THE OCTANE INTERVIEW
These days he’s all over Historic racing, but Mass made his reputation as the most enduring of endurance racers. Paul Chudecki meets him
Outspoken German racing hero Jochen Mass
In his heyday Jochen Mass was one of Germany’s most famous and versatile racing drivers. He has since established himself as one of the most popular racers on the Historic racing calendar. Ever approachable, with a warm and friendly smile, the softly spoken German remains in demand at retrospective racing events across the globe.
Until 1967, however, becoming a racing driver hadn’t even crossed his mind. He grew up in Bavaria, was educated at boarding school and, aged 21, wanted to be a mechanic. That would be after three years’ service in Germany’s merchant navy, which he left, disenchanted, having hoped to sail yachts. The kickstart came when his girlfriend, a Mannheim Sports Touring Club member, took him to his first hillclimb, at Eberbacker, where she was a marshal. The sights, sounds and smells instantly sparked a lifelong passion – and career. ‘I saw it spontaneously,’ 73-year-old Jochen recalls with a grin. ‘Listening, smelling, seeing the cars; this is nice, that’s what I’m going to do!’
He couldn’t afford a racing car so he secured a job as an aspiring race mechanic for Mannheim-based Alfa dealer Helmut Hahn, who ran an Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA. ‘Otherwise, I’d have had to join the army,’ he says. Soon he got behind the wheel of a Giulia Super Ti, finishing second at Eberbacker behind a GTA; another podium shortly followed. ‘I didn’t have the faintest notion of failing, I knew I could do it, I knew I had the talent, I just didn’t think about it,’ Jochen laughs. ‘I did two or three circuit races with the GTA. That belonged to the garage and it was a works car. It was a good car. And I wrecked it, unfortunately, early in ’69. Then you realise that you need always some help, you need a guy who supports you. That was so important.’
His successes were noticed, resulting in a Ford test at Zandvoort. ‘Thirty guys there, lots of Formula 1 drivers: Tim Schenken, JeanPierre Beltoise, plus Dieter Glemser, Manfred Mohr, Helmut Marko and me. There were four guys within four-tenths of a second. I got a contract immediately and they said “What do you want to drive?” I said “Just tell me what you can do.” They said, “Well, the European Hill Climb Championship.” I said “Anything!”’
Signing that contract also meant a leap in pay from DM150 (about £16) per month. ‘They said “How much do you want to earn?” I hadn’t the faintest idea what to say. When they came up with their proposal, I fell off the chair!’ laughs Jochen. ‘And now I was a works driver, too.’ That was 1970.
After competing in several EHCC rounds in a Capri 2300GT, for 1971 Jochen moved to Touring Cars, managed by Jochen Neerpasch in Cologne, and promptly won the German Saloon Car Championship, initially with a 2300GT, then an Escort RS1600 and finally a Capri RS2600. In the latter he won 1972’s SpaFrancorchamps 24 Hours, Silverstone’s Tourist Trophy and the Jarama Four Hours, co-driving with Hans-Joachim Stuck, Glemser and also Gerard Larousse and Alex Soler-Roig, earning the European Touring Car Championship title.
Then came a hat-trick of three-hour sportscar races in a Chevron B21-Cosworth/Hart (with Gerry Birrell and Peter Gethin), while taking in the European Formula Vee Championship. ‘I had plenty of time to do all these different series, a great variety of cars,’ says Jochen. ‘I was quick because I loved it. While you race you’re focused and everything is good.’
Jochen was increasingly in demand, having garnered a reputation as a determined charger. While leading Formula Vee in 1972 he switched to the hugely competitive British Formula 3 and European Formula 2 Championships, the former with a Brabham BT35-Ford, in which a win and top results placed him firmly on the map, and the latter with a works March 722-Ford, alongside Niki Lauda, leading his first race until clutch failure and winning his second.
For 1973 he switched to a Formula 2 Surtees TS15-Ford, finishing runner-up to Jean-Pierre Jarier. By mid-season Jochen had a Surtees Formula 1 drive and, aged 27, made his World Championship debut with a TS14A-Cosworth in the British Grand Prix. A victim of the infamous startline crash, he had to wait until the German race to complete his first race, finishing seventh; he would also end the year second overall in the TS15 in the European F2 Championship. A full-time Surtees drive in the unreliable TS16 meant a dismal 1974 F1 season but Jochen landed a McLaren drive, in the M23-Cosworth, for the last two races.
He finished seventh in the United States GP and, then deemed a potential FI title contender, was signed for 1975 alongside McLaren’s new World Champion, Emerson Fittipaldi. During that season, Jochen took his sole F1 victory, in Montjuïc’s crash-strewn Spanish GP. ‘It was the most unworthy win,’ he concedes – a German wouldn’t win a GP again until Michael Schumacher’s 1992 Belgian victory. Jochen stayed at McLaren for ’76, alongside James Hunt, who went on to win the Championship.
Then Porsche came calling and so began a long and successful association. Jochen’s first outing, sharing a 935 with Jacky Ickx, saw victory in the Mugello Six Hours; the pair (bar one race with Mass and Stommelen) would then win nine of 11 races, including three of seven World Championship for Makes rounds,
helping Porsche to overall victory. ‘The cars were damn good,’ smiles Jochen. ‘That was fabulous, so we were actually World Champions in Makes. But you know, Jacky and I were always together, except for Le Mans.’
Which is significant. ‘I had misgivings about Le Mans. I said to the Automobile Club de L’Ouest “Your guard rails are crap, they are loose, they are two-tier only, and they’re not even fixed in the ground properly.” I said “Fix it.” They said “Jochen, c’est impossible,” blah, blah, blah. In my contract was everything but Le Mans. I insisted. That’s why Derek always drove with Jacky; had I driven with Jacky as normal I would have won five times just the same. With hindsight, it was wrong but on principle I didn’t want to do it. It was a joke, this arrogance. The first Le Mans I did in ’72 with the Capris, I hated every second of it. With the prototypes’ – he groans – ‘fuck, I was always in the mirror not to be in the way of anybody. I said “What a bore, I wish the thing would blow up,” and it did me the favour and just went bang!’
By the end of 1977, Jochen had been replaced at McLaren by Patrick Tambay and moved to ATS. A lacklustre season ensued, compounded when, testing ATS’s D1-Cosworth at Silverstone in 1978, he suffered broken leg, shoulder and ribs, a punctured lung, and smashed knee and femur following suspension failure at 180mph approaching Stowe. ‘I survived it, luckily,’ he smiles wryly. Remarkably, two months later he was at Silverstone testing for Arrows; contracts for 1979-80 followed, his best result an excellent second in Spain in the A3-Cosworth. Having missed a 1981 Williams drive while uncontactable after breaking his leg sailing his 28ft 1919 schooner across the Atlantic, Jochen accepted a 1982 drive in RAM’s March 821Ford. But his time in F1 was nearing its end.
During practice at Zolder for the Belgian GP, Gilles Villeneuve misjudged a high-speed pass and crashed after his front wheel touched Jochen’s rear wheel. The Canadian’s death persuaded Jochen that he could put his family through it no longer. It was the last of 114 Grands Prix he entered.
But he’d relented over Le Mans, and moved back to Porsche. Jochen finished 12th at La Sarthe with Vern Schuppan and Hurley Haywood in a 936 – and he won the Kyalami Nine Hours with Reinhold Joest. Then, with the arrival of Group C and the new World Endurance Championship, he had Porsche’s allconquering 956 from June 1982. ‘I sat in the car for the first time, drove it, and I thought “Nice”. It was so much quicker than the 936. I said to [Porsche engineer Norbert] Singer, “My God, fantastic, I’ve never driven a better car.”’
Jochen, of course, enjoyed numerous top results with first Porsche and then SauberMercedes Group C cars. ‘Oh yeah, sure, sure, it was good. I’m still the guy with the most points over the years, 800, whatever. I was the most successful long-distance driver.’ And next closest? ‘I think it’s Derek, and Jacky of course, because they started in the late 1960s in sportscars, but it was never a championship, it didn’t count the same way, so maybe that’s why they didn’t get the same points.’
As a works Porsche driver Jochen’s successes spanned more than a decade, including a record-breaking 19 victories with Ickx, but a win at Le Mans – second in ’82 was the closest – had always eluded him. After several IMSA events with privateer 962s, including the Sebring 12 Hours, Jochen joined Sauber in 1987, run by his former boss Neerpasch, to drive its Sauber C9/88-Mercedes-Benz: ‘And the car was, as we know, bloody good.’
Indeed, on his first outing, the Jerez 800km, he won with Jo Schlesser and Mauro Baldi; eight more podiums followed in 1989, including four wins and, finally, the Le Mans 24 Hours, with Manuel Reuter and Stanley Dickens, 17 years after his debut. ‘We won Le Mans, no points, no money, no nothing; a shit trophy,’ Jochen says, dismissing the trophy’s diminutive proportions with a gesture, and recalling the FIA/ACO regulations war that year, which had caused Le Mans to be removed from the World Sports-Prototype Championship.
Even so, he finished runner-up in the WS-PC (as he had in 1984’s then WEC). Surely he must have felt good atop the Le Mans podium? ‘Yeah, it was fine,’ is his understated reply. ‘After all, I had been driving it 14 times or whatever. I drove 11 hours of that 24, Stanley Dickens drove eight and Manuel Reuter drove five. I thought “Well, thank God, I’ve done it finally.” We were leading,’ he chuckles, ‘but it was forever!’
Jochen’s luck chasing the elusive top step of the WS-PC didn’t improve in 1990 with the Mercedes C11, although the title came tantalisingly close in the Canadian round when Karl Wendlinger suffered a puncture after contact with another car while the pair were leading. ‘He came in and put a new wheel on and went out. I thought “We’ll catch up again.” Anyway, so I got no points, so we didn’t win the championship, it was against Schlesser, with a small margin ahead of us.’ Indeed, the Frenchman and Mauro Baldi took the drivers’ title jointly by just 1½ points.
With the ongoing FIA/ACO war, SauberMercedes had boycotted Le Ma 990, but Jochen’s ill luck resumed the n year. After he’d held first place for 16 hour is pit crew saw the water temperature risi ‘We were leading by four laps. So they sa that, and our crew engineer had gone for a s. The guys didn’t have the guts to order a s and they cooked it! So they called in the ot car quickly, and the engineer was there, the changed it in 30 seconds! So I said “That exe cise cost us a million just to be here, with the p eparation and all, all because of a bleeding brac – four laps in the lead! How can you just thr w it away like that?" It was a pity.'
Jochen left Saube cedes at the end of 1991, and entered ret rement with ten wins and 19 Endurance Cha onship victories, more than any other drive nd three years later he proved he’d lost non of his speed when Frank Williams invited hi to drive 20 laps at Le Castellet. ‘John Wat on was there, Jarier and Derek Daly – they ouldn’t drive any more, seriously,’ Jochen says with an incredulous look. ‘They couldn’t get o ourth gear! Yeah, it was odd. Then I go in, hemmed in by the cockpit sides, all rigid – bloody carbonfibre!’ he chuckles. ‘The car so nice. And David Coulthard had bee testing for three days
“
you’re in pole position” – I was half a second quicker t he was on all these test days before!
new tyres were contro tyres. was good And I thought that if I was quicker than Dav d then there’s something wrong. But anyway, t ’s how it was.’
Impres ely, he did that in the FW15CRenault, ing not driven an F1 car for 12 years. Joc then returned to Le Mans for the 11th and final time in 1995 in a McLaren F1 GTR but, alas, the car retired after nine hours.
Having established himself as one of the most accompli hed sportscar drivers ever, Jochen settled in he South of France with wife Bettina 20 years o, and has taken to Historic racin ‘Historic acing is easy in comparison,’ he says, ‘but whe you race in anger at the Revival and so on, yo realise that it’s not always that easy. When I eel that I’m losing it badly then I’ll stop; not point, what can you prove?’
Much he German’s time also involves his role as a Mercedes-Benz brand ambassador, including demonstrating its fabulous historic machiner They use me for quite a few things, which is e.’
That h continues to do so, and the many other His oric duties he undertakes, is nice for all of us too.
‘I THOUGHT THAT IF I WAS QUICKER THAN COULTHARD THEN THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG. BUT ANYWAY, THAT’S HOW IT WAS’