Breakfast with ... Helmut Marko

They say you shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, but Eric Silbermann risks the wrath of Mrs Manners by having breakfast with a pot-pourri of paddock people.

We’re in Austria and everyone is still talking about the Le Mans 24 Hours, mainly because of Nico Hulkenberg’s win, so who better to talk to than Dr. Helmut Marko. The Red Bull adviser had his Formula 1 career cut short when a stone pierced his visor and blinded him in one eye at the 1972 French Grand Prix, therefore the Austrian is best remembered for his exploits in Sports Car racing, including winning Le Mans for Porsche in 1971, teamed with Dutchman Gijs van Lennep.

Everyone’s talking about Le Mans and the WEC at the moment. What do you think the attraction is now and what was it back then when you were racing?

Coming back to the old days, besides Stewart (Sir Jackie) nearly all F1 drivers raced in Sports Cars too. At most circuits, sports cars, especially the 917 (Porsche) were quicker than a Formula 1 car. There was no priority between the two formulas, it was more… fun is maybe not the right word but, the atmosphere in the sports car camp was a more family one and it was more exciting. Because you had a partner in the car and you had big teams: at Porsche I think at one stage we had around six cars running at Le Mans.

Nowadays, when I think back, I still can’t understand how we raced on circuits like the Targa Florio with such cars where safety was absolutely zero.

And you still hold the record round the Targa Florio course.

Yes, it shows that with a racing driver, when the visor comes down, the brain is cut out! But coming back to Le Mans, already in the old days, there was a special atmosphere and the event had its own rules and it was a race like no other, the event of the year and in my day, there were no motorhomes, we just slept when we could on the floor at the back of the garage and someone would bring sausages from a kiosk because we didn’t even have our own kitchen. But everyone enjoyed it. It was such a challenge, because our cars were more than 100 km/h faster than the slow one and they were fighting each other of course, so that was one of the big risks.

Last Saturday evening, I had some friends round at home and I switched on the television to see what the race order was at Le Mans and all the people with me, most of them not interested in motor sport, they all got excited, saying “what beautiful cars.” It was clear from the pictures that the drivers were pushing with no one concerned about saving tyres or fuel, they were just going for it. That’s the difference compared to the current Formula 1, where everything is so restricted. You hear on the radio, by lap 2 of a Grand Prix, “if you can’t overtake, drop back a couple of seconds and save fuel and tyres.”

If WEC continues like this it will grow and what they need now is more competition, because this year, Toyota is not competitive. The series needs at least three different makes competing for the victory like last year. You have three different technical configurations all competing and that’s what makes it exciting, with one diesel, one double hybrid, one normal engine with one KERS.

Given your enthusiasm and the fact that drinking Red Bull is supposed to keep you awake, maybe you should build up a WEC LMP1 team.

Ah! I think on the chassis side we could do it, but on the engine side it’s getting to the same financial level as Formula 1. Going back to the people with me last Saturday, if it was Formula 1, they’d watch the first few laps and leave it, but we ended up watching two or three hours of Le Mans. I raced there twice, no three times, first with the 908. I remember that funnily enough, we finished third but we got the most prize money, because we won some special prize.

You never hear drivers these days talking about prize money, because that’s not an element of their pay package.

For them it’s nothing, but I remember it well. I also recall when I won at Le Mans, I was a surprise winner and five or six times during the actual race, we were negotiating about how we would split the money within the Porsche team, whether to put all the winnings in one single pot. It was a major topic, more important than tyre wear!

Tell me a bit about the Targa Florio and your lap record that can never be beaten as the race no longer exists.

It was in ’72 and I was paired with Nanni Galli in an Alfa ‘trentatre’ (33.) 

With the roads you were racing on, it was like doing a rally with a race car.

Yes, with a 500 horsepower prototype car. We started practicing with the Alfa GTA which was already a fast car and then we changed, in the middle of roads open to the public into the race car. We were sitting in a small trattoria and on the ground floor was a garage where the cars were prepared, with the mechanics eating spaghetti. You’d watch as another Alfa went past and you’d put down your food and say “I want to do another lap now.” On public roads! Can you imagine, you are doing 300 kilometres an hour and there are donkeys on the road.

Even back then, I felt this was too much

Up in the mountains, if you missed a corner, you would go shhhhhhh – here Marko mimics a car flying over a cliff – and it would take them ages to find you. Even back then, I felt this was too much and not really what I wanted to do. I said this to Carlo Chiti our race manager and he was really annoyed. “You are paid and so you do your best,” he said. Then, in the race, I sniffed a chance of winning and puff! All sense was gone.

I remember I was behind a Ferrari. It had a faster engine but in the corners I was catching up. There were thousands of people alongside the road and when the cars arrived they would move back, so it was like a moveable Armco barrier. I realised after watching for a couple of laps that the only place I could overtake the Ferrari was at a hairpin. What the hell was I going to do, so I just drove at the crowd and this “Armco” moved fortunately.

Nanni Galli was not having a great day – afterwards he told me a friend of his had died – and he lost maybe 3 minutes and he came into the pits and the car ended up near a small wall where all the tools were kept so the mechanics had to pull the car away on a trolley and that lost more time. I got back in and caught the leader again and got ahead before the long straight leading by maybe 8 or 9 seconds. For the timing and information there was an Italian mechanic hanging out of a tree holding a board. I knew the Ferrari would catch me on the straight and I lost the first place by a handful of seconds.

Recently, Ricciardo did a promotional activity, driving my old car on a part of the old Targa Florio course. He rang me, as he had some questions: “Is it normal that the clutch is so heavy? And the gearbox so hard to find a gear.” He felt the car was a monster, spinning its wheels all the time.