Dear Friends,
Sadly, less than four weeks after my previous mail, I am here sharing with you the sad news that I assume you already know. Jochen has not made it.
Only when a person passes away one fully realizes how much he has been loved and respected, and the positive note is that his departure has been felt very much from the whole Motorsport community and beyond.
I received calls from some of you and we shared some nice thoughts, and I thank you for that. As well, what is happening in the social medial world is quite special. His family should be proud.
In these sad moments, we can show that we are a strong Club with values, and I appreciate a lot what has been going on and said about Jochen from many of you.
I am, of course, concerned about Bettina and will try to stay in touch with her to see if she needs support.
Let me wish you all the best and looking forward to seeing you in Silverstone for the General Assembly where we will be making a toast on Jochen.
Ciao ciao,
Emanuele Pirro
President
Jochen Mass 1946 – May 4 2025
Jochen Mass, one of the most popular members of the Grand Prix Drivers Club, died on Sunday, May 4, after ill health following the stroke he suffered in February of this year.
Jochen, a Bavarian, was born in the town of Dorfen, 50 km east of Munich, on September 30 1946, but, unlike many grand prix drivers, he wanted to be a sailor like his grandfather and joined the merchant navy.
His switch to cars came later when he retired from the merchant navy and joined Kurz & Menzel a dealership for Alfa Romeo. He was entered for the Ulm-Laupheim hill climb south of Stuttgart in an Alfa Romeo Giulia Junior GTA. He ran in the Class for GTs and Group 5 1300-1600 class and finished in second place to another Alfa driven by Herbert Schultz, who was driving for the official German Alfa Romeo distributor team at the event. The following year the dealership entered him for the Nurburgring six-hour race with Karl Heinz Becker but were up against a raft of Alfas in the class but finished the event. At the end of the season, he finished 7th overall and winner of the Class. This was sufficient for him to be called up to the Ford team in 1970, racing Ford Capris, and he was European Touring Car Champion in 1972.
Jochen took a familiar route into single-seater racing, firstly in Formula Super Vee, then Formula 3 and Formula 2, where his year with Surtees led to his first Formula 1 grand prix at Silverstone in 1973. Sadly, he was involved in the first lap multiple accident at Woodcote that put him out of the race, but he took a well merited 7th place for Surtees in the German Grand Prix at Nurburgring.
The year 1974 was probably his most forgettable, for again, driving for Surtees, he had no fewer than eight retirements before being signed by Yardley McLaren to run the last two races of the season at Mosport and Watkins Gle,n where he finished in both and signed for McLaren for the next three seasons. He won his one and only grand prix at the Spanish grand prix in 1975, which was stopped due to a tragic accident when spectators were killed, so he only received half points rather than full points if it had gone the full distance.
His move to Gunther Schmid’s ATS in 1978 was a bit of a disaster, and he was fortunate to be taken on by Arrows for their Warsteiner Arrows team. In the 1980 Austrian Grand Prix practice, he fractured his back when he crashe,d but was able to complete the season. By now his sports car racing was beginning to dominate and with no drives available in Formula 1 he skipped the 1981 grand prix season but was signed up by March for 1982 but early in the season at Zolder Gilles Villeneuve’s attempted to overtake Jochen’s March but the cars touched and Villeneuve was killed in the resulting accident. Added to this, Jochen was involved in a similar accident with Mauro Baldi at the French Grand Prix. He damaged his legs in the accident and did not start in the German Grand Prix, and decided to retire from Grand Prix racing.
From then until he totally retired from racing in 1999, he concentrated on sports cars. Indeed, Jochen was to continue racing in sports cars for the rest of his racing career, which included five major Porsche teams, Rothmans, Busby Racing, B.F.Goodrich, Joest Racing, Bayside Racing and Richard Lloyd. However, it is often forgotten he was also a key member of the Sauber-Mercedes racing team and in 1989 he won his only Le Mans 24 Hour race sharing a Sauber C9-Mercedes with Manuel Reuter and Stanley Dickens.
At the same time, he also featured in the Mercedes-Benz young driver programme to bring on promising young German drivers and included Michael Schumacher and Heinz-Harald Frentzen which was typical of a man who truly cared about his motor racing and was certainly not self-centred. Nobody could fail to like Jochen who always appeared cheerful and was game for a laugh such as when I took this photo of him at a party in the South of France where he immediately whipped out his tiny camera to respond.
Graham Gauld