To end? With the most efficiently dominant team in Formula 1’s history: 79 Grand Prix wins – 44 of them being 1-2s – since 2014, at the time of writing.
And in between? In no particular order:
- Belgian Camille Jenatzy, aka The Red Devil, winning the 1903 Gordon Bennett Trophy at Athy in Ireland aboard a borrowed car. A factory fire at Mercedes’ Cannstatt HQ had destroyed the more powerful works machines.
- Penske winning the 1994 Indianapolis 500 with a turbocharged pushrod engine, a.k.a. The Beast, that went from discussion to dyno via drawings in just 25 weeks. It whistled through a loophole and ground its rivals into the bricks.
- Blonde bombshells Ewy Rosqvist and Ursula Wirth overpowering 1962’s toughest race: the 2,900-mile Argentine Road GP. They set fastest time on all six stages and averaged 79mph – in a 220SE saloon – to win by six hours.
- Rudolf Caracciola’s 270mph on a two-lane concreted autobahnin 1938.
- A 1-2 in the 1952 Carrera Panamericana despite the victorious Gullwing’s dive-bombing by a vulture.
- A 1-2-3 in the 1914 GP de l’ACF at Lyon, the week after Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo. Otto Merz, a chauffeur in that ill-fated motorcade, would win the 1927 German GP at the newly opened Nürburgring.
- A 1-2-3-4 in the 1955 British GP at Aintree. Did Juan Manuel Fangio let local hero Stirling Moss win? If he did, he would never say. Classy guy.
- Mercedes – the amalgamation of Daimler-Benz was not codified until June 1926 – introduced supercharging to Indy in 1923.
- Mercedes-Benz is the only non-Italian manufacturer to have won the Mille Miglia. It did so twice, in 1931 and 1955, courtesy of epic drives by Caracciola and, guided by Denis Jenkinson with his ‘loo roll’ of pace notes, Moss.
- Mercedes-Benz empowered and powered phoenix-like Brawn GP in 2009.
- A Daimler ‘Phoenix’ – aka the first Mercedes (named after the daughter of Austrian entrepreneur Emil Jellinek) – won the mile sprint, La Turbie hillclimb and 259-mile city-to-city elements of 1901’s Nice Race Week.
- Ralph DePalma’s 1908 GP Mercedes, aka The Gray (sic) Ghost, led a record 196 laps but fell agonisingly shy of victory at the 1912 Indy 500 because of a broken con-rod. Three years later, in a 1914 GP Mercedes spirited from Europe on the eve of WWI, he led 132 laps – the crucial last three of which were completed despite a broken con-rod.