Would you have recognized him?
04/22/2021
If one of these four gentlemen were sitting at the next table, would they have recognized him? All of these seniors were once works racing drivers at Porsche.
So here we go: who is he?
Together with Jo Siffert, he won the 1970 Targa Florio in a Porsche 908 and the 12 Hours of Sebring in a 917K. He is English and also drove in Formula 1 from 1968 to 1974. And now the name: Brian Redman, of course.
The second man:
He is the best-known and most successful racing driver from the Principality of Liechtenstein. Yes, there aren't that many. Is the name already there? No? He took part in Le Mans several times and his best result was a fourth place together with Rolf Stommelen in a Porsche 935 in 1976. That's right, it's Manfred Schurti.
"The third man" is not from the English thriller, but comes from Belgium and has probably changed the least of all in his old age:
He drove in Formula 1 from 1966 to 1979, celebrating 8 victories, 13 pole positions and 14 fastest race laps in his 114 starts. Who could that be? At the start in Le Mans in 1969, he walked comfortably to the car while everyone else was racing like crazy. If I now say that he nevertheless won the 24 Hours of Le Mans six times, then the penny has surely dropped. Yes, it's Jacky Ickx.
The fourth one is a bit more difficult:
Coming to Europe from Australia, he competed in a total of 9 F1 races from Belgium in 1974 to Austria in 1977. In 1983, he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Porsche 956 together with Al Holbert and Hurley Haywood. He later built his own super sports car, the 962CR, a road-going version of the Porsche of the same name. Are the scales falling? That's right it's Vern Schuppan.
How many of you would have recognized them all at the next table? This is exactly what happened to me on the island of Elba a hundred years ago. At dinner in a street restaurant, four people sat down at the next table. One of them looked very familiar to me right from the start, but for a long time I didn't know where to place him. It wasn't a race weekend, he was on vacation, so where was he going? He speaks German, but the dialect is reminiscent of Austrian... Then suddenly the twilight of the gods: "Excuse me, but aren't you Manfred Schurti?" They knew each other, of course, and the two tables were pushed together.
