Ralph DePalma's 1915 Winner
Aug 14, 2016 22:11:46 GMT -5
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racerbrown, Chris, and 1 more like this
Post by 1961redlegs on Aug 14, 2016 22:11:46 GMT -5
I finished tonight Ralph DePalma's 1915 Indianapolis 500 winner.
The 1915 Indianapolis 500 turned into a contest between two men born in Italy: Ralph DePalma in a 1914 Mercedes Grand Prix racer and Dario Resta in a Peugeot. DePalma finished three minutes and 29 seconds ahead of Resta as his Mercedes sputtered home after the connecting rod snapped. The same fate befell him in 1912, depriving him of a win after a dominant race, this time he managed to bring it home.
This wasn't the beginning of the adventure with DePalma and this car. The Mercedes he drove in the 500 ran in the tumultuous 1914 French Grand Prix, where the German cars stunned the French crowd winning a smashing victory. More than exhaust fine and dust hung over the race was the fact that on June 28, 1914 assassins murdered Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. This act precipitated a crisis that caused Europe to teeter on the edge of war, as the cars raced the leaders, diplomats, and military leaders of Europe planned the next move.
Those moves plunged Europe into the abyss, inaugurating a four-year nightmare and forever altering the course of the 20th Century. An
apocryphal tale has DePalma negotiating the purchase of one of the Grand Prix Mercedes for E.C. Patterson when he was told he had to leave as war had broken out and that he got on the last ship out of Europe. That's not entirely true, but his purchase of the car came amidst the build up to the Great War and he made good his way out with the Mercedes.
After coming home, DePalma ran the car at Elgin, where he won and other races. After the season the car went to the Packard factory for an overhaul, getting a more streamlined body and allowing the technicians to look at the engine and make blueprints. After Indianapolis he ran the car extensively, having great success with the car all over the country. It was perhaps the most accomplished car DePalma drove, which says a lot as he was the finest driver of the early years of the sport.
DePalma vies with Jim Clark and Ryan Hunter-Reay as my favorite all-time driver to contest the 500. He conducted himself as a gentleman at all times, earning the respect of all who knew him. After reading about him I knew he'd be a driver I would've been a fan of had I lived in that era. So 100 years after he started racing DePalma gained a new fan!
The car is from Fernando Pinto, it is a beautiful kit that builds nicely. There are many wonderful detail parts that make this car a stunner. That said there are some issues that I should advise anyone of who'll build this kit. There's a lot of flash to clean up and the instructions can be vague at times. I used photos from the Internet to get an idea of where certain detail pieces went. A particularly good site is www.conceptcarz.com/view/photo/1183744,20369,0,0/photo.aspx as they have many good upclose shots of a surviving sister car to the one DePalma drove. I painted the car Tamiya white and in the interior where it's supposed to resemble wood I used Tamiya red-brown, dry brushing in semi-gloss black and wood color to get a wood effect.
All in all this was a fun build, however make sure you have your research documents with you as you build it and if you do you'll come out with a beautiful rendition of the 1915 winner.
Thank you for looking!
The 1915 Indianapolis 500 turned into a contest between two men born in Italy: Ralph DePalma in a 1914 Mercedes Grand Prix racer and Dario Resta in a Peugeot. DePalma finished three minutes and 29 seconds ahead of Resta as his Mercedes sputtered home after the connecting rod snapped. The same fate befell him in 1912, depriving him of a win after a dominant race, this time he managed to bring it home.
This wasn't the beginning of the adventure with DePalma and this car. The Mercedes he drove in the 500 ran in the tumultuous 1914 French Grand Prix, where the German cars stunned the French crowd winning a smashing victory. More than exhaust fine and dust hung over the race was the fact that on June 28, 1914 assassins murdered Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. This act precipitated a crisis that caused Europe to teeter on the edge of war, as the cars raced the leaders, diplomats, and military leaders of Europe planned the next move.
Those moves plunged Europe into the abyss, inaugurating a four-year nightmare and forever altering the course of the 20th Century. An
apocryphal tale has DePalma negotiating the purchase of one of the Grand Prix Mercedes for E.C. Patterson when he was told he had to leave as war had broken out and that he got on the last ship out of Europe. That's not entirely true, but his purchase of the car came amidst the build up to the Great War and he made good his way out with the Mercedes.
After coming home, DePalma ran the car at Elgin, where he won and other races. After the season the car went to the Packard factory for an overhaul, getting a more streamlined body and allowing the technicians to look at the engine and make blueprints. After Indianapolis he ran the car extensively, having great success with the car all over the country. It was perhaps the most accomplished car DePalma drove, which says a lot as he was the finest driver of the early years of the sport.
DePalma vies with Jim Clark and Ryan Hunter-Reay as my favorite all-time driver to contest the 500. He conducted himself as a gentleman at all times, earning the respect of all who knew him. After reading about him I knew he'd be a driver I would've been a fan of had I lived in that era. So 100 years after he started racing DePalma gained a new fan!
The car is from Fernando Pinto, it is a beautiful kit that builds nicely. There are many wonderful detail parts that make this car a stunner. That said there are some issues that I should advise anyone of who'll build this kit. There's a lot of flash to clean up and the instructions can be vague at times. I used photos from the Internet to get an idea of where certain detail pieces went. A particularly good site is www.conceptcarz.com/view/photo/1183744,20369,0,0/photo.aspx as they have many good upclose shots of a surviving sister car to the one DePalma drove. I painted the car Tamiya white and in the interior where it's supposed to resemble wood I used Tamiya red-brown, dry brushing in semi-gloss black and wood color to get a wood effect.
All in all this was a fun build, however make sure you have your research documents with you as you build it and if you do you'll come out with a beautiful rendition of the 1915 winner.
Thank you for looking!
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