Rolf Stommelen

Interesting facts

In 1969 Stommelen took pole position for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Porsche 917 and became the first driver to clock over 350 km/h on the Mulsanne Straight that same year. At the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix in Montjuich Park, the rear wing of his car broke away mid-race and it flew into the crowd, killing five spectators, a tragedy that effectively ended the venue's time on the Formula One calendar. During a rain-soaked 1976 Nurburgring race in the Porsche 936, he deliberately let chasing Renaults past him early on; both then slid into puddles trying to keep up, giving rise to a saying that nobody on the Nordschleife braked later than Rolf Stommelen. In that same race his throttle jammed open, so he kept racing by flicking the master switch off and on to brake and accelerate through the corners, and he still finished second. At the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans, racing a Porsche 935 alongside Paul Newman and Dick Barbour, a stuck wheel nut cost them a 23-minute pit stop and the overall win, though they still took their class. On April 24, 1983, at Riverside International Raceway, his car's rear wing failed at 306 km/h and sent it into a concrete wall, where it somersaulted and caught fire; Stommelen died at 39, while his co-driver Derek Bell survived the crash. Rolf Stommelen raced in Formula 1 from 1970 to 1978, across 8 seasons as a German driver. He scored a total of 14 championship points over his career.