The life's work of Walter Brun
A book with seven seals, as the saying goes, had its grand christening a few days ago at the "autobau erlebniswelt" in Romanshorn. After a good two years of hard work, one of the craziest book ideas was realized in almost its entirety.
A book, no, three books, which almost chronicle Walter Brun's life's work in motorsport, was presented with many celebrities in attendance.
Oscar Larrauri traveled all the way from Argentina, Thierry Boutsen from Monaco, Massimo Sigala from Italy, Jochen Mass and Harald Grohs, as well as Herbert Schnitzer from Germany and, of course, many local motorsport enthusiasts were invited to Fredy Lienhard's "autobau". There could hardly have been a more fitting location for this incredible life's work.
Walter Brun not only enjoys a large circle of acquaintances in Switzerland, he is also well known throughout the German-speaking world as a former racing driver and team owner.
From the Lotus Cortina in 1966, through the Porsches 956 and 962, to the Saleen 2009, he drove a wide variety of racing cars very successfully for over 43 years. His own team in Group C won the team world championship in 1986 and even in the premier class, the F1 (1988-90), the name Brun was involved for three years.
The idea of a book with photos of all Group C and F1 races from Brun was expanded more and more by Walti's son Sacha, so that in the end every single race with every Brun car present there, whether in Europe, Japan or America, on the mountain or on the circuit from 1966 to 2009, is documented in three volumes on 960 pages with around 1200 photos. Group C, Formula 1, European Hillclimb Championship or even the Interseries, everything has its place and is lined up year after year.
You can imagine that it is not easy to track down at least one picture of every car in every race over 30 or 40, even 60 years ago. Photographers around the world were contacted, who "thanks" to the corona pandemic also found some time to dig through their archives, and in the end only three pictures from three Interseries races (two from 1985 and one from 1986) were actually missing.
The four authors Sacha Brun, Peter Wyss, Eckhard Schimpf and Thomas Nehlert provided the text, which was kept short compared to the pictures, and of course the countless captions.
Although Walti has distanced himself more and more from racing in recent years, devoting himself more and more to music, he still showed great satisfaction and contentment with his gigantic life's work on practically every racetrack on the planet. In over 50 years, he also enjoyed great success as German Champion, European Champion and World Champion.
For those interested, the book, which is limited to 1000 copies, can now be ordered for € 375 from the Sportfahrer-Zentrale website .
