History: Rolf Stommelen / Formula 1 died 41 years ago

“Cologne racing driver Rolf Stommelen suffered a fatal crash during a race in Riverside/USA. His Porsche 935 Turbo left the track at more than 300 km/h after the rear wing broke and crashed into a concrete wall. Former driver The 39-year-old Formula 1 driver died a short time later at Riverside Hospital from his severe internal injuries.

After the Trips of Graf (1961) and Hans Peter Joisten (1973), Cologne lost its other great athletes: Rolf Stommelen.

Let me share with you some memories of a lively nature, a talented racing driver and a shrewd businessman.

With a Rhenish dialect, dry humor and hidden sarcasm, “de Rolef” always had laughs on his side. A warrior with full strength was considered a real “Kölsche Jung”.

His father, a gas station owner in the Sülz district of Cologne, gave him a Porsche Super 90 in 1962 when he passed his road test, which became the 904 GTS two years later. At that time, the sports car from Zuffenhausen was available from the factory ready for racing for less than 30,000 DM (approx. 15,300 euros) and was quickly considered a benchmark for the GT class with a displacement of up to 2 liters.

A silver Porsche hip flask with the registration number K-SR 904 was recently spotted at the first mountain and circuit races. This was also the case in the Wolsfeld mountain race near Bitburg, where Rolf appeared with a 904 on the axle and took part in the race wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

I remember the memorable performance very clearly because I was a young reporter sitting at the microphone of the song at the time. The newcomer was so quick once that he set a new record on the asphalt and made famous mountain experts like Michel Weber, Sepp Greger and Karl Federhofer look very old.

A few months later he was fighting for his first victory at the airport race in Innsbruck with the Porsche 904 GTS stars Udo Schütz and Gerd Koch.

When the Ford racing department was revived in 1969 and accelerated the influx of horses of various sizes in Cologne, the happy company led by Rolf was often seen in the old town in the evenings.

Jochen Neerpasch, Mike Kranefuß, Jochen Mass and general manager Domingos Piedade appreciated Rolf as a local companion and space maker.

But everyone quickly became familiar with his habit of saving iron clothes. Anyone who owed him even a single mark could be tortured for weeks. And there were no tips for the waiter when paying the bill. Even when Rolf had already made millions, people had to encourage him to finally throw a round.

Rolf’s sporting achievements in brief: From 1966 onwards he was the official Porsche works driver in the following years he won almost all the classic sports, from the Targa Florio to the 24 Hours of Daytona. His Formula 1 career began in 1970, first at Brabham, then at Surtees, Eifelland and Hill-Lola.

Meanwhile, he continued to drive sports cars, first for Porsche and then for Alfa Romeo. And in 1974 he also worked for Ford in the legendary Capri RS

Rolf celebrated one of his most valuable personal successes at the Nürburgring in 1977 when he won the German Championship (DRM) in a Porsche 935 for the Cologne Gelo team, beating local rival Porsche-Kremer and driver Bob Wollek in a dramatic final. . It will remain his first and only championship.

Rolf also had to learn the dark side of racing early on. Friends and teammates of the Porsche team such as Bobby Klass, Ludovico Scarfiotti and Gerhard Mitter suffered fatal accidents.

Rolf himself only survived three bad accidents with a lot of luck. In 1968, at the European Hill Climb Championship in Rossfeld, he suffered his first major accident as a Porsche works driver in a Bergspider. The result was permanent mobility restrictions in the severely injured arm.

Six years later at Watkins Glen, after a 200 km/h collision, he only managed to free himself from a burning Alfa Romeo 33 sports car at the last second. The helpers came too late. Marked with burns, he told German journalists in the wider Kölsch area: “It would be better if it was extinguished, only after the fire was extinguished.”

Rolf liked to comment on difficult situations and irony.

For the third time his guardian angels had to act in the Spanish GP in Barcelona in 1975. In the 26th lap, the rear wing of his Embassy-Lola in the racing team of world champion Graham Hill broke.

Rolf and his car jumped over the guard rails through the security fence. Two marshals and a photographer died immediately, several spectators were injured, some seriously, by flying debris, and two died later in hospital.

He himself was very lucky to survive the terrible accident at all – although he had very serious injuries: both legs and collarbone were broken, his kneecaps were broken and other severe fractures. He had to rest for six months before returning to racing and returning to the Porsche works team in 1976.

The classic sports car was always his best discipline, here he was able to fully develop his abilities and did not have to deal with inferior materials as in Formula 1.

After almost 20 years of professional racing, Rolf had been taken care of forever because he always saved and invested his money for profit. For a good fee, he just started where everything was fine – for him, these were the well-heeled Porsche teams in the USA.

He chose the mode of “racing driver on the phone” himself because he no longer wanted to endure the constant stress of racing. But he and his wife Marlene enjoyed their home in the upscale Hahnwald district of Cologne the most.

At the end of the year, Rolf wanted to announce his retirement from racing. “Then I’m 40 years old, it’s a good time,” he said in a well-known circle a few weeks before his death. No, you didn’t need to worry about Rolf.

And then came the fateful April 24, 1983 in Riverside – the racing driver’s luck ended suddenly, his guardian angels could no longer do anything for him in the fourth major crash.

When Cologne’s fastest son of modern times was buried at “Melaten” on May 3, 1983, more than 2,000 mourners flooded the famous Aachener Straße cemetery. None of his fellow racers were missing;

Even today, the family tomb is considered a place of pilgrimage for fans from all over the world.