Motorcycle road championship of the GDR
| Motorcycle road championship of the GDR | |
|---|---|
| Vehicle type | motorcycle |
| Country or region | GDR |
| First season | 1950 |
| Last season | 1990 |
The motorcycle road championship of the GDR was held from 1950 to 1990.
history
The championship always consisted of several races in which points were awarded. The driver with the most points scored within a season became the GDR champion. The venues and events included the Sachsenring race on the Sachsenring , the Schleizer triangle race on the Schleizer triangle , the Frohburger triangle race on the Frohburger triangle , the Leipzig city park race , the Halle-Saale loop , the Dresden motorway spider , the Bernauer loop and the race track Dessau .
The first championship was held in 1950. Before that, although Germany was already divided, an all-German championship was held. In 1950 the runs for the GDR and West German championships took place together. The last all-German championship run in 1950 at the Sachsenring was attended by around 400,000 spectators. From 1951 there were only separate championship races.
In the early years after the Second World War , private drivers who had been active before the war dominated on rescued or pre-war machines assembled from spare parts. With the growth of the motorcycle industry in the GDR, especially at IFA and later MZ in Zschopau and at AWO and later Simson in Suhl , the works teams became increasingly involved in the GDR motorcycle championship from the mid-1950s. The MZ factory riders such as Degner , Musiol , Fügner , Bischoff , Bartusch and Rosner , who were also internationally successful in the motorcycle world championship , dominated the classes up to 250 cc on their two-stroke engines until the early 1970s.
As early as the mid-1960s, the MZ pilots had more and more problems to keep up internationally with the technical progress of the Italian and especially Japanese competitors. This was not due to the lack of know-how of the engineers , but rather to the lack of raw materials and the associated poor material quality due to a lack of foreign exchange . After the GDR hosted its Grand Prix in 1972 for the last time as part of the motorcycle world championship under political pressure from the GDR leadership and from 1973 only advertised for pilots from the Eastern Bloc , MZ withdrew completely from racing at the factory. From the mid-1970s until the fall of the Berlin Wall , the GDR championship was characterized by committed private drivers with commercially available racing machines or self-made motorcycles. It was held for the last time in 1990. The all- German German motorcycle road championship took its place and has held races since then, for example on the Sachsenring or the Schleizer Dreieck.
Winners lists
Solo motorcycles
Teams
| year | 500 cc | 750 cc |
|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Heinz Krause / Fritz Trinkhaus ( BMW ) | Heinz Laue / Haase ( BMW ) |
| 1952 | Fritz Bagge / Kurt Schönherr ( Zündapp ) | Hans Fräbel / Jacobi ( BMW ) |
| 1953 | Rudolf Richter / Erwin Klim ( BMW ) | Willy Krenkel / Perduss ( BMW ) |
| 1954 | Fritz Bagge / Kurt Schönherr ( Norton ) | |
| 1955 | Fritz Bagge / Kurt Schönherr ( Norton ) | |
| 1956 | Willy Krenkel ( Norton ) | |
| 1957 | Willy Krenkel ( Norton ) | |
| 1958 | Rudolf Richter / Erwin Klim ( BMW ) |
Web links
- Björn Reichert: GDR motorcycle championship. www.motorrad-autogrammkarten.de, accessed on March 15, 2013 .