Hans Stuck

Hans Stuck

Nation:	Germany
Automobile world championship
First start:	1952 Swiss Grand Prix
Last start:	1953 Italian Grand Prix
Constructors
1952–1953  Hans Stuck
statistics
World Cup balance:	no World Cup placement
Starts Victories Poles SR 3 - - -
World Cup points :	-
Podiums :	-
Leadership laps :	-

Hans Stuck (born December 27, 1900 in Warsaw , Russian Empire , † February 9, 1978 in Grainau ) was a German - Austrian automobile racing driver . Hans Stuck went down in motorsport history as "the mountain king" because he achieved a lot of successes, especially in hill climbs . He was also considered the prototype of the men's driver .

Life

Originally, Stuck owned a farm in Wolfratshausen in Upper Bavaria . Legend has it that he developed his driving skills when delivering the milk, because he drove as fast as possible over mountain roads so that the milk got into the shops before it turned sour. But he is said to have produced butter every now and then.

In 1925 he started his first hill climb as part of the 5th International Automobile Tournament in Baden-Baden and won the touring car class straight away with a Dürkopp that he had modified himself .

Stuck's badly destroyed car after his accident at the Schauinsland race in 1929

Hans Stuck in 1932 in a Mercedes-Benz at the AVUS race in Berlin

From 1927 to 1930 he drove an Austro-Daimler and was almost invincible in hill climbs. Among other things, he was able to win the European Hill Climb Championship for racing cars in 1930 . However, his car was less suitable for circuit racing. After Austro-Daimler withdrew, he switched to the Mercedes-Benz racing team , for which he won the Lemberg Grand Prix in 1931 and numerous hill climbs, including the 1932 European hill climb championship for sports cars. In 1936, Stuck set a new world speed record of 286.496 km / h on 10 miles of the new section of the motorway between Frankfurt and Heidelberg with a flying start.

When the 750 kg formula for Grand Prix racing cars was introduced in 1934 , the Auto Union group, a merger of the four brands Audi , DKW , Wanderer and Horch , had Ferdinand Porsche design a racing car for this purpose. In the works team led by race director Willy Walb , Hans Stuck immediately got along with the heavily oversteering and difficult to drive type A mid-engine car , which was new for the time, and won the German Grand Prix and the Swiss Grand Prix in the same year. Thanks to the superior traction of this design, which only became common in Formula 1 around 25 years later, as well as his track knowledge, Stuck was almost unbeatable in hill climbs.

On the racetrack, on the other hand, the Auto Union's “rear spin” with up to 500 hp was often difficult to control. In 1936, Stuck grew up at Auto Union with the young Bernd Rosemeyer, an excellent competitor who won several races without having gained much experience in racing cars beforehand. However, after Mercedes dominated again in 1937 with the new W 125 model with more than 600 hp , Stuck was dismissed from Auto Union because, following the Rosemeyer's example, they wanted to rely on young motorcycle pilots who had not yet got used to the front-engined cars that are common elsewhere.

At that time Stuck was filmed by Ulrich Bigalke together with Bernd Rosemeyer and Manfred von Brauchitsch for the full-length “racing film” German victories in three continents (1937). In 1933 an entertainment film with the charismatic racing driver was planned, which was to carry the title Full Throttle Into Happiness . However, this film did not materialize.

In view of his sinking star, he set his hopes for a speed record with the 3,000 hp Mercedes-Benz T 80 from 1936 . However, the record attempt with Daimler conflicted with its contract with Auto Union, and Daimler had secretly chosen Rudolf Caracciola .

After Rosemeyer's death in early 1938 , Stuck returned to Auto Union and came third in the German Grand Prix . The new team-mate, the Italian racing legend Tazio Nuvolari , was considered the best driver in Auto Union. However, Stuck was still successful in hill climbs.

Stuck's Cisitalia D46 , with which he won the Hockenheimring in 1947

Since his time at Austro-Daimler, Hans Stuck had both German and Austrian citizenship. Since the German drivers were excluded from racing after the Second World War , he initially started as an Austrian until 1950. After a season with a Cisitalia , he drove, interrupted by a short but unsuccessful interlude in the sixteen-cylinder BRM P15 racing car at the 1951 Italian Grand Prix , between 1949 and 1953, mainly in Formula 2 with an AFM racing car built by Alexander von Falkenhausen . With his private AFM , initially equipped with a V8 light alloy engine developed by Richard Küchen , he competed in the Swiss Grand Prix in 1952 , but had to give up the race prematurely. An attempt to qualify for the Italian Grand Prix with the twelve-cylinder Ferrari of the Swiss Rudolf Fischer was just as unsuccessful as two further starts in 1953 at the German and Italian Grand Prix with the AFM, which was now equipped with a Bristol engine. Great successes were no longer possible in view of the superior strength of Ferrari and Maserati .

In the GDR, Stuck also took part in some car races, including a. on the "Halle-Saale Loop" or at the Leipzig City Park Race , where he won in 1952 with his Formula 2 AFM in the rain.

Therefore, in addition to participating in circuit races, Stuck increasingly concentrated on his profession, the hill climb. Here his popularity was unbroken. He continued his career with Porsche and BMW , and in 1960 at the age of 60 he was again German mountain champion.

On December 9, 1960, Federal President Heinrich Lübke awarded him the Silver Laurel Leaf .

Hans Stuck ended his active career in 1962 and from then on devoted himself to training sports drivers, especially on the Nürburgring . His son Hans-Joachim Stuck, born in 1951, was able to gain experience there at a young age. From 1958 to 1975 Stuck was the president of the Vespa Club von Deutschland VCVD e. V.

Hans Stuck was married to the tennis player Paula von Reznicek from 1932 to 1948 before he married Christa Thielmann (1921-2014). Their child was Hans-Joachim Stuck .

Stuck published his autobiography under the title Twice Hans Stuck in 1972.

Hans Stuck died in 1978 at the age of 77 in Grainau ( Garmisch-Partenkirchen district ). There he was buried in the community cemetery. His wife Christa, who died 36 years later, was buried next to him.

statistics

Pre-war grands prix results

season	team	dare	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	Points	position
1932	H. Stuck (private) / Wilhelm Merck	Mercedes-Benz type SSKL								0	-
			DNA		DNS
1934	Auto Union AG	Auto Union Type A								-
				DNF	DNA	DNA	2 1	4 2
1935	Auto Union AG	Auto Union Type B								36	5.
				DNF		2	11	1	DNF
1936	Auto Union AG	Auto Union Type C								15th	2.
			3	2	3	DNF
1937	Auto Union AG	Auto Union Type C								20th	5.
			2	DNF	4th	4th	9
1938	Auto Union AG	Auto Union Type D								20th	5.
				3	4th	DNF
1939	Auto Union AG	Auto Union Type D								23	9.
				6th	DNF	10

Legend
colour	meaning		EM points
gold	victory		1
silver	2nd place		2
bronze	3rd place		3
green	Classified, covered more than 75% of the race distance		4th
blue	not entitled to points, covered between 50% and 75% of the race distance		5
violet	not eligible for points, covered between 25% and 50% of the race distance		6th
red	not eligible for points, covered less than 25% of the race distance		7th
colour	abbreviation	meaning	EM points
black	DSQ	disqualified	8th
White	DNS	did not start
	DNA	did not arrive
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)

¹After 59 laps, Hermann zu Leiningen took over Stuck's car after he suffered burns on his feet from a defective radiator. Zu Leiningen took second place.

² Stuck retired with his car, took over to Leiningen's car and drove it up from tenth to fourth place.

Statistics in the automobile world championship

general overview

season	team	chassis	engine	run	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Race laps	Points	WM-Pos.
1952	Alex von Falkenhausen Motorenbau	AFM 4	Kitchens 2.0 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	NC
1953	Hans Stuck	AFM 4	Bristol 2.0 L6	2	-	-	-	-	-	-	NC
total				3	-	-	-	-	-	-

Single results

season	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9
1951
							DNS
1952
	DNF							DNQ
1953
							DNF		14th

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

Fonts

• with Ernst Günther Burggaller , Das Autobuch., Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1933.
• 4 bastards. , Verbano-Verlag, Locarno, Leipzig 1938.
• Sports cannons private. , Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1941.
• The mountain king. , Sportverlag, Berlin (East) 1955.
• Race driver's diary. , mvg, Munich 1967.
• Hans Stuck twice: a racing driver's diary., Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 978-3-87943-269-1 .

literature

• Eberhard Reuss: Hitler's racing battles. The silver arrows under the swastika. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-351-02625-0 .
• Hans Seper, Martin Pfundner, Hans Peter Lenz: Austrian automobile history. Eurotax, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-905566-01-X .
• Arnulf Boettcher: Calendar sheet of the Deutsche Welle

Web links

Commons : Hans Stuck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hans Stuck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Hans Stuck in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Hans Stuck in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Hans ("Mountain King") Stuck. In: BMW history. BMW AG, accessed on May 19, 2014 (dossier on Hans Stuck in the BMW Group Archive). 
• Leif Snellman: Hans Stuck (D / A). www.kolumbus.fi, September 5, 2014, accessed on March 31, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Because his mother, Maria Stuck, was née von Villiez , the name Hans Villiez von Stuck or Hans Stuck von Villiez is incorrectly mentioned every now and then .
2. ↑ see e.g. B. Scherl's magazine from December 1929, p. 1348: The sporty type of today: The elegant gentleman driver (Hans von Stuck )
3. ↑ World speed record on the Frankfurt - Heidelberg route, March 24, 1936. Contemporary history in Hesse. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
4. ↑ einestages.spiegel.de: The 3000 PS Project Article from September 2, 2009
5. ^ Information given to the Bundestag by the Federal Government on September 29, 1973; Printed matter 7/1040; Annex 3, pages 54 ff., Here page 69.
6. ↑ Gerd Otto-Rieke: Graves in Bavaria . Munich 2000. p. 95
7. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Hans Stuck
8. ↑ http://www.kalenderblatt.de/index.php?what=thmanu&manu_id=1193&tag=6&monat=3&year=2014&dayisset=1&lang=de