Sunday 3rd June 1934

The VIII ADAC Eifelrennen, an annual motor race organised by ADAC Automobile Club, held in Germany’s Eifel mountain region (even before the Nürburgring was built there), was won by Manfred von Brauchitsch in a Mercedes-Benz W25/34.The start was delayed for several hours because of fog, rain showers and hail. At 3 PM the race was finally started with 44 cars in 3 classes flagged of after each other. A bunch of cars arrived together into the Südkehre on the first lap and Austrian driver Emil Frankl (Bugatti) touched another car and went, with damaged wheel, into a wild spin just missing the Mercedes cars, before overturning, killing the unfortunate driver. After the first lap it was Fagioli in front of von Brauchitsch, Stuck, Chiron, Tadini, Penn-Hughes, zu Leiningen and Pietsch. Then Neubauer gave order to Fagioli to let the other Mercedes car by and at Bergwerk on the second lap von Brauchitsch took over the lead from his team mate. On the third lap Momberger was out of the race with fuel pump failure and the problems for the Auto Union team continued. A flying stone has created a leak in zu Leiningen’s fuel tank and he fell far back while the tank was repaired and refilled. Von Brauchitsch had opened up a 46 second lead over Fagioli who was ferociously attacked by Stuck. Nuvolari was out of the race after a series of technical problems.Halfway through the race the Mercedes cars came in for tanking and a furious Fagioli started a bilingual verbal fight with team leader Neubauer over the team orders. Fagioli went off again but then, with one lap to go, simply abandoned his Mercedes on the track in disgust, giving Neubauer a taste of things to come.The Alfas did not need to come in for refueling but they were not able to keep up with the superior roadholding of the German cars. The Nürburgring took its tolls, Maserati drivers Rüesch och Siena were out with engine problems and zu Leiningen was also out, leaving only one Auto Union in the race. However, Stuck was now in the lead and opened up a gap of almost one minute to von Brauchitsch. The Mercedes team was worried: Was Stuck trying to do a nonstop race? Finally Stuck went in for tanking, tyres and new plugs and after a lengthy pitstop he rejoined the race 87 seconds behind von Brauchitsch. With such advantage the Mercedes driver had no problem to keep the lead from then on and he went on to win. He could hardly have got off to a better start as a works driver. Neither could the Mercedes-Benz team have had a better comeback, winning the first time out.