Helmut Marko LL.D., (born 27 April 1943) is an Austrian former professional racing driver and current advisor to the Red Bull GmbH Formula One Teams and head of Red Bull’s driver development program. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Born in Graz in April 1943, Helmut Marko was close friends with Jochen Rindt as they grew up and they raced each other on motorcycles, then cars, and everything was a competition. He once borrowed his father’s car without permission and crashed it down a hill and the deal between him and Jochen was that if they had a problem- you were on your own!
Helmut’s early racing involved Super Vee, followed by Formula 3 in 1969 and in 1970 he (and Rudi Lins) finished third at Le Mans in a Martini Racing Porsche 917. In the following year he did even better, winning it with Gijs van Lennep and their distance record remained unbeaten until the 2010 race. Also in 1971 he raced Karl von Wend’s Lola T212 and won the Auvergne Trophy, the Cape 3 Hours and three rounds of the European 2-litre championship. In F1 he entered the German GP with an Ecurie Bonnier McLaren M7C, but failed to qualify when the car ran out of fuel on the first lap though competed in four races with BRM and at his debut in Austria (replacing Vic Elford) he finished eleventh.
The BRM team had grown to five cars in the later part of 1971 and continued into 1972 with the same number of entries. He raced along with P.Gethin, H.Ganley, R.Wisell and A.Soler-Roig, with Jean-Pierre Beltoise later joining the team but running a multi-car operation was a big drain on the team and the cars suffered from reliability problems. He missed Spain, relinquishing his seat to A.Soler-Roig, but at Monaco he had his best result, finishing eighth, plus Jean Pierre Beltoise won the race, which would be BRM’s last victory.
During the year he also raced for Alfa Romeo’s sports car team, taking second place in the Targa Florio and the Osterreichring 1000 Km plus third place finishes at Daytona and in the Nurburgring 1000 Km. At the Targa Florio, he drove the fastest laps around the 72 km mountain circuit, catching up over two minutes on the leader within two laps to finish second by a mere 17 seconds.
At the Belgian GP, he finished tenth and following this came Clermont-Ferrand, where he qualified a sensational sixth in the BRM P160. Unfortunately, while fighting for fourth place during the race, behind Emerson Fittipaldi and Ronnie Peterson, a stone pierced his visor and hit him in the eye and although he was able to stop the car the damage was done and it would be the end of his career.
Helmut was in hospital for two months and ran his own hotel for a while, but eventually returned to motor racing. He worked for Renault Austria, then ran a series of racing teams and oversaw drivers such as Gerhard Berger, Karl Wendlinger, Helmut Koinigg, Hans Georg Burger and Markus Hottinger. He also helped Jo Gartner and Christian Danner at Le Mans in 1981 and in the early 1980s his RSM Marko team ran Gerhard Berger in the European Formula 3 Championship. There was also a DTM team plus Karl Wendlinger won the German F3 title with the team in 1989.
RSM Marko briefly fielded an Indy Racing League car in 1988 for Dave Steele and there was further involvement with the IRL when he supervised Red Bull’s sponsorship of Eddie Cheever’s Red Bull Cheever Racing Team.
In 1994 Jorg Muller won the German F3 Championship for the team and, when they moved up to F3000, they won the title in 1996. In the following year, the team ran Juan Pablo Montoya and Craig Lowndes, with Montoya winning three races.
When Dieter Mateschitz began marketing his Red bull drink in Austria, one of its first ambassadors was Gerhard Berger and in 1994 Dieter became involved with the Sauber F1 team. Helmut convinced Dieter Mateschitz to fund a Red Bull Junior Team, and when it closed down its Red Bull’s sponsorship went to Christian Horner’s Arden Motorsport. When Red Bull bought Jaguar Racing they hired Horner to run it and at the end of 2005 Dieter Mateschitz bought Minardi and renamed it Scuderia Toro Rosso. Into 2018, Helmut is still heavily involved with Red Bull as an advisor and head of driver development.
