Karl Kling - Kling, Glöckchen klingelingeling ...
Summary
Karl Kling, born on September 16, 1910 in Giessen and died on March 18, 2003, not only survived a daring racing career, he was also able to look back on some great victories. He originally saw himself as an endurance racer, but even in a Grand Prix car he was hardly slower than serial winner Fangio. And that was saying something. This racing driver portrait looks back on the life of Mercedes works driver Karl Kling and shows him in many historic photos.
This article contains the following chapters
- One of the fastest
- Only eleven Grand Prix races
- Let it fade away
- Not an ascetic
- Escaping the war
- The bird from the Carrera
- Unlucky streak
- Sports director
- Few real friendships
- Money blessing
- When racing drivers were still real guys
- Loyal to Mercedes
- Always on the move
- Career via detours
- Winter domicile
- Modest
Estimated reading time: 15min
Preview (beginning of the article)
Karl Kling turned 80 years old on September 16, 2001. Who, pray tell? The answer to this perfectly legitimate question inevitably leads to the happy double message of July 4, 1954. So let us quote the "Frankfurter Allgemeine", which on the following day, in the midst of the political melange, journalistically sobered up on its first page what had stirred up a veritable outburst of identity in the western half of the patriotic provisional state the day before: "Germany is football world champion" and "Fangio wins in Reims - Mercedes success in France". Max Morlock and Helmut Rahn were instrumental in this semi-national elation. And Karl Kling, who had followed Fangio through the finish line after 500 kilometers of racing distance in a fully clad W196 with a gap of one car length - already greying, bruised by the war from his seven best years of racing and in this, his first major prize, already at a stage where the door to the geriatric ward opens very gently for today's sportsman. Three things were remarkable about this success: firstly, the fact that the brand new streamlined W196 came, saw and won after 15 years of abstinence from European formula racing by the Stuttgart team; secondly, the way in which this happened, namely with a wafer-thin tenth of a second gap and after the cars of the desperate competitors (Hawthorn, Ascari, Gonzales and Cie.) had withered completely overwhelmed at the edge of the track.
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