Le Mans winner and all-round motor sport ace Jochen Mass has passed away at the age of 78. Not many racing drivers have mixed competing in grands prix with sailing trips across the Atlantic. And that's before you factor in this laid-back German's sports car successes – as he told Simon Taylor
For most of 2009, a quarter of the drivers on the grand prix grid were from Germany. And, thanks to the long reign of Michael Schumacher, that country is statistically one of the more successful in Formula 1's history. Yet, in the first two decades of F1, the only German front-runner was Wolfgang von Trips, whose career ended tragically at Monza in 1961.
Then, in the early 1970s, a brilliant young protégé of Ford of Cologne started to attract attention, and was soon being tipped as a future world champion. But it didn't turn out quite like that for Jochen Mass...