The lost stars of 1980

Thirty-five years ago the European Formula 2 Championship was struck twice by tragedy. In April Austrian Markus Hottinger was killed at Hockenheim, and just three months later German Hans-Georg Burger lost his life following an accident at Zandvoort.

Given that they died just 13 weeks apart - and both in freak incidents that involved head and neck injuries - it's inevitable that the names of Hottinger and Burger are usually mentioned in tandem.

In fact the links are much stronger. Close friends, they both emerged from the hurly-burly of Renault 5 racing, attracted support from BMW, and caught the eye by taking on established Formula 1 stars in the M1 Procar series.

Both were then channelled into F2 by the Munich manufacturer with a view to an eventual graduation to grand prix racing. Sadly it was not to be, and BMW lost its two brightest proteges in one year.

"Markus was very good and a nice guy," recalls his friend Niki Lauda. "He slept in my hotel room once. He couldn't pay for his room and I made him sleep in on my floor! And then unfortunately Hockenheim came..."

Hottinger (pronounced 'Hurtinger' with the umlaut) was born in May 1956, four years after Burger. That he made it to the international stage first perhaps reflects the fact that he came from a more affluent background, and had the opportunity to go racing at an earlier age. Indeed, he was still a student when motorsport took over from skiing as his main passion.

Young Hottinger was still a student when he chose motorsport over skiing © BMW AG

"Markus was running a Renault 5 in the Austrian or German championship," recalls Dr Helmut Marko. "He was just a young guy from Burgenland, which is the smallest state in Austria.

"He was working on the cars himself in the beginning, just with a friend of his. And then I think we did some sort of cooperation in the European championship. So from then on I was following him or guiding him through the various categories."

The Renault 5 scene was fiercely competitive - future F1 driver Mauro Baldi was the big star in Europe at the time - and Hottinger caught the eye when he won the support event at the 1977 Italian GP.

Marko helped to galvanise support from BMW competition boss Jochen Neerpasch, which led to an appearance at the Kyalami 1000km at the end of that year, alongside veteran Harald Grohs in a 320. It was a huge step up for the 21-year-old R5 racer, but the pair finished third.

Hottinger was contracted to BMW for 1978, and the heart of his busy programme was the popular German Group 5 series, or DRM. Given a seat with the GS Tuning team, he immediately impressed, winning several races and finishing the year second in Division 2, and fourth overall.

He also contested some endurance races, partnering Hans Stuck, Dieter Quester and Giorgio Francia, and he even found time to win a European Touring Car Championship race at the Osterreichring with the crack Luigi team.

"I did the deals with him," says Marko. "But it was a sort of friendship relationship. He was a very intelligent guy, with a sort of philosophical humour. Everything developed very well, his personality, his speed. It was going in the right direction.

Hottinger raced in the DRM in 1978 as a BMW driver

"I taught him to be professional and so on. He was good-looking, and I had to stop him coming home at 4am on Sunday morning from the disco and things like that!

"That was his lifestyle, a typical easygoing student. He pretty soon realised that it can't go on like that, and he understood what is necessary. He put a lot of effort in."

"He was a very friendly chap, and well brought up," says close friend Christian Danner. "Unusually for the time he was very into fitness, running around in shorts, and he had these strange eating attitudes. He made a big fuss about ham if it had the slightest bit of fat on it, and he was into nuts and things like that. I found it quite interesting."

Hottinger's 1979 season was to be even busier. As well as the DRM he faced a steep learning curve when he contested five F2 races in a Bob Salisbury-prepared March 792, earning three seventh places. Most significantly Marko fielded him in the new Procar series, where the competition included Lauda, Alan Jones, Carlos Reutemann, Mario Andretti and Nelson Piquet.

It was the perfect opportunity for a young gun to shine, and Hottinger made the most of it. He regularly mixed it with the big names, earning second behind Jacques Laffite on home ground in Austria, and thirds at Zolder, Silverstone and Monza. He finished fourth in the championship behind Lauda, Stuck and Clay Regazzoni.

"His performance in the Procar really opened up his future," says Marko. "Especially with BMW. Neerpasch noticed his talent and helped a lot."

F2 move came in 1979, when Hottinger took part in five races © LAT

Hottinger's career developed in parallel with that of Burger. The pair had got to know each other when they were competing in Renault 5s together, and Burger was picked up by Neerpasch and BMW a year later than Hottinger.

He ran in German Formula 3 in 1978 before enjoying his first DRM drives in a 320 at the end that year. He was helped on his way by top journalist Rainer Braun and by wheeler-dealer Werner Heinz, who would later look after Nick Heidfeld and Nico Hulkenberg.

Burger really began to make his mark in 1979, finishing second in the F3 series and fourth in the DRM's Division 2, as team-mate to Hottinger at GS Tuning. He also made a huge impression when he earned third on his Procar debut at Hockenheim in a spare works car.

At the end of '79 Burger and Hottinger shared a Marko-entered M1 in the Kyalami 1000km, underlining their shared roles as BMW's men of the future.

"They were close friends, but on the other hand opposition," says Marko.

"I think the more natural talent was clearly Burger," says Danner. "Markus however was extremely clever. He immediately twigged that with some brains you could improve your game dramatically in those days. He was struggling a little bit when he went to single-seaters. It took him a while, but he got on top of it because he was smart and willing to learn.

BMW Procar racing offered Hottinger, and Burger, a chance to shine © LAT

"He was like a gypsy. He'd just turn up without any spare clothes, and he was very happy to rely on people like me or my girlfriend for lunch or dinner. Hans-Georg was very different, because he was married and he already had a child. I think he was a mechanic and had no proper school education."

Meanwhile there was much going on back in Munich in the winter of 1979-80. BMW had quietly been working a new Formula 1 turbo project, and indeed Hottinger had helped to develop it in 1.4-litre DRM form.

Neerpasch had even tried to engineer a deal for BMW to join forces with McLaren and Lauda, but that didn't fly with the board. He then announced that he was leaving to join Talbot, and that his gameplan was for the French company to take over the BMW F1 engine project.

But the man he recommended as his successor, Dieter Stappert, was determined to see BMW competing in F1 in its own right. The Austrian tried to block the Talbot deal and, while BMW's F1 future was far from settled as 1980 began, he saw a bigger picture. He wanted the company's proteges to be part of it.

Having run the Procar series, he knew Hottinger and Burger well, and he placed them in F2 drives with works engine deals to help further their education. Burger signed to drive the new Tiga F280, run by former F1 racers Howden Ganley and Tim Schenken.

"I can't remember if we approached Dieter, or he approached us," recalls Schenken. "Hans-Georg had works engines and some sponsorship from Winnebago. He was a lovely bloke, and a racer as well. He fitted in very well, and got on well with the mechanics. We could have a good laugh together, and there was no clash of cultures. He was obviously a good driver, but to try to evaluate him was difficult because the car was a one-off."

Burger raced new Tiga in the 1980 Formula 2 season © LAT

Meanwhile Hottinger joined Maurer. The German outfit had got off to a shaky start in 1979, but had some good people on board, including designer Gustav Brunner.

"The plan was to be successful in F2, and then move on," Marko explains. "And Stappert was a big fan of Hottinger, so it was obvious that there were possibilities. Markus was, from BMW's side, the guy they wanted."

"He came along as BMW's new kid on the block," says Maurer team-mate Eje Elgh. "He'd done some touring cars and done very well and he was a future star, basically. He turned out to be a really nice guy. His feet were completely on the ground, always very happy, very social, and I got on very well with him. Some guys you don't know at all from the start, but with him you joked and you laughed. He was a good-looking kid, and he was full of life."

Sadly it was to be an all-too-short relationship. Hottinger endured a difficult first weekend at Thruxton, where he was hampered by a series of niggling problems, and he qualified midfield at Hockenheim the following weekend.

In the race Andrea de Cesaris and Manfred Winkelhock tangled at Turn 1 at the start of the third lap. Then a lap later Derek Warwick spun off on the dirty track surface and hit the barrier on the right.

One of his rear wheels flew back across the track and, by a stroke of fate, struck Hottinger's helmet. Its driver unconscious, the Maurer spun to a halt and was hit by the following Bernard Devaney.

Medical staff worked on Hottinger at trackside. There were faint signs of life, but it wasn't until some 27 of the 30 laps had been run that the race was red-flagged so that a helicopter could land on the track. He was transferred to Heidelberg, but nothing could be done to save him. He was just 23 years old.

Hottinger was just 23 when an accident at Hockenheim claimed his life © LAT

"It was very tragic because he was a young kid," says Elgh. "I was staying in a hotel in Speyer, as that's where the workshop was. After breakfast on Monday I went over and there was Markus's car. There was hardly any damage, but the rollhoop was flattened."

"He was the first guy I supported who was killed," says Marko. "So that was a big shock. At some stage I was really, 'Should I do this any more?' It's a big responsibility you take if you have a young driver. So it was not an easy time."

Just 11 days after Hottinger's death BMW announced that it would be joining forces with Bernie Ecclestone and Brabham from 1981. The Talbot deal pushed by Neerpasch had been canned, and Stappert had got his way. There was now a clear path to F1 for a talented BMW protege, if not with Brabham then perhaps with another future customer.

BMW's focus moved to Burger, who was getting to grips with the unproven Tiga. At the Nurburgring he qualified a sensational second despite missing practice mileage as he was commuting to and from a Procar event at Donington.

In the race he ran second to Teo Fabi before dropping to third behind Winkelhock, who subsequently performed his infamous televised flip at the Flugplatz. The Tiga guys were convinced that Burger could have caught and passed Fabi and won the race, but a broken gear linkage - the result of an unauthorised modification by a mechanic - stopped him.

A busy BMW programme ensured that he didn't do all the F2 races, and he continued to shine in a BASF-liveried GS Tuning Procar. He also shared an M1 with Stuck on his Le Mans debut.

He was back on F2 duty at Zandvoort in July as the small Tiga team began to make progress. Alas, in the Sunday morning warm-up he ploughed off the road at the fifth-gear Scheivlak corner.

The remains of Burger's Tiga after his crash in slippery Zandvoort conditions © Willem J Staat

"It was just raining lightly," recalls Ganley. "He'd stopped the lap before and said, 'This car's go so much grip.' I guess he was planning on doing that corner flat-out, and it was just a bit too slippery.

"It seemed fairly innocent initially, just sliding into a catch fence. But about an hour later Tim came back and said, 'This is not sounding very good...'"

In fact a fence post had struck and split Burger's helmet. He was transferred to Amsterdam with head, neck and throat injuries, to which he succumbed on the Monday evening. He left a wife, Anni, and a young son Thomas.

Stappert didn't give up on his plan to promote home-grown talent, and Procar racer Danner was fast-tracked into a works March F2 drive to help fill the void. Meanwhile BMW still had one long-time junior driver in Winkelhock, who hadn't been widely regarded as F1 material.

But his 'arms- and-elbows' style was much admired by engine wizard Paul Rosche, and in 1982 he was helped into an ATS F1 seat. Two years later Gerhard Berger was given a similar opportunity with the same team. Stefan Bellof also had some BMW support at Maurer in F2, although he was a Porsche man by the time he graduated to F1.

Neerpasch would later find a German-speaking superstar in Michael Schumacher - and Marko would find another in Sebastian Vettel. We'll never know how Hottinger and Burger would have fared had they lived, but those who knew them rated both men highly.

"For sure Markus would have been competitive in F1," Marko insists. "Just from his speed and his intelligence. Hans-Georg didn't have the straightforward approach that Markus had, but he was one of the best Germans at that time."

"Whatever happened to Manfred and Gerhard with ATS, that would have been the route," says Danner. "Markus had the right personality, and was very disciplined. Burger just relied on his talent. But he was absolutely amazing in a racing car."