The wildest R5 European Championship battle ever
As today, 1 August, is the perfect date, I’m going to take a quick look back at the 1976 R5 European Championship season. Fifty years ago today, on 1 August 1976, the Nordschleife witnessed not only Niki Lauda’s horrific fire crash, but also, just before that, the most memorable and wildest race in the history of the R5 European Cup as part of the German Grand Prix support programme.
There were four laps to go. The atmosphere could certainly be described as heated, as a fair bit of a desire for revenge had built up from the previous European Cup races. From the huge starting grid of around 70 R5s, a pack of no fewer than ten cars quickly broke away. Five Frenchmen and five Germans were jostling and bumping into one another for all they were worth. After two laps, the ten had already pulled half a minute clear of the rest of the field, but were still bunched up in a very tight pack. On the final lap, the French suddenly tried to break away from the Germans with a few underhand tricks and take the race home on their own in their own pack. As a result, the final 22 km turn into a veritable bloodbath, because suddenly the five Germans remember the importance of sticking together and, also pushing, launch a sort of surprise attack on the tricolour riders. The battles for position turn out to be rather rough and go against the French riders involved.
Behind the particularly energetic duo of Georg Weber and Karl Fix, I have a front-row seat and, together with Wolfgang Schütz and Jürgen Zerha, I take on those opponents who suddenly want to rush to the aid of their compatriots, who are being badly battered at the front. Because the nasty scuffle meant that, in the end, everyone got in each other’s way and lost a lot of time, allowing the pursuers – who had already been left well behind – to catch up again. But the German team is wide awake for their home race and finally pulls off a cracking performance: of the leading pack of ten, only a single Frenchman with the pseudonym ‘Gorduche’ survives this final lap in third place, whilst Weber and Fix celebrate a clear German one-two, with three more Germans finishing in the top ten. This fantastic team result sends the top brass at Renault Sport – including PR Director Hommen and Sporting Director Schmidt – into a state of total ecstasy. But the worst is yet to come. First, the energetic Germans, along with their support staff in the paddock, have to make a hasty retreat because, led by the thick-spectacled and extremely short-sighted Michel Marze, a group of outraged Frenchmen is rapidly approaching with clear intentions. Yet there really was no difference between our rough behaviour and that of the French, Italians or Dutch at their home races in Monaco, Monza or Zandvoort.
In Monaco, for example, Wolfgang Schütz was almost pushed right up to the reception of the posh Loew’s Hotel by two Frenchmen. And Jörg Denzel ended up just ahead of the outdoor tables at the famous Rascasse Café. So no sooner had the final French attack been weathered – with all the drivers pulling out – than the next piece of bad news arrived: Weber’s engine had been held up in the technical inspection because the cylinder head was a few hundredths of a millimetre undersized. There was a huge outcry, but it was all to no avail; the winner was disqualified. My team-mate Karl Fix inherited the victory, with everyone else moving up one place. Incidentally, the fact that this memorable Nürburgring decision in favour of the Germans came about without any resistance from the Italian team had a dramatic backstory. The utterly exhausted driver of the double-decker transport van from Milan failed to spot the warning signs regarding the clearance height of the railway underpass in the little village of Oberzissen, just before the finish line that night. There was a terrible crash – and most of the ten Group 5 cars on board lay dented on the road...
The battles that unfolded in that race back then rank among the wildest stories in the history of the R5 Cup European Championship. Incidentally, no one lodged an official protest; at the time, such matters were always settled directly on the track at the next suitable opportunity.
