Between the Lions: the Essential Austrian

He has not raced a Formula One car for ten years. And yet on the Thursday prior to this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, the co-owner of Scuderia Toro Rosso (STR), Gerhard Berger, strapped himself into an historic 3.0 litre V8 Ford Cosworth-powered 1983 McLaren MP4/1C and performed a demonstration run in Budapest, centered around the famous Chain Bridge.

What is so special about the Chain Bridge? It is the 160 year-old stone and steel suspension bridge spanning the Danube between the hilly western Buda side of the river, and the flat terrain of Pest on the eastern side of the bridge.

The Chain Bridge is decorated with lion head sculptures on the arches and full-bodied guardian lions at each end of the monumental entrance-ways, thus the 'Lions' in sponsor Red Bull's 'The Bulls and the Lions' event.

Sounds like fun, a perfect blending of man and machine for the peripatetic Austrian, who has become a fixture in Formula One - first as a driver, and later as a part of the Formula One establishment.

He is now a trusted confidante of people as diverse as FIA President Max Mosley, BMW's Mario Theissen, and Renault's Flavio Briatore, and, along with fellow countryman Helmut Marko and Dietrich Mateschitz, one of the 'Essential Austrians' re-making the image of the sport of Formula One.

Most recently, unfortunately, Berger has found himself playing peacemaker in a war of words between STR's team principal, Austrian Franz Tost, and STR's outspoken American driver, Scott Speed, the two of them nearly coming to blows after both Speed and his team-mate Vitantonio Liuzzi, aquaplaned into disaster when the heavens opened at the Nurburgring.

Gerhard Berger and Franz Tost © XPB/LAT

Far from being a Father Confessor to his two young lions, Berger has been very strict with Scott and Tonio, leaving them on tenterhooks until the last minute before re-signing them for the 2007 season, and suggesting that it was not the STR Ferrari car but the drivers that have led to STR's dismal record this year - no points after ten races.

On the eve of the Hungarian Grand Prix, it was announced that Sebastian Vettel would replace Speed, so perceived insubordination has led to termination.

Vettel has been complaining that he has not received enough seat time at BMW-Sauber - be careful what you wish for, Sebastian.

So the STR situation is deadly serious for Gerhard Berger at the moment, and he probably welcomes the chance to clear away the cobwebs and blast around Budapest in a McLaren previously driven by John Watson and Niki Lauda.

But what was Berger like when he was a young driver? Truth be told, in a paddock full of driven drivers, Berger always stood out for his sense of fun and balance in life.

This was perhaps the result of his brushes with death - once in a road accident in 1985, when he broke his neck but miraculously survived, and later in a fiery crash in his Ferrari, when his front wing broke at Tamburello in 1989 - the same corner where his friend Senna would meet his death in 1994.

He was left with severe burns on his hands, but returned to racing in a months time.

But on the racetrack, the tall, sandy-haired Austrian was all business, with one of the longest driving careers in modern Formula One.

He started 210 races (placing him fifth amongst the 724 drivers who have competed in Formula One), stretching from 1984 through 1997, and scored 10 Grand Prix wins throughout that time with top teams like McLaren-Honda, Ferrari and Benetton, and team-mates like Ayrton Senna, Jean Alesi, Michele Alboreto and Thierry Boutsen.

Senna was Berger's favorite team-mate when they were at McLaren-Honda together from 1990-1992, and the feeling was mutual, which was no small thing since the Brazilian did not suffer fools - or team-mates - gladly.

Berger remembers providing a refuge for Senna as part of their friendship on Berger's boat in the harbor at Monte Carlo.

Gerhard Berger leads teammate Michele Alboreto (Ferrari F187/88Cs) to victory in the 1988 Italian Grand Prix at Monza © LAT

"He always had all these discs and cassettes with him, and he went back to the cabin to listen to music," he recalled.

When Senna died, Berger was right there with him in the hospital in Bologna, having left the Imola track early.

Senna's death affected him deeply.

"Senna taught me a lot about our sport," he famously said. "I taught him to laugh."

Senna taught Berger so well that there is one significant statistic in which the Austrian actually exceeded the Brazilian's performance: fastest laps, with Berger scoring 21 and Senna 19.

And although Berger had only a fraction of Senna's 41 wins, all of Berger's ten victories were notable - many of them historic - for some reason or other.

For example, Berger's first win was also the Benetton team's first victory, in the inaugural Mexican Grand Prix 1986.

In addition to all these firsts, Berger's performance in the Mexico race was significant because Berger went through the whole race without changing his long-lasting Pirelli tyres.

Berger was back in a Benetton in 1997, when he won at Hockenheim, which was his last win and also the last win for Benetton.

Berger's father had died in a plane accident earlier that summer, so his performance that day was all the more impressive.

Years beforehand, in the 1988 season, when the Prost/Senna combination at McLaren-Honda was winning everything in sight, Berger stepped up for his then-team, Ferrari, and won at Monza on September 11, 1988, much to the relief of the Tifosi, who were still mourning the death of Enzo Ferrari a month earlier.

Berger had met with Pope John Paul during the Pontiff's visit to the Ferrari factory on June 4, 1988, representing the ailing Enzo who could not be there himself, so perhaps it was divine intervention that helped Ferrari and Berger win at Monza that year - the record-breaking season when McLaren-Honda won every other race.

In appreciation of this 1988 victory at Monza, the Ferrari team gave Berger the Ferrari F1/87-88C 1.5 litre V6 turbo that he took to victory on that day.

Gerhard Berger and Dr Mario Theissen © XPB/LAT

In the 1989 Portuguese Grand Prix, Berger continued Ferrari's struggle back to the front, qualifying his normally-aspirated 3.5 litre V12 Ferrari 640 on the front row next to pole-sitter Senna's McLaren-Honda 3.5 litre V10.

In the race, Senna got caught up in a collision with Mansell, and with those two out of the race, Berger finished in first, just ahead of Prost's McLaren-Honda.

Berger also had a historic win at Suzuka in 1987 while driving a Ferrari F1-87 1.5 V6 turbo, and it was significant because it was the first Grand Prix ever at the Honda-sponsored Suzuka circuit that has now been abandoned by Formula One in favor of the Toyota-owned Fuji circuit.

Berger's later win at Suzuka in 1991, when he was driving for McLaren, was also unique because it was gifted to him by his friend and team-mate Senna, who pulled over smartly on the last corner of the last lap after the chicane to let Berger by.

Why? Because Senna was respecting the fact that during the race, Berger had held the lead but had let Senna by when the championship battle with Nigel Mansell had still been in play.

In 1992, when the Williams FW18B-Renault 3.5 V10 was virtually unbeatable, Berger picked up the pieces in his McLaren and won the 1992 Canadian Grand Prix when the two Williams cars were sidelined and Senna was forced out with an electrical problem.

And at the 1992 Australian Grand Prix, which marked Honda's last race in what it calls its Second Generation in Formula One, it was Berger, not Senna, that won the race for the Japanese manufacturer, driving the McLaren-Honda with the final evolution of the three Honda engines used in this Second Generation, the normally-aspirated Honda 3.0 litre V12.

Another significant victory for Berger was his win at Hockenheim in 1994, driving the Ferrari 3.0 litre V12 412 T/B. Berger's win ended a painful dry spell of almost four years for the Scuderia, which to that point had not won a race since Alain Prost's victory at the 1990 Spanish Grand Prix in the 3.5 litre V12 Ferrari 641.

In 1998 Berger announced his retirement, but he was not gone from the paddock for long.

Later that same year, BMW appointed Berger its Director of Motorsport, and he worked with the BMW-Williams team to bring the engine program along to the point where Williams finished second to Ferrari in the 2003 constructors' championship.

It could be said that the success of the BMW Sauber team as best-of-the-rest in 2007 is down to the work pioneered during Berger's time with BMW.

Berger retired from his BMW duties in October 2003 and went full circle, returning home to run the trucking business that his late father had started, and that Gerhard used to drive for as a teenager.

But in his parting statement to the press, he said: "I don't think I will be away for good, because I cannot see my life without racing."

True to form, within a few years, Berger was back in the paddock with Red Bull's junior Formula One team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, born out of the ashes of Minardi.

In February 2006, Berger did a deal with Red Bull's Dietrich Mateshitz, transforming Berger's interest in his family's trucking business into a 50 percent co-ownership of the Scuderia Toro Rosso, thus solving all his problems will one fell swoop, securing the family business and freeing up Berger to plunge back into Formula One in earnest.

A lucky man, a successful driver, a principal in an emerging and well-financed Formula One team, Berger only had one thing to worry about at the Chain Bridge in Budapest: facing the catcalls from Liuzzi and Vettel back at the STR garage if he stalled the McLaren! Look out between the Lions ...