A very happy birthday to Jochen Mass, who was born on his day in 1946. 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. But as he tells Simon Taylor in today's Great Read, Mass has treated life as a game
For most of 2009, a quarter of the drivers on the Grand Prix grids 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. His highly successful racing career lasted through three decades; but, out of 105 Grands Prix, his only victory was in the accident-shortened Barcelona race in 1975. Today he's relaxed about that. He lives a busy life indulging his wide-ranging interests, from the development of wind-powered nautical freighters to the writings of the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.
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