1/1/1951
Record updated
German racing driver who has competed in Formula One and many other categories. He is the son of the legendary Hans Stuck. As a young boy, his father taught him driving on the Nürburgring, which led to the victory of the 19-year-old in the first 24 hours race there in 1970. He won there again in 1998 and 2004, too, each time with a BMW touring car.
The always friendly and funny, tall and blond Bavarian living in Austria is nicknamed Strietzel after a sweet pie.
In 1972, Stuck teamed up with Jochen Mass to drive a Ford Capri RS2600 to victory at the Spa 24 Hours endurance race in Belgium. His campaigns racing the BMW 3.0 CSL "Batmobile" were very successful in 1974 and 1975, in the German DRM as well as in the USA together with Ronnie Peterson. Later in the 1970s he raced the turbo-charged BMW 320i.
After some success in Formula 2 with a March-BMW, he also entered F1 with March. Overall, Stuck participated in 79 Grands Prix, debuting on January 13, 1974. He achieved 2 podiums and scored 29 championship points. Stuck was quite successful at Brabham-Alfa in 1977, leading the 1977 USA West Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in the rain, but was replaced by Niki Lauda for 1978. Stuck missed an opportunity to join Williams F1 just before this team became successful.
Due to his height of 194cm, he did not fit well into the F1 cars of the late 1970s that had the cockpit moved forward. Leaving F1 at that time probably spared him bad injuries to the leg, as suffered by Ronnie Peterson, Clay Regazzoni, Marc Surer and others.
Stuck continued racing touring and sports cars all over the world, winning the the 24 hours of Le Mans twice with a Porsche 962, was DTM-Champion in 1990 with Audi before returning to Porsche until the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1997. Since then, he is back at BMW.