1969 Helmut Fath GP Sidecar Racer - 6-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article

Description

1969 Helmut Fath GP Sidecar Racer - 6-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article
Original, vintage magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
“A blitz start! Did you see that!?”
screamed the Hockenheim speakers, echoing
the amazement of the spectator-packed
stands, as more than one hundred and fifty
thousand fans watched and cheered the
sidecar history being made before them. The
flag had just dropped, starting the sidecar race
that October afternoon, but already the
crowd’s favorite machine was flashing down
the straight. Behind-in just two seconds
already way behind-sprinting drivers and
passengers, looking like they were starting in a
different race, still pushed their asymmetrical
ground-hugging rigs to blat-blatting life.
The engine noises of all the machines
hadn’t changed from coughing, megaphone-
amplified blasts to the revving roar of racing
BMWs on full song before that one machine
was away. At the controls was 39-year-old
West German engine builder and veteran GP
sidecar racer Helmut Fath. Fellow landsman
and weaver Wolfgang Kalauch, also 39, his
passenger, was at his side, out flat behind the
sidecar’s miniature fairing. The machine was
the I-wonder-if-it-will-make-it-this-time URS.
And the URS (pronounced as three separate
letters) was the most talked about sidecar in
the history of this spectator-thrilling, close-to-
the-ground, shoulder-scraping sport.
The race was a big one, a Grand Prix. But
nobody had to stand around observing
Hockenheim’s functionaries happily watching
ticket sellers fill cash boxes with coveted West
German marks to know that. Any GP is big.
And any GP that was going to decide the
championship like the one that afternoon was
really big.
The man of the hour, Fath, a local hero
who lives just sixteen miles from the race
circuit was attempting the “impossible.” He
was challenging the giant. He was out to upset
the applecart of BMW, the mighty, the brand
that had dominated the sidecar scene for
fourteen consecutive years. (Now, fourteen
years of anything in racing is a long, long
time. Pre-race publicity, the program and the
man at the microphone made certain the
crowd knew it, too.) So by anyone’s
standards, the Bayerische Motoren Werk was a
big applecart indeed.
Fath, the fans knew, didn’t need anyone
to tell him what the opposition was like. Most
of his life a BMW rider himself, he rode the
brand to a world title in 1960. So, from
first-hand experience, he knew what he was
up against. He and the BMWs were not
strangers. But that’s another story.
At the time of the Hockenheim race, Fath
was concerned about only the competition of
the moment-the BMWs he was riding against.
All the fast ones were there. The machines of
’67 champion, Enders; two-time TT winner,
Schauzu; and the machine the factory was
giving most of its support to, George
Auerbacher’s.
The reason for the factory’s interest in
Auerbacher and his BMW was obvious: Only
he, tied with Fath in the point standing, had a
chance of making it a BMW win for the
fifteenth consecutive year. But to do the job,
Auerbacher had to beat Fath who just
happened to have the fastest machine on the
circuit, as shown by the qualifying times the
day before the race. And, to make matters
worse, despite the efforts of the factory,
Enders’ BMW, not Auerbacher’s was the
second fastest qualifier. The pre-race situation
was indeed critical for BMW. So critical, in
fact, that the applecart looked unstable for
the first time in years. Toppling down would
come that fourteen-year-old reputation if
Fath won.
And win is what he did. And how! Riding
like an old fox who knew the capabilities of
his own machine and all the others, he used a
lightning “blitz start” to put space between
his URS and the BMWs-and then just stayed
out in front. Clear of all the time-consuming
dicing going on behind him, he rode exactly
the race he wanted to, simply and easily
following the ideal line through all the
Hockenheim fast bends. Thirty-eight minutes
and twenty-five seconds after the start, when
he and Kalauch took the checkered flag, a
new course record had been set: 100.67 mph.
Mighty BMW was pushed out of the number
one position by a former rider of the brand,
riding his home-built engine. The apples had
been spilled.
To see what kind of man can do such a
thing, we went to the small village near
Heidelberg where the URS is built and spent
three days with Helmut Fath and his partner,
Dr. Peter Kuhn.
Fath’s bi-level house/workshop is built on
a hill at the edge of Ursenbach-the village in
which Fath was bom and raised. Getting
someone to point the way is no problem
because every farmer and child in the area
knows where the house is. After all, not many
medieval-looking villages with no stores, one
tavern, and sixteen tractors has an interna-
tionally known, often-visited celebrity in it.
The self-built house where Fath spends all
his non-racing time is relatively comfortable—
actually luxurious by local standards. Upstairs
he lives with his wife and ten-year-old
daughter. Downstairs, in a sunny glass-
enclosed shop, he, Kuhn, and a small group of
friends work on the engines. The neighbors
say a normal day up on the hill is about ten to
fourteen hours long. Actually, most people in
the area have grown accustomed to seeing the
shop looking like a mountain beacon, with its
lights burning through the night.
But nobody, it seems, complains about
hours put in on the URS. In fact, now that
Fath and Kuhn are able to spend all their time
on the project, they wish there was even
more. However, before prize money and
sponsorship was anything worth opening a
wallet for, the situation was quite different.
Telling the whole story from the begin-
ning, Fath starts with 1960, the year he rode
a self-prepared BMW to a championship GP
title. “You know,” he says smiling, “in 1961
BMW gave me factory support to make me
one of them .... They didn’t want me on the
team as much as they wanted me to stop
beating the factory-prepared machines. It was...
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