Tall ratio tale

Sir,

In the May issue Bill Boddy has repeated the story told to some by Juan Fangio that he could not have beaten Moss at Aintree in 1955 because his car had a lower axle ratio than the W196 driven by Stirling.

This was not the case, as the records of the Rennabteilung show. All four cars at Aintree had the same 15:42 final-drive ratio. Fangio used the lowest revs, 8950, while Moss and Kling used 9150 and 9200 respectively. Winner Moss had the lowest fuel consumption at 32.5 litres/100 km, while Fangio consumed 33.0 and Kling 35.5.

The only occasion in 1955 when the cars did have different final-drive ratios was the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where the two streamliners were geared slightly higher than the cars running with open-wheeled bodywork.

I am, yours etc,
Karl Ludvigsen, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk