The McLaren-Mercedes cars of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard at the 2000 United States Grand Prix marked the German marque's return to a circuit where it first competed almost a century ago. Thomas O'Keefe takes us through the distinguished history of Mercedes-Benz at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway It is not a long history, but it is a distinguished one that Mercedes-Benz has forged with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. To begin with recent history, who can forget the spectacular sight of the McLaren-Mercedes team slipstreaming off the Turn 13 banking and down the front straightaway at Indianapolis on September 23, 2000, during Qualifying for the Inaugural U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis, with Mika Hakkinen short-shifting and kicking up the dust in the slow lane while letting David Coulthard by to improve his top speed on the straight. Even the typically reserved Ron Dennis, team principal for McLaren, was caught up in the romance of the moment at Indy, theorizing in response to a question as to why the Indianapolis crowd seemed to go so wild at the distinctive sound of the Formula One engines. Dennis opined that what the crowd seemed to love was the engine note of the high-revving V10 engines, and admitted that it gets to him too at the Cathedral of the Speedway, with its towering grandstands on both sides of the narrow track, seating some 250,000 people: "The engine note still gives me a tingle, particularly down a confined space as we have here on the front straightaway." Mercedes-Benz and its derivative companies have been thrilling race fans at the Indianapolis 500 going back to its earliest days, as well as in the American races that were the predecessors to the Indy 500. Interestingly by the way, the mellifluous and evocative name "Mercedes" came not from Karl Benz or Gottlieb Daimler, but from a young girl named Mercedes Jellinek, daughter of Emile Jellinek, the Consul in Nice to the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, who was also active in The Daimler Company and in the development of the specially built sports racer that the Daimler Company christened Mercedes. By 1903, the Mercedes 60 HP built by Benz and driven by Camille Jenatzy won the Gordon Bennett Trophy race at the Athy circuit in Ireland, its first international success. In 1904, Mercedes came to the United States to race for the Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island in New York. In 1908, Mercedes driver Emil Stricker was the only foreigner contesting the Vanderbilt Cup road race, the other "foreign" cars deciding to focus on the Automobile Club of America's American Grand Prize race in Savannah, Georgia which offered a purse of $4,000, twice that offered by the Vanderbilt Cup.

By 1911, the 3.2 million paving bricks used to make the 2.5 mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway had been laid and the first Indianapolis 500 was held at the Brickyard on May 30, 1911. There were two white Benzs in the race and one Mercedes painted gray, the original Silver Arrow, driven by Spencer Wishart. At the tender age of 19, Wishart came in fourth in the 1909 Vanderbilt Cup in a specially modified Mercedes Grand Prix car, in a race where many older and more experienced drivers got caught up in the many accidents that occurred in that race. In the 1911 Indy 500, Wishart started 27th in a 40-car field but managed to get into the lead by lap 6, and ultimately brought home the Mercedes in fourth place in the

For the 1913 Indy 500, Wishart and De Palma had abandoned Mercedes for Mercer and Mercedes was represented by Ralph Mulford, who some thought had actually won the controversial first Indy 500 in 1911. Mulford went 500 miles in his gray Mercedes on the same set of tires and finished 7th. In addition, a Mercedes-Knight was entered, which was a car with a gray and white Mercedes chassis and a 4-cylinder Knight engine; it finished 5th in the race. In the 1914 Indy 500, Ralph Mulford entered a white and blue Mercedes with a Peugeot engine that finished 11th in the race.

Ralph De Palma was also in the 1914 ACF Grand Prix in an uncompetitive British Vauxhall and no doubt would have loved to have been one of Lautenschlager's teammates. As it turned out, in less than a year, he would get his wish, in a manner of speaking. The world was about to go

After the indifferent performance of the Mercedes factory team in 1923, and despite its competitors in European road racing like Maserati and Alfa Romeo competing from time to time at Indy, Mercedes made only episodic appearances at the Indy 500, typically in the hands of private entrants, such as in 1924 and 1948.

His injuries were significant and it was only after several months of recuperation that he learned what had happened in the race (as it turned out, his Thorne Engineering teammate, George Robson, won the 1946 race for Joel Thorne). Once out of the hospital, Tony Hulman, who understandably felt somewhat responsible for this unfortunate turn of events, took Caracciola to the Hulman home in Terre Haute, Indiana to complete Caracciola's recuperation. Hulman and Caracciola remained good friends after this unhappy episode, until Caracciola's death in Switzerland of liver failure in 1959. By the way, Tony Hulman George, who now runs the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and is responsible for bringing Formula One back Indy, is the grandson of Tony Hulman, who himself died in 1977.

Three cars were actually prepared to race in Argentina and in Indianapolis, but after some disappointing races, the idea was abandoned and the plans to run Indianapolis by the 1952 season never materialized. Which is a shame because, as it turned out,

While Mercedes-Benz engines continued in the Indy 500s run from 1994-1996 in the hands of capable drivers like Bobby Rahal, Paul Tracy, Roberto Guerrero, Gil de Ferran and Davy Jones, a Mercedes engine has not won the Indy 500 since 1994 and, with the switch in 1997 to Aurora and Infiniti engines for the Indy Racing League, the Mercedes/Indianapolis connection for the foreseeable future will be limited to attempting to win the U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis, which should keep Mercedes, McLaren and Ilmor quite busy. For those who saw Hakkinen and Coulthard streaking down the front straightaway in the inaugural U.S. Grand Prix, there can be no doubt that Ralph De Palma and Al Unser, Jr. will not remain the only Mercedes-engined winners at Indy for too much longer.