Top 5... Jochen Mass’s five greatest drives
The finest racing moments of Jochen Mass, who died recently at 78 after a prolific career in touring cars, sports cars and F1 in the 1970s and ’80s.
1980 Monaco GP After three full seasons with McLaren (1975-77), Jochen’s F1 career was reduced to the minnow teams: ATS, Arrows and March. But there were still a few good days at Arrows, especially at Monaco. He’d run third in 1979 until brake cooling problems dropped him to sixth. A year later he held off Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari after a rain shower for a hard-earned fourth (his final world championship points), in a race best remembered for Derek Daly’s Tyrrell cartwheeling carnage at Ste Dévote.
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1. 1976 German GP
Jochen Mass took no pleasure from his only Formula 1 win, the tragic and truncated 1975 Spanish GP. So let’s skip that and focus instead on his best performance from 105 GP starts*. He should have won this race on his beloved Nürburgring. Despite rain at the start, Jochen opted for slicks on his McLaren M23 and by the end of the first 14-mile lap he was second to Ronnie Peterson. When the track properly dried, the rest came in for dry tyres – and Jochen was sitting pretty with a huge lead. Then Niki Lauda had his fiery accident. The race was restarted and Jochen once again shone. But with team-mate James Hunt and Tyrrell’s Jody Scheckter up the road, he could only finish third. The one that got away.
*104 GP starts officially. But we’re counting the 1980 Spanish GP even if it was retrospectively scratched from the record books as a points-scoring race. Especially as Jochen finished second in an Arrows!
2. 1972 F2 Eifelrennen
This was a big year for Jochen. He won the ETCC in a Ford Capri and scored what he considered his best Formula 3 win, beating Patrick Depailler in teeming rain on the Nordschleife. And then there was this, the Eifelrennen run for F2. Future Porsche team-mate Derek Bell led from pole in his Rondel Brabham, only for a misfire to allow Jochen’s March to steal the glory and make him the first home winner of the Eifelrennen since Gerhard Mitter in 1963 when it was run for Formula Junior. Jochen won the Eifelrennen again for March in 1977.
3. 1983 Nürburgring 1000Kms
The last world championship sports car race to be run on the Nordschleife, and it was fitting that Jochen should win it given his devotion to the place. Derek Bell is still miffed; he lost his final chance for a win on the great circuit when team-mate Stefan Bellof destroyed their Rothmans Porsche. Jochen, sharing the sister 956 with Jacky Ickx, picked up the pieces. “You just don’t drive on the limit here,” he said, “not where the car tends to jump [on the bumps].”
4. 1989 Le Mans 24 Hours
Jochen hated Le Mans and considered it too dangerous. But it would have been remiss if his illustrious record didn’t include a win here. It came aged 42, after Porsche had withdrawn its works teams from sports car racing and he’d switched to Sauber. Talk about an Indian summer: Jochen and Jean-Louis Schlesser won four of the WSC rounds together (Schlesser also won at Suzuka with Mauro Baldi to become champion), while Mass shared a C9 with Manuel Reuter and Stanley Dickens to win standalone Le Mans.
5. 1980 Monaco GP
After three full seasons with McLaren (1975-77), Jochen’s F1 career was reduced to the minnow teams: ATS, Arrows and March. But there were still a few good days at Arrows, especially at Monaco. He’d run third in 1979 until brake cooling problems dropped him to sixth. A year later he held off Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari after a rain shower for a hard-earned fourth (his final world championship points), in a race best remembered for Derek Daly’s Tyrrell cartwheeling carnage at Ste Dévote.