The mercurial Stefan Bellof was born on this day in 1957. Former team-mate Martin Brundle raced alongside Schumacher and rubbed wheels with Senna, but in today's Great Read remembers his old Tyrrell colleague, reflecting on a sports car world champion who might have achieved so much more
How good was Stefan Bellof? The statistics will ever be incomplete, but there's evidence that – with the right opportunities – he could have extended his collection of world titles beyond the one he won during his second sports car campaign.
To add some context, Bellof was the star turn in German Formula Ford during the 1981 season, just as Ayrton Senna was in the UK. Rightly regarded as a meteor on wheels, the Brazilian moved on to dominate FF2000 in Britain and Europe – often at club-level meetings, with commensurate crowds – while Bellof graduated directly to European F2, then F1's unofficial ante-chamber, and won his first two races. Their paths were realigned two years later in F1 – most notably in Monaco, where they accompanied Alain Prost on the podium. Had the race been allowed to continue in teeming rain, they might well subsequently have passed him...
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