Herbert Linge
Motorsport pioneer who did much to build up Porsche and outraced Steve Mcqueen at Le Mans
HERBERT LINGE, who has died aged 95, was the last surviving founding member of the small team that established Porsche as a car manufacturer. He was the firm’s first lead mechanic in 1948, and went on to make a significant mark as a racing driver over three decades, and then as senior manager at Porsche’s engineering research centre.
Linge worked closely with Ferdinand Porsche and his son Ferry as their first production car, the 356, evolved from a prototype into a production roadster, and then the coupe that would define the company in the 1950s. In the early days of low-volume production, every new 356 was driven by Linge before being dispatched.
Porsche then sent Linge to America, where better-quality fuel, as well as traffic jams (then rare in Europe), were causing engine problems. Linge solved the issues and became a revered “Mr Fix-it” to American Porsche fans.
Linge drove a Porsche 908 in the 1970 Le Mans race as a camera car for the Steve Mcqueen film Le Mans. He ended up dicing with the leaders, but was disqualified because changing the film rolls counted as “working on the car”.
He was also employed to drive ahead of Mcqueen in a sequence that was supposed to culminate in the actor streaking off into the distance. Mcqueen confidently told Linge not to take his foot off the pedal, as he could easily overtake him anyway.
After a week of shooting the scene, however, Mcqueen had to admit defeat, and ask Linge to slow down, but the pair got on well and took a motorcycle tour of the Normandy countryside together.
A driver as precise as he was fast, Linge was visionary in his concern for safety standards. In 1971 he founded the safety division of Germany’s national motorsports organisation, the ONS, and improved driver survival with his idea for high-speed rescue teams, adapting a Porsche 914/6GT as a rescue car, equipped with a large fire
extinguisher tank and medical kit. It was an era when circuit owners provided little mobile safety equipment, but Linge’s work was supported by Bernie Ecclestone – then a team owner, and soon to found the Formula One Constructors Association – who funded safety improvements where track operators did not. Jackie Stewart was also instrumental in the campaign.
Formula One’s head medical officer Sid Watkins then helped to develop Linge’s ideas for getting rescue teams to crash scenes quickly, and many lives – notably Niki Lauda’s – were saved, moving motorsport out of the era of “acceptable” tragedy.
For his achievements, Linge was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit.
Herbert Linge was born on June 11 1928 at Weissach in south-western Germany. His mother wanted him to be a teacher, but his
father, a motorbike enthusiast, took him to the Porsche family workshop for a job interview.
Having passed an entrance exam, he was taken on as a 14-year-old junior apprentice and worked on Porsche-designed prototypes. In 1946 he was based in Baden-baden as part of a Porsche engineering team working for the Allied occupying forces.
The Porsches – Ferdinand, his son Ferry and son-in-law Anton Piëch – had been arrested for their support of the German war effort, but were eventually released. Linge was the first mechanic employed by the firm when it was re-established in Stuttgart in 1948.
He drove a Porsche alongside Hans Herrmann in the Carrera Panamericana races from 1952 to 1954; the pair achieved three consecutive victories in their class. In the 1954 Mille Miglia they had a remarkable escape in their low-slung, open-topped Porsche 550 Spyder: unable to stop at a level crossing, they drove under the closed barriers – and across the tracks just inches in front of the Rome express.
Herrmann bashed the short-of-stature Linge on the back of his helmet to make him duck down below the dashboard – and did likewise. James Dean would be killed in an identical 550 Spyder the following year.
Linge took class wins at the Mille Miglia for several years, and one in 1958 at the 12 Hours of Sebring race in Florida. He was the overall winner of the 1954 Liège-romeliège and the 1960 Tour de Corse. Victory at the British Empire Trophy Saloon Car race in 1961 in a BMW 700 was a rare nonporsche moment. In 1967, he won the Marathon de la Route on the challenging Nürburgring track.
Linge was pivotal in the launch of the original Porsche 911, and alongside the engineer Peter Falk secured its first major success, finishing fifth in the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally. He drove with the racing stars of Porsche including von Frankenberg, Barth, Bonnier, Herrmann, Stirling Moss, and latterly Redman and Bell.
He started 11 24 Hours of Le Mans races, winning the GT Class in 1960 and finishing fourth overall in 1965 in a Porsche 904/6 driven with Peter Nöcker.
Pioneer in Pole Position by Frank Wiesner (2007) told the story of his remarkable career.
Linge never moved away from his birthplace of Weissach, which reputedly became the richest village in Germany, thanks to the Porsche engineering development centre which Ferry Porsche opened there in the 1970s at Linge’s suggestion.
Liselotte, his wife of more than 50 years, died in 2013.