Helmut Marko: the Player (II)

Part II: the Grand Prix Years

On the heels of Helmut Marko's stunning 1971 Le Mans victory, almost one year after his friend Rindt's death, Marko qualified for his first Formula One race, the Austrian Grand Prix on August 15th 1971, at the Osterreichring, driving an outdated BRM P153 for Yardley Team BRM - a four-car team with Jo Siffert, Peter Gethin, Howden Ganley and Marko as the latest driver, taking up the place of Pedro Rodriguez, who had been killed in a sportscar race in Germany.

By the way, a Statistical Note is in order here: the record books say that Helmut Marko tried to qualify Jo Bonnier's McLaren M7C at the 1971 German Grand Prix, the race just before the Austrian Grand Prix, but Marko says that because of contractual conflicts, he never actually ever took out the McLaren M7C to qualify so the 1970 Austrian Grand Prix was his first race. "I did not do the qualifying," is what Marko told Autosport-Atlas emphatically, and he was there, so statisticians and historians, get your erasers out.

Niki Lauda's debut in Formula One in a March 711 as a pay driver was at this same 1971 Austrian Grand Prix as Helmut Marko's, on home ground at the Osterreichring, where both Austrians had raced extensively. Marko and Lauda knew each other and traveled together to the same races over the years but, it should be said, Marko (from Graz) does not speak of Lauda (from Vienna) in the reverential terms he uses for his boyhood friend Rindt; to him, Niki Lauda was just another guy to beat on Sunday and he usually did so.

Marko turned in a much more credible Grand Prix debut than Lauda, taking his year-old Yardley Team BRM P153 to 11th place, up from 17th place on the grid; it was Lauda's first and last Grand Prix in 1971 and he finished in 17th place. Marko's Yardley Team BRM teammate, Jo Siffert, won the 1971 Austrian Grand Prix with the newer spec BRM P160. Indeed, except for one race, the 1972 South African Grand Prix at Kyalami where Lauda finished in seventh place and Marko in 14th place, Helmut Marko did better than Niki Lauda in all the races in which they both competed in 1971 and 1972, as Marko did in his first Grand Prix in Austria.

It is interesting to reflect upon the fact that, when Marko and Lauda were carrying the Austrian flag in these early years in Formula One, neither Alexander Wurz nor Christian Klien, the current Austrian hot shoes, were yet born and Marko and Lauda's future colleague, Gerhard Berger, was about to turn 12 years old.

The 1971 Italian Grand Prix at Monza was won by another Yardley-BRM teammate of Helmut Marko, Peter Gethin, in a famous slipstreaming battle won by a car length that until 2003 held the record as the fastest ever Grand Prix - a 150.75 miles per hour average. (Michael Schumacher's Ferrari F2003GA set a new record of 153.75 miles per hour in the 2003 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.) Gethin had a BRM 160, chassis no. 1. Unfortunately, Marko had the hand-me-down BRM 153 and was out early on lap 3 with engine trouble. However, on the strength of BRM's back-to-back wins by Siffert and Gethin in Italy and Austria, BRM would finish second in the Constructors' Championship for 1971, a team with promise for the 1972 season.

In the last two races of the 1971 season - the Canadian Grand Prix at Mosport and the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen - Marko finished 12th and 13th respectively, further up the grid than where he qualified, still the only one on the team running the outclassed BRM P153, the others having graduated to the BRM P160.

Two weeks after the 1971 season ended, tragedy again struck the BRM team when team leader Jo Siffert was killed in the non-Championship, post-season Victory Race held on October 24th 1971 at Brands Hatch, which was intended to celebrate Jackie Stewart's taking the World Drivers' Championship for 1971.

Notwithstanding the body blows suffered by the BRM team with the losses in quick succession of Pedro Rodriguez and Jo Siffert, tobacco money was coming into the sport in size, and Louis Stanley, who ran the BRM team, had big plans for expanding the BRM team in 1972, and had convinced Marlboro to contribute considerable amounts for sponsorship. This, Stanley hoped, would permit BRM to field a six-driver super team, to be called, somewhat presumptuously, the Marlboro World Championship Team.

The six drivers recruited for the Marlboro BRM team included 1970 Italian Grand Prix winner Peter Gethin, Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Helmut Marko, Alex Soler-Roig, Gijs van Lennep and Howden Ganley. Marko was not a pay driver; according to Marko, Marlboro and BRM had approached Peter Gethin and Helmut Marko first about being part of the 1972 super team. The original concept was to build up three new cars and update three existing chassis to potentially field a six-car team, something that did not quite happen but that was the idea.

As it would turn out, even the Marlboro sponsorship was not enough to build and sustain the super team, as the mechanics were overextended in trying to prepare five cars, and spare parts for the fleet were often wanting.

Nonetheless, Helmut Marko's first full Formula One season started off very promisingly. In the Argentinean Grand Prix at Buenos Aires, Marko's BRM P153 was still good enough for tenth place, just ahead of Niki Lauda's March 721X in 11th place, and in the South African Grand Prix Marko finished 14th, far ahead of the other three BRM's in a field of 26 cars.

On March 30th 1972, in a non-Championship race, the Grande Premio de Brasil at Interlagos, Marko garnered fourth place in his BRM V12 106, chassis no. 01, the lucky chassis that had taken Peter Gethin to victory in the 1971 Italian Grand Prix nine months later.

When I mentioned to Marko at some point that his highest finish as a Grand Prix driver was an eighth place (not a points-paying position at that time), the 62 year-old looked puzzled and questioned that statistic and then remembered that his impressive fourth place finish came in Brazil, which was not a full-fledged Grand Prix.

"Oh, that was non-Championship," he recalls, but, I could see that it was also a point of pride for him, to know that he had finished in the points in Brazil, behind the likes of Carlos Reutemann and Ronnie Peterson.

And he should be proud, because the 1972 Grande Premio de Brasil at Interlagos was one of the most famous of non-Championship races, a race run under torrid heat and dusty track conditions, where the marshals were hosing off the crowds in the grandstands who were suffering in the heat, a race won by Carlos Reutemann's Brabham BT34 after Emerson Fittipaldi's Lotus 72 suspension gave up with five laps to go, a race that was a prelude to the first official Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos in 1973. For Helmut Marko to finish fourth in the Peter Gethin year-old BRM V12 P160/1, was a considerable achievement that should have foreshadowed in 1972 a successful first full season in Formula One for the young Austrian.

But apart from the non-Championship race in Brazil, the 1972 Monaco Grand Prix was Marko's best result in Formula One, a race held in one of those very wet conditions that Monaco throws up from time to time. Before the race, under threatening skies, all the drivers were prognosticating as to what tires to use, including Helmut Marko, then sporting long sandy blond hair and broad sideburns.

Marlboro-BRM team leader Jean-Pierre Beltoise, in his BRM P160B, survived the downpour that eventually occurred and led for the BRM/Marlboro team from flag to flag for 80 laps, while many others spun off the slippery streets of Monte Carlo. Unfortunately, Beltoise's only win would turn out to be BRM's last win.

Helmut Marko in his BRM 153B proved to be a sufficiently capable Reigenmeister in these difficult conditions to finish in eighth place, maneuvering better through the rain and around the accident debris than the likes of Ronnie Peterson, Graham Hill and Niki Lauda, who all finished further down in the order.

Squeezed in between Marko's appearances at the Monaco Grand Prix and the Belgian Grand Prix, was one of the most spectacular drives of Helmut Marko's career, the 1972 Targa Florio, run the next Sunday after Monaco.

The Targa Florio, which counted as a round of the 1972 sportscar Championship, has no modern parallel. A road course set out in a 44-mile loop of mountain roads around Sicily, it was Italy's most popular road race, watched by more people crowded together in little towns and along the dusty roads that connected the towns than attended this year's Indianapolis 500. Eleven laps around the punishing circuit was the task at hand, with 38-40 minutes being a respectable time for one lap, the fastest-ever lap set in a Porsche 908 in 1970 at 33 minutes, 36 seconds.

In 1972, there were 76 cars entered, to be released one by one at 15-second intervals, but for the 400,000 Italian spectators, there were only two marques worth following: the four V8 Alfa Romeo 33TT3's entered by Autodelta, Alfa Romeo's racing division, against the lone Ferrari 312 PB, driven by Arturo Merzario and Sandro Munari.

The 1972 Targa Florio was the seventh round of the 11 races that counted for the 1972 FIA's sportscar Championship, and although Alfa Romeo hoped in the beginning of the season to be able to challenge Ferrari for the title, it was already clear by May that Ferrari would win out in the end, thus, the Commendatore only bothered to send one Ferrari to the 1972 Targa Florio.

For Alfa Romeo, though, the stakes were higher since Alfa Romeo had won the 1971 Targa Florio and hoped to repeat that success amidst an otherwise lackluster season, and Alfa Romeo's team manager, Carlo Chiti, an ex-Ferrari man himself, threw all Autodelta's resources at the Targa Florio, with Targa specialist Nino Vaccarella (he had won the 1965 Targa Florio in the works Ferrari 275P2 and the 1971 race for Alfa Romeo and was a schoolteacher from nearby Palermo), assigned to drive with Rolf Stommelen (winner of the 1967 Targa Florio) and ex-Le Mans winner Gijs van Lennep teamed with team leader Vic Elford (who had won the 1968 Targa Florio in the Porsche 907/B). Nanni Galli was the co-driver assigned to Helmut Marko. Indeed, of Alfa Romeo's four-car effort, the Marko-Galli car was the only Alfa Romeo that did not have at least one driver who had previously won the Targa Florio, so Carlo Chiti had every reason to hope for a repeat win on Sicilian soil.

But right from the outset, things went south for Alfa Romeo. Vic Elford, one of the favorites, whose Alfa Romeo #2 was the first car to take the course, was also the first one out when Elford's engine gave up, even before completing the first lap. By lap four of the 11-lap race, Alfa #1, with the two former Targa Florio winners in it - Vaccarella and Stommelen - was out due to broken valve springs. Alfa # 4 driven by Surtees Grand Prix Driver Andrea de Adamich and Toine Hezemans (another ex-Targa Florio winner), was 10 minutes behind the leaders after five laps.

Which left Alfa Romeo's hopes riding on the #5 Alfa Romeo 33TT3 driven by Helmut Marko and Nanni Galli. And, as Vic Elford reported later on, Helmut Marko did not even like running the chaotic Targa Florio and had before the race vowed never to come back again.

Nevertheless, when the chips were down, Helmut Marko took up the cudgels in his last stint for the woebegone Alfa Romeo team and ferociously attacked the sinuous circuit to chase down Arturo Merzario's Ferrari 312 PB. With one last 44-mile lap to go, Marko had clawed back 2 minutes from the time previously lost by co-driver Galli when he spun out during his last stint.

As Marko began the last lap, the Austrian, who trained as a teenager with Jochen Rindt on the mountain roads above Graz that are not too dissimilar to the twisty bits of the Targa Florio, was driving like a demon by the time he reached the town of Campofelice, having closed the gap to the Ferrari to a bare 28 seconds. In the end, even Marko's demonic possession could not bail Alfa Romeo out and when the tallies were done, Merzario's Ferrari was still 16 seconds ahead of Marko's Alfa Romeo notwithstanding his valiant effort. Had good friends Vic Elford and Helmut Marko been paired together by Carlo Chiti, as they had been in other races, Marko would have almost certainly won the race with that last heroic stint.

It was Marko's bravura performance in this 1972 Targa Florio race that led Commendatore Ferrari to put Helmut Marko in a Ferrari 312PB for the 1972 Osterreichring 1000 KM race from which Alfa Romeo had withdrawn. In that familiar Austrian setting, Marko substituted for an injured Clay Reggazoni and placed second, ahead of his Ferrari teammate, Ronnie Petersen, in what would turn out to be Marko's last sports car race, a class of racing where Marko was acknowledged to be one of the world's best drivers. How good was he? Enzo Ferrari intended to add Marko to the already star-studded Ferrari sports car team for the 1973 season.

Returning to the 1972 Grand Prix tour, in the Belgian Grand Prix at Nivelles, Helmut Marko again showed his mettle, finishing in 10th place after qualifying 23rd. Marko was the second highest-finishing BRM in his P153B; both Gethin and Beltoise were forced to retire their BRM 160B's.

On July 2nd 1972, the French Grand Prix was held at Clermont-Ferrand, which is in a part of France where the hilly terrain is volcanic rock and loose stones near or on the abrasive track surface were always a hazard for drivers, both because they caused punctures and because they could be thrown up into the eyes of the drivers. Marko knew the circuitous track, having won the Auvergne Trophy sports car race there in 1971. At long last, Marko looked to have under him at Clermont-Ferrand his best ride yet, driving for the first time up to date equipment, the BRM P160B, chassis no. 06, with a BRM 3.0 litre V12 engine, on a "drivers track" that was known to him.

Marko used his opportunity in the fresh equipment well, qualifying in a career-high sixth place. To understand the caliber of Marko's qualifying performance that day, the Marlboro-BRM team had its usual host of drivers on hand that weekend - Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Reine Wisell, Peter Gethin and Howden Ganley, and yet Helmut Marko outdid all his BRM teammates and lined up in the third row amongst the likes of Chris Amon (on pole with the Matra-Matra), Jackie Stewart (Tyrrell 003), Denny Hulme (McLaren M19C), Jacky Ickx (Ferrari 312B2) and Tim Schenken (Surtees TS9B).

Throughout the weekend, the loose stones thrown onto the circuit at Clermont-Ferrand caused a number of punctures and eight of the 24 cars had to pit for punctures during the race. Chris Amon, whose tagline is the best driver to have never won a Grand Prix, was in rare form that day before the French crowd in the fabulous-sounding Matra V12 and took the lead from pole and was out in front for the first nine laps of the 38 lap race until a puncture forced him to pit, surrendering the lead to Jackie Stewart, the eventual winner of the race. In one of his grittiest drives, Amon fought back in the Matra to third place and took fastest lap on lap 32 in the process of scratching his way back up through the field.

Just behind the leaders, Helmut Marko also got a good start and had moved up to fifth place, when on lap eight a loose stone flung up by the aerodynamic forces of the racecars - probably Ronnie Peterson's March 721G ahead of him - flew into Marko's visor with such force that it actually pierced his visor, damaging Marko's left eye and compromising his vision to the point that he was ultimately forced to give up his most promising driving career. He was 29 years old.

Jackie Stewart had experienced a similar episode that weekend, when an errant loose stone had put a hole in his Tyrrell's windscreen, but that windscreen effectively acted as bulletproof glass and Stewart was not injured. Somewhat tallish for a driver, Marko's BRM had a smidgen of a windscreen surround that was not very high, barely coming up to the bottom of his helmet, whereas the Tyrrell's windscreen offered the wee Scot somewhat better protection.

A lot of things - too many things - went wrong that day that contributed to Helmut Marko's tragic accident. Formula One never went back to Clermont-Ferrand again after this 1972 race.

You can see from pictures of Marko's Marlboro red and white no. 25 BRM P160B in the opening laps of the race, that Marko looks somewhat outsized for the BRM's cockpit. It turns out that this particular P160B, chassis no. 06, was new and had not yet been used. The body panels looked ill-fitting but, according to Marko, that was not the main problem. Marko recalls the key problem all these years later: "It was a new car and I was the first one in the chassis and the new chassis did not fit me and therefore I am so much out of the car . . . . Normally, I would be much lower in the car and that is another reason why the accident happened."

Track conditions at Clermont-Ferrand were also a factor. It will be remembered that this year at Hockenheim for the 2005 German Grand Prix, Flavio Briatore of Renault complained about McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen intentionally kicking up dust in Alonso's face as Kimi exited a corner ahead of Alonso, the assumption being that the precise Finn knew exactly what he was doing and that it could be dangerous or at least unsportsmanlike.

In Ronnie Peterson's case, there has been no suggestion that Peterson intentionally went off line to throw up rocks in Marko's face, but even then it must have been known that the volcanic stones all over the place at Clermont-Ferrand presented a problem, and the stingy paving of the track surface, leaving so little space between the track and the volcanic rock and grassy adjacent areas surely made the accident more likely to happen.

The materials used for visors in that era were also not the tough bulletproof Lexan product used today. Helmut Marko's helmet was a full-face helmet with a large, oval-shaped opening for the visor that was shaped almost like the oval Indianapolis 500 track, but the visor/shield material, was made of thin plastic, but fairly rigid. Pictures taken of the Helmut's red and white helmet in the hospital show an almost perfectly round hole about the size of an Oreo cookie in the center left of the visor where the rock made a clean entry; no shattering of the visor, just a hole, as if a huge bullet had gone through it.

Which is what it must have felt like to Marko, who was having the race of his life, running up front in a field of 24 cars with the likes of Amon, Stewart and Ickx all around him, only to have it all be brought to a halt in a split-second, which he, of course, remembers vividly:

"It was Peterson's car. [a March-Ford not Emerson Fittipaldi's Lotus-Ford as is sometimes reported]. I saw something coming, I did not know what it was . . .a stone [came] through the visor and cut my eye.

"At that moment I knew there was a lot of fuel [in the BRM], the heaviest fuel load ever in the car [as it was only lap eight of 38 lap race] and 20 cars behind me and so I managed to open my eye which was itself remarkable [as the doctors would say later on] because when one eye is gone the other eye automatically closes. The doctor did not believe that I was able to do that. I raised my arm and shoved the car to the side. It was the only way to survive because the cars were coming at something like [260] kilometers, all in a line."

We all remember how agonizingly long it seemed for the safely workers to reach Ralf Schumacher when he slammed his Williams-BMW into the wall at Indianapolis during the 2004 US Grand Prix, a circuit only 2.6 miles around; in Helmut Marko's case, 32 years earlier, the response time, if it could be called that, was appalling on the lengthy and twisty 5.1 mile Clermont-Ferrand circuit, but when help turned up after about a half an hour, it turned out to be his friend and Alfa Romeo sports car teammate, Vic Elford, driving the somewhat primitive medical/course car. Still conscious, this is what Marko remembers next:

"Vic Elford arrived 30 minutes later in a 911 Porsche Medical Car; it didn't have a back seat, they put me in the trunk and then they brought me to a medical guy and then drove to the wrong hospital, so I arrived at the hospital [in Clermont-Ferrand] two and a half to three hours after the accident. And then there was no doctor [natch, Sunday afternoon in sleepy Clermont-Ferrand] and by the time we found one it was early evening . . .the pain, you cannot imagine."

Of course, Helmut Marko was not in a position to know why all these interminable delays occurred. Vic Elford reviewed Marko's 2005 recollection of the 1972 rescue and added his own vivid account of coming upon his friend at the accident scene:

"At Clermont Ferrand it was still the very early days of the Rapid Response vehicle following the first lap (I did it at Monaco one time but I don't remember when) and I was, as [Marko] said, in a 911 Turbo. The doctor and I sat at the end of pitlane, helmeted, buckled, ready to go, and our initial intervention was in fact very fast.

"There were a number of reasons why I was in the car. I knew how to drive a 911, I knew the circuit, having raced there on the Tour de France and indeed in the F1 GP in 1969, so I was used to having F1 cars around me - and I spoke fluent French. Over the radio I got the message to GO, even before knowing where I was going, and we were already at the top of the hill before they told me where to go.

"At first sight I thought they had made a mistake, since I saw only the car sitting uncrashed at the side of the road and the driver being helped by the course workers. Then I saw Helmut and the terrible blood red hole where his eye had been. The doctor made the decision that even though we were not equipped as an ambulance, bearing in mind the length of the track, we should get him in and to the medical center as quickly as possible, which we did. Once there, we handed him over to the medical personnel and took up our spot at the end of pit lane again."

Only a few months before this sad day, Vic Elford remembers the fun-loving Marko pulling the following stunt while the two Alfa Romeo sports car teammates were at Daytona for the Six Hour Daytona held in February 1972 where Elford/Marko finished third behind two Ferraris: "I remembered the "wild side" [of Helmut] that he generally kept hidden. In 1972 we were teamed together . . . at Daytona I had a little Ford Pinto (or some such rubbish) rental car, while Helmut was sharing a BIG American tank with a couple of others.

"One day on the way to the track, we left the beach and a couple of blocks out I stopped at a red light with Helmut driving the tank behind me. I sat with my foot on the brake waiting for the light to change and suddenly realized that in spite of the brake, I was sliding gently across the intersection, finally stopping right bank in the middle. A glance in the mirror showed Helmut falling about laughing at the wheel behind me after pushing me ever so gently to the embarrassing position I now found myself in."

When Helmut Marko finally did get to a proper hospital, extensive efforts were made to save his sight. According to Marko, he was "40 days in the hospital in Clermont-Ferrand with French Doctors . . .then another two months in Austria with Austrian doctors, but then I said 'I don't want any more operations or things like that' . . .I am the one who gave up . . . ."

In Vic Elford's fabulous documentary film "Speed Merchants", which covers the year-long struggle in 1972 in sports car racing between Ferrari and Alfa Romeo, there are shots of Helmut Marko in his hospital garb, learning how to come to grips with the loss of one eye. In the film, Marko's beautiful and charming wife, Irmi, recalls in her broken English what Marko told her about how it felt when the eye was lost: "You know he felt in the first three days . . . he thought that something strange had happened . . . he didn't feel his eye . . . as on his body . . . he always thought it was something strange; the first moment he even thought he had no eye anymore."

Ironically, Marko's friend, Jochen Rindt, had also had his problems at Clermont-Ferrand, having retired during the 1969 race there with nausea and double vision, so demanding were the 51 turns per lap in this "little Nurburgring" of a circuit.

Next week: Life Goes On

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