Helmut Fath

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Helmut Fath (born May 24, 1929 in Ursenbach ; † June 19, 1993 in Heidelberg ) was a German motorcycle racing driver and designer.

Career

Helmut Fath attended elementary school in his birthplace. He completed his training as a precision mechanic at what was then the "Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research" in Heidelberg (now the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research ). After the Second World War he worked as a bus driver for the US occupation forces in Heidelberg, then as a motorcycle mechanic for the Mannheim company "Zeiss & Schwärzel". In 1959 he set out with this profession independently .

Racing career

From a young age, Fath secretly did laps on his father's motorcycle. When he got his driver's license, he bought his first motorcycle - a BMW with 250  cc and soon began to tinker with engines that he secretly used in races. He built his first team in 1948 after buying a BMW motorcycle again, which he then added a sidecar. With this team he achieved his first success in 1952 at a race in Lorsch , where he achieved third place.

After a few races, which he had finished victoriously, Fath received the international racing license in 1954. In order to be able to compete with competitive material, he bought a 500 series BMW engine from the Swiss Florian Camathias . For this engine, Fath later designed a completely new type of frame, also known as the "Kneeler", with which he became the best private driver at the 1956 World Championship .

He and his partner Alfred Wohlgemuth were able to crown the continuous further development of their engines and machines by winning the World Team Championship in 1960 .

For his sporting achievements, he and his co-driver Wohlgemuth were awarded the silver bay leaf on December 12, 1959.

During a race on the Nürburgring in 1961, the team had an accident, with Fath seriously injured and his co-driver Alfred Wohlgemuth killed. After this momentous event, Fath sold all of his equipment for financial reasons. The death of his friend and the consequences of his injuries led to several months of abstinence from racing. In the end, however, a little later, together with engineer Peter Kuhn, under the abbreviation URS, he built what was then an advanced four-cylinder in-line engine with chassis.

With his new co-driver Wolfgang Kalauch , Fath was again the best privateer driver on this team in the 1965 season at the world championship and also won the world championship title for the second time at the URS in 1968 , which was also his last, as he won the entire racing team for 240,000 in the following year  DM sold to Friedel Münch .

Career as an engine tuner

At the same time, Fath began taking care of the four-time world champion Phil Read . For him, Fath tuned a 250cc Yamaha , with which Read achieved his fifth world title in 1971 . For the 1972 season , Fath planned to convert the Yamaha engines to water cooling . But Read made a different decision and accepted MV Agusta's offer and became world champion with the 500 MV in 1973 and 1974 .

Fath developed in the early 1970s on to a water-cooled four-cylinder two-stroke - boxer engine , the 1975 drivers Siegfried Schauzu with the passenger Wolfgang inserting Kalauch and 1976, the German championship won and were in the World Cup Fifth. In 1977 and 1978 , the team vice world champion Werner Schwärzel also used the same engine, which developed over 126  hp .

From 1980, Fath shifted his field of activity, where he was a tuner in the Nava Kucera racing team and looked after Reinhold Roth , who became German runner-up with his 500cc Suzuki and won the European title in 1982 with a 250cc Yamaha Production Racer also prepared by Fath . In 1983 Reinhold Roth was able to become German champion on his 250cc Yamaha racing machine, which was also looked after by Helmut Fath. The next year Roth switched to a 500cc three-cylinder Honda production racing machine. Without failures, Roth achieved the German championship title with the Honda tuned by Fath.

From 1985 onwards , Fath made his know-how available to Martin Wimmer , who competed in all the world championship races in the German Mitsui Racing Team on a production racer, with which he was able to finish fourth in the 250cc season. From 1986 onwards, Helmut Fath looked after the 250 and 500cc Honda factory racing machines in the team of ex-world champion Takazumi Katayama . Jean-François Baldé finished fifth with the 250cc factory racing machine, and Raymond Roche was eighth with the 500cc factory machine.

In 1987 Helmut Fath tuned the 250cc Yamaha Production Racer from Jochen Schmid , who won the German championship with this motorcycle. A year later, Helmut Fath was responsible for preparing Martin Wimmer's two 250cc Yamaha Production Racers in the Hein-Gericke team.

Some time later, Fath developed cancer . He died on June 19, 1993 in the Heidelberg Clinic.

statistics

title

Isle of Man TT victories

year class Co-driver machine Average speed
1960 Sidecar ( carriages ) GermanyGermany Alfred Wohlgemuth BMW 94.1  mph (151.44  km / h )

References

literature

  • Frank Rönicke: German motorcycle world and European champion . From Schorsch Meier to Stefan Bradl. 1st edition. Motorbuch Verlag , Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-613-03410-5 , p. 103-110 .
  • Eric Meesters: With heart and soul . The story of Friedel Münch & Helmut Fath. 1st edition. 2013, ISBN 978-90-821002-0-4 .
  • Siegfried Rauch; Frank Rönicke: Men and motorcycles - a century of German motorcycle development. Stuttgart: Motorbuch-Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-02947-7 , pp. 42-51

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sports report of the federal government of September 29th to the Bundestag - printed matter 7/1040 - page 68
personal data
SURNAME Fath, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German motorcycle racer and designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Ursenbach
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1993
Place of death Heidelberg