Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to as Mercedes and sometimes as Benz, is a German luxury and commercial vehicle automotive brand established in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a Mercedes-Benz Group subsidiary established in 2019) is headquartere ...
supercharged 5.6L inline-8 engines boasting nearly 650 bhp. Considering that an average
saloon car A sedan or saloon (British English) is a passenger car in a three-box configuration with separate compartments for an engine, passengers, and cargo. The first recorded use of the word "sedan" in reference to an automobile body occurred in 19 ...
produced around 25 bhp at the time, the performance of these single-seaters was extremely high compared with any other season in modern
motorsport Motorsport, motorsports or motor sport is a global term used to encompass the group of competitive sporting events which primarily involve the use of motorized vehicles. The terminology can also be used to describe forms of competition of two ...
; so much so that for the first time ever, regulations were put in force for the following year to limit the engines' size capacity to reduce their power and to add weight to the cars to make them slower. Mercedes-Benz's development of their technology was thanks almost entirely to the state-subsidies that they were receiving from the
Nazi German government The government of Nazi Germany was totalitarian, run by the Nazi Party in Germany according to the Führerprinzip through the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany began with the fact that the Enabling Act was enacted to give Hitler's gover ...
at the time. The amount of power the supercharged
Mercedes-Benz W125 The Mercedes-Benz W125 was a Grand Prix racing car designed by Rudolf Uhlenhaut to race during the 1937 Grand Prix season. The car was used by Rudolf Caracciola to win the 1937 European Championship and W125 drivers also finished in the second, t ...
's had was not equaled in racing cars until American Can-Am cars in the late 1960s, and European Grand Prix cars did not have this kind of power again until the early 1980s (a span of nearly 45 years), when Grand Prix racing had long since become
Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...
.


Season review


European Championship Grands Prix


Non-championship Grands Prix


Championship final standings


References

* * * {{Grand Prix seasons Grand Prix seasons