Seconds passed by. His lead continued to quickly dwindle. It actually had been a good thing that he had pushed as hard as he had for it was his advantage over Farina that was still giving him hope. However, the stop continued to carry on. Then, Farina would come and go with Ascari’s lead.
Farina would be a couple of miles up the road before Ascari would remerge from the pits. One last lap, and less than ten minutes, separated Ascari from his World Championship, but he first had to catch Farina. Farina was known for his cruelty to back-markers, assuredly Ascari couldn’t expect his Ferrari teammate to make things too easy for him.
Actually, Farina would make it about as easy as it could get. Upon assuming the lead, Farina didn’t increase his pace. Farina perhaps had been thinking back to the Monza Grand Prix back in June when Ascari was running away with the race until a failure handed Giuseppe the lead and the victory. Whatever he had been thinking, Farina wasn’t aware of the runaway train heading his way.
Ascari’s race pace wouldn’t be any more evident than over the course of the last lap of the race. Farina carried on at the same pace in which he had been running the entire race. He was in the lead with a decent margin over Ascari. But Ascari’s incredible pace would bring him up behind the unaware Farina much more quickly than many could have imagined. Caught totally unaware, Farina was unable to put up much of a fight against Ascari. Ascari would get by to retake the lead of the race.
Ascari had caught Farina with more than enough miles remaining. Despite having a car that wasn’t one hundred percent, Alberto would go on to cross the finish line with a fourteen second margin of victory over Farina. Seeing his championship hopes go by with Ascari, Farina would just carry on to finish the race 2nd. He was under no threat as the 3rd place car was quite a long way behind.
At over ten minutes per lap, being a lap down was like being an eternity behind the leader. All but the 2nd and 3rd place finishers would experience such a reality. Rudolf Fischer, the winner of the Eifelrennen would come close to finishing down a lap, but would hold on to finish the race a little over seven minutes behind Ascari in the 3rd place position.
Nothing could have graphically demonstrated the difference between Germany’s racing scene and that of the rest of Europe and the world like the 1952 German Grand Prix. In 1951, only Formula One cars raced in the German Grand Prix. Germany had literally no Formula One teams at the time. In 1952, with Formula 2 regulations, the best from Germany had the opportunity to go up against the best from the rest of the world. At the conclusion of the race it was obvious who had lost the war. The best of the German finishers was Fritz Riess and he would end up being more than two laps, or more than twenty minutes, behind Ascari at the finish.
In the case of Merkel, the disparity was even more obvious. Against the newer technology and the factory efforts, like Ferrari, Merkel couldn’t even manage to garner enough pace to make it into the race. Merkel wouldn’t have the opportunity to say that he had competed in a World Championship race. However, given the way the race actually unfolded, it seemed many other German racers really should not have had the right to say that they had. In just fashion, Merkel’s name would be a mere footnote, like many other German racers, in World Championship grand prix history.
Merkel’s failure to qualify for what would be his only World Championship attempt would actually signal something more. Merkel was done for 1952, at least in major races. Merkel had been given the opportunity to purchase Krakau’s, which meant he could have taken part in the remaining two rounds of the West German Championship. But he would turn down the offer.
Although Merkel was done racing for the 1952 season, he wasn’t quite done racing in his career. While he would not take part in many more Formula 2 races, Merkel would enter a number of sportscar races.
Merkel would put in an entry driving a Porsche 356 for the Mille Miglia at the end of April in 1953. However, neither the car nor Merkel would appear. Merkel; however, would appear for the Eifelrennen Nurburgring sporscar race at the end of May. In the race, Merkel would drive a 1.1-liter Porsche for Buchberger and would finish the race 9th. Merkel’s only other highlight for the 1953 season would be a 4th place finish in the 1.1-liter category in the German Sportscar Championship race at Avus in July of that year.
Although Merkel’s racing career wouldn’t start until the early 1950s, it would continue on into the early and mid 1960s. Throughout that time, he would take part in a number of sportscar races and would earn less than spectacular results.
The Cold War really began to heat up. Merkel’s native Leipzig would become closed behind the Iron Curtain. Merkel would leave his native city and would move to West Germany. While living in West Germany, Merkel would manage a number of dealerships with relationships with Lancia, Panhard and Triumph.
During this time after his retirement from racing, Merkel would become quite well known for something that seemed almost off on another spectrum from a racing career. All of the years wielding cars into and out of corners, wrestling with them to get them to do what he wanted helped Merkel in one of his new endeavors—shotput. He was so good that he would end up winning a gold medal in a meet in Australia.
After living a number of years in West Germany, Merkel would head off on another chapter of his life. After getting married, Merkel would emigrate to Australia, where he would live until he died in 1995 at the age of 77.
