Kurt Ahrens sen.

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Kurt Ahrens in a Cooper-Norton at the Leipzig city park race in 1954

Kurt Ahrens sen. (* 1908 in Hildesheim ; † August 1988 in Braunschweig ) was a German racing driver and businessman.

life and career

Around 20 years on grass and sand tracks

Kurt Ahrens was a trained painter and house painter , not only in terms of his job title, but also with a talent for painting. He painted landscapes and worked on the restoration of wall and ceiling paintings in churches. He found an interest in motorsport in the late 1920s when he attended a grass track race in Sehnde near Hanover . In order to be able to participate actively, however, there was not only a lack of the necessary technical understanding. Above all, his salary as a painter's journeyman was not enough to finance the purchase and maintenance of a racing motorcycle.

That's why Ahrens started trading scrap. He moved to Braunschweig and founded the company "Kurt Ahrens scrap iron, metals, rags, bones, scrap paper". The company ensured him a good living right from the start, so that he was able to drive grass track races as early as the 1930s. In 1948 Ahrens switched to dirt track racing and in 1950 he became German champion in the class up to 250 cm³, although he drove the finals in Munich with a plastered right foot.

Ahrens owned nine dirt track machines, always drove at high risk, won around 100 races and often crashed. A fourfold broken leg in Herxheim in 1951 was the signal for him to switch to automobile sport.

From 1951 racing on four wheels

Ahrens began his racing career at the age of 43 in Formula 3 , initially with a Scampolo-BMW and later with a Cooper-Norton. Thanks to the flourishing scrap iron trade, he was able to afford many fast cars: three Mercedes-Benz 300 SLs , at the end of 1954 the first Porsche 550 at a price of DM 24,600, which was delivered to private drivers, and various Alfa Romeo models. With an Alfa Romeo registered by him, he and Richard Trenkel finished 30th in the 1000 km race at the Nürburgring in 1958, in which 54 cars had started. These sports cars more came seaters of Formula Junior : Stanguellini , Cooper , Lola , Lotus 18 , and others. Ahrens drove rallies in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, with Eckhard Schimpf as co-driver , among others . Schimpf reports in one of his books how he woke up the cigar smoking driver who fell asleep at over 200 km / h.

1958 his son Kurt Ahrens jun. , the future Porsche works driver, 18 years old, got his driver's license and also drove races, often against his father, who was still active. Ahrens senior, who won around 50 races all over Europe on four wheels, remained daring and reckless as in the days of his dirt track races, and accidents increased with age. In the first seven races of 1963 he went off the track seven times or had collisions with other participants. Jochen Rindt , who is 34 years younger than him, is said to have asked him to be a little more careful, especially in the crowd at the start, because the constant pile-ups would be too expensive for the others. In the same year, Kurt Ahrens senior's 35-year career ended. In the Avus race, one of his Lotus cars hit the top of the banked curve at high speed that Richard von Frankenberg and Carel Godin de Beaufort had flown over a few years earlier . With luck he managed to pull the car down into the interior of the curve, where it overturned. He survived the accident unharmed, but declared that he would not race any more in the future.

The years after the motorsport career

After his time as a racing driver, Ahrens devoted himself to his business before retiring for the last 15 years of his life. He lived near Grußendorf in a small house on a large property with animals such as ducks, chickens, sheep, goats and fallow deer, far away from the noise and hustle and bustle. He painted again and he cared for his wife, who was blind in old age. After his wife's death, he fell into depression and committed suicide two months before his 80th birthday.

literature

Web links

Commons : Kurt Ahrens senior  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cecilie Hollberg (ed.): Braunschweiger Prinzenpark-race. Exhibition catalog and calendar 2012. p. 201.
  2. ↑ Lothar Boschen, Jürgen Barth: The great book of the Porsche types . 2nd edition, Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-613-01284-7 , p. 288 u. 289
  3. ↑ Michael Behrndt, Jörg-Thomas Födisch, Matthias Behrndt: ADAC 1000 km race . Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2008, ISBN 978-3-89880-903-0 , p. 198.
personal data
SURNAME Ahrens, Kurt Sr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German motorcycle and automobile racer
DATE OF BIRTH 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim
DATE OF DEATH August 1988
Place of death Braunschweig