Contracted to race as a senior driver for Mercedes-Benz in 1937, Lang validated his selection with victories in the Tripoli Grand Prix and at Berlin’s dauntingly high-banked Avus Ring, where he recorded a top speed of more than 237 mph with this streamlined W125. Photo: Mercedes-Benz
Hermann Lang so nearly didn’t get a shot at the European Championship, motor racing’s premier title before the Second World War. Family pressures, Alfred Neubauer’s initial rejection, the Depression and a strong dose of in-house class distinction nearly saw to that. But Lang gave a rigid middle finger to it all and battled on to win the championship, awarded to him by the German motor racing authorities rather than the governing body of European motor sport, the AIACR.
Hermännle, as he was nicknamed, started out as a motorcycle mechanic for Standard of Stuttgart, and in 1927 bought his own racing bike on which he won his very first race at the Solitude circuit near his hometown. He mostly competed in sidecar events for the next few years and, at 22 years of age, won the 1931 German Hillclimb Sidecar Championship. By that time his brothers, Albert and Karl, had been killed in the sport but, despite opposition from his mother and future wife Lydia, he pressed on until he was seriously injured in a race pile-up that killed two other riders. He recovered just as the Depression set in, only to lose his job at Standard.
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