25 replies to this topic

[bigears]

(I found out from an other forum and edited the original post to correct some English)

German ex-F1 teamowner Günter Schmidt has passed away today suffering from an illness.

He made his money with rims and in the late 1970s he entered Formula 1.

Drivers like Marc Surer, Manfred Winkelhock, Hans Joachim Stuck and Christian Danner drove for him in F1 and on the first ATS-outing they scored a point. The designer of the ATS car was Gustav Brunner.

Schmidt opened the way to F1 for many guys and threw very much liked parties for the German speaking journalists on his yacht and then shipping them to a local restaurant nearby.

On one occasion after dinner with some journalists. He got the restaurant bill, took out a pen, looked at the bill, wrote down some things and then said: -

"Ok, there are 18 people altogether, so that's...

Ah, just a joke! I pay the bill!"

The (German) racing world lost a friend with a good sense of humor and always fair to the people he knew around him.

Rest in peace.

[Cirrus]

That's sad news. I've always thought that he was given a hard time by the British press, who tended to treat him as a bit of a figure of fun. His Rial team punched well above their weight on a tiny budget, and produced a couple of very neat cars (Gustav Brunner - designed, I think).

Motor racing is the poorer for his passing.

[MODE]

Originally posted by Cirrus
That's sad news. I've always thought that he was given a hard time by the British press, who tended to treat him as a bit of a figure of fun.

Not only the british press but ALL the press except the german one. There's a story about that, it was said that he had photos of german journalists with girls that he had paid for....after that he always had good reports by german press

[renzo_zorzi]

quite sad news indeed

rip günther!

ps: among ats-drivers for f1 were also keke rosberg and gerhard berger!

[Richard Jenkins]

Very sorry to hear this in what is a sad year for motorsport.

[jorism]

Yes, there's lot of sad news the last monts.

I talked Michael Bleekemolen recently, he gave me a good impression how Schmidt was.

During testing with the 1978 ATS HS1 he heard a very strange sound from the airbox, so they took it off to drive some rounds without it. Now the car proved to be 1,5 seconds quicker then with airbox! When Schmidt heard about a non-airbox HS1 he got outrageous. When Michael tried to qualify for the Monza Grand Prix he was at the bottom of the timelists, but Schmidt insisted to have the airbox on the car, otherwise Michael would have qualified.

[Mallory Dan]

I agree sad news, and also wondered why Schmidt seemed to get a bad press.

As an aside any ideas as to why the Germans, despite their fantastic road car industry, have never cracked the manufacture and entry of single seaters ? ATS, Maurer, and Rial had their occasional days, but with the success of Porsche/BMW/Merc/Audi in road and sportscar racing, its staggered me that they've never been able to translate that to bigger single seaters.

[renzo_zorzi]

i guess u already said it there: i think exactly because porsche, bmw and ford were successful in sportscar races and touring car racing they drew away a great deal of drivers/fans/technicians/companies/sponsors to support popular series like the german racing championschips calld "deutsche rennsport meisterschaft" which was more popular in the 1970ies and early 80ies than formula 1 in germany.

besides by the time porsche left the f1 circuit gp racing used to bepredominantly a british affair (apart from ferrari or ligier) with highly specialised firms catering to the needs of single seater racing and especially f1. not much was to gain for a german team in the 1960ies and 1970ies in both terms of marketing and technical difficulties facing the dominance in know how of the british racing industry.

[ian senior]

Surely there must have been a fair number of German constructors making FVee and Supervee cars? The names Kaimann and Horag come to mind, but I have a feeling Horag may have been Swiss.

[petefenelon]

Originally posted by Mallory Dan
I agree sad news, and also wondered why Schmidt seemed to get a bad press.

As an aside any ideas as to why the Germans, despite their fantastic road car industry, have never cracked the manufacture and entry of single seaters ? ATS, Maurer, and Rial had their occasional days, but with the success of Porsche/BMW/Merc/Audi in road and sportscar racing, its staggered me that they've never been able to translate that to bigger single seaters.

Maurer should have been successful, given all the Chevron people and ideas they picked up - it would've been interesting if they'd arrived a year or so earlier and got a proper Chevron/Maurer works team going instead of picking up the leftovers. Although their adherence to the F2 rules was occasionally a bit tenuous....;)

[René de Boer]

Originally posted by ian senior
Surely there must have been a fair number of German constructors making FVee and Supervee cars? The names Kaimann and Horag come to mind, but I have a feeling Horag may have been Swiss.

And Kaimann is Austrian...

[ian senior]

Originally posted by René de Boer


And Kaimann is Austrian...

Oh no. Same language, though. How about McNamara? OK, started by an American, but based in Germany.

[renzo_zorzi]

yes Horag was from switzerland.

Kaimann surely was austrian and tried also to get a foot itno formula 2 with helmut koinigg (sadly died in a surtess in 1974 gp at watkins glen) and a modified 2 litre opel engine (vauxhall for u brits ;) but the project didnt rreally take off (altho i think the kaimann f2 raced in hockenheim early 1974)

oh and BTW, i have a faint memory that Maurer was about to build a F1 in the early 1980ies? could anybody confirm that?

[renzo_zorzi]

oh and....the guy running Kaimann Mr. Bergmann was also involved with the spectacular bi-engine volkswagen for the pikes peak race in 1987

[ReWind]

Originally posted by bigears
(I found out from an other forum and edited the original post to correct some English)
German ex-F1 teamowner Günter Schmidt has passed away today suffering from an illness.

What other forum? From which date is the original post saying he passed away "today"?

BTW: There is not even a consensus about how to spell his name: Günter or Günther (or even Hans-Günther), Schmidt or Schmid?

[bigears]

I got it from this thread at the fameflame.dk forums. Look for tommy84's post.

http://tbk.fameflame...15439&start=125

Not sure if you can view it there as a guest of this particular forum.

When I looked at the post, I always thought it was Schimdt and I didn't do research to find the correct name and then I realised my mistake when I looked in the orbituary of him in today's Autosport magazine.

Also as the post was posted by a German chap and he did his best to type it down in English so I assumed (a bad habit for me!) that he passed away on the day the post was made so I sort of corrected it a bit and added some more information from what I know and posted in here.

If it is a mistake of the wrong date then I do apologise.

[jorism]

How old was he?

[petefenelon]

Originally posted by jorism
How old was he?

72, I believe.

[ReWind]

Originally posted by bigears
I got it from this thread at the fameflame.dk forums. Look for tommy84's post.

That post by a German member was made on Tuesday, June 7th. That is the date Swiss magazine "MOTORSPORT aktuell" was released containing an obituary on Günter Schmid by Dieter Stappert (complete with the restaurant bill joke...).

According to Stappert Schmid died "last week" (no exact date given).

Stappert revealed Schmid's age as "72" although in 2000 Schmid had claimed to be just 59:
http://www.dunlop.de...id_guenther.pdf

[Stefan Schmidt]

I think his name is Günther Schmid (without t ) like it is written in my name..

[Paolo]

I recall reading this story about Schmidt (Schmid) on Autosprint.
It was the wing cars era ( possibly 1981) , and the driver (possibly Lammers) thought the car was better with front wings, and had them mounted. In these days front wings were not always employed, since they hindered the flow to Venturis.
Herr Schmid(t) thought otherwise, and they had an argument.
In the end, the (considerably sized) Boss lost patience, and started jumping on the front wings several times until they broke.

[Twin Window]

Originally posted by Paolo

I recall reading this story about Schmidt (Schmid) on Autosprint.
It was the wing cars era ( possibly 1981) , and the driver (possibly Lammers) thought the car was better with front wings, and had them mounted. In these days front wings were not always employed, since they hindered the flow to Venturis.
Herr Schmid(t) thought otherwise, and they had an argument.
In the end, the (considerably sized) Boss lost patience, and started jumping on the front wings several times until they broke.

Yep; I remember hearing about it a day or two after it took place. A few years earlier, Guy Ligier performed a similar act on his cars' bodywork, IIRC.

I've always been rather proud that I designed the livery for the 1982 ATS (yes, I do know it was rather boring), and that the only minor alteration to my scheme came from the owner himself. Much as I'm saddened by his demise, he was nevertheless an odd chap - certainly in his team ownership guise.

However, all credit should be given to an entrepreneur who put his money where his mouth was, and achieved most people's dreams twice over!

[Paolo]

Originally posted by Twin Window

I've always been rather proud that I designed the livery for the 1982 ATS (yes, I do know it was rather boring),

Not boring at all.
I repainted my Ferrari 312 T4 slot car with that scheme... found that yellow - white very beatutiful.

[Frank de Jong]

Originally posted by Paolo
I recall reading this story about Schmidt (Schmid) on Autosprint.
It was the wing cars era ( possibly 1981) , and the driver (possibly Lammers) thought the car was better with front wings, and had them mounted. In these days front wings were not always employed, since they hindered the flow to Venturis.
Herr Schmid(t) thought otherwise, and they had an argument.
In the end, the (considerably sized) Boss lost patience, and started jumping on the front wings several times until they broke.

Correct: it happened at long Beach 1981 IIRC - exactly 1 year after Lammers' finest hour in F1; 4th on the grid with ATS. 1980 could have been a great year for ATS, but maintenance on the cars was often "pennywise but pound-foolish"; it cost them a good finish at the Spanish non-WC GP, for instance.
Schmid did make mistakes, like all of us, but still he gave quite a few drivers a chance of driving a GP car - we Dutch have ground for saying "thank you", he gave Bleekemolen his only GP and gave Lammers twice a chance to restart his GP career - and I don't think Lammers brought lot of money (he brought rumours of a possible deal with Heineken in 1980 but little more as far as I know).
And I liked the 1983 ATS-BMW - great looking car.

[MattFoster]

Sad news indeed.

His cars always looked the goods, apart from the Rial they were just too inconsistant. I think my favourite ATS would have to be the 1984 version. Great paintjob!

He was typical of the passionate independant team owner that the powers that be have worked so hard to remove from the formula and it is all the poorer for it

RIP Herr Schmidt!

[fines]

Sad news indeed!

Günter Schmid was a very idiosyncratic man, and as such at the receiving end of a lot of press flak - also in Germany! But at heart he was a true enthusiast, and a "doer" (unlike those who critisized him!). Where would the sport be without people like him?

Btw, I'm sure the "wing trampling under foot" incident was in South America (Buenos Aires?) in '81!