Gerhard Berger

Interesting facts

A week after the 1984 season ended he nearly died: his BMW was rammed from behind on an Austrian Alpine road, sent off a cliff and cartwheeling - he was thrown out through the rear window, but two spine surgeons happened to be among the first responders, and he made a full recovery from a broken neck. In practice for the 1989 San Marino Grand Prix he hit the wall at Tamburello at nearly 180 mph, the car spinning before catching fire - the rescue crew needed 16 seconds to put it out; despite burns and broken ribs, he was back racing one round later in Mexico, missing only Monaco. His McLaren years alongside Ayrton Senna became legendary for an escalating prank war: he once dropped Senna's supposedly indestructible briefcase from a helicopter just to see if it would survive, and another time flooded Senna's hotel room with a fire extinguisher at 3 a.m. - 'he flew out of the window like a rocket.' He once filled Senna's hotel bed with frogs ('did you find the snake too?' he asked innocently when confronted), and Senna retaliated by hiding pungent French cheese in his air conditioning. In 1993, before the season launch, he and Jean Alesi took team boss Jean Todt's brand-new Lancia Y10 for an unauthorised spin at Fiorano - pulling the handbrake flipped the car within centimetres of their still-unveiled new Ferrari; Alesi ended up hospitalised. In his final season, 1997, recovering from his father's death in a plane crash and sinus surgery, he won the German Grand Prix at 37 from pole with the fastest lap - also Benetton's last-ever win. Gerhard Berger made his Formula 1 debut in 1984 and raced until 1997, 14 seasons in total as an Austrian driver. He scored a total of 385 championship points over his career.