1/4/1952 - 20/7/1980
Record updated 20-Jul-21
Killed in the warm up of a round of the European Formula 2 Championship at Zandvoort driving a Tiga F280 BMW. Hans-Georg drove in the 1979 German Formula 3 championship. Finished as runner up in the series. racing In 1980 he drove in European Formula 2 and the Procar series.
Born in Welschbillig in the former West Germany, Bürger started racing in 1975, winning the German Slalom title the following year and graduating to the Renault 5 Cup and finishing 2nd in the Championship, runner-up to Mauro Baldi.
In 1978, with help from the German magazine 'Autozeitung', Bürger graduated to the German F3 Championship with a Ralt RT1-Toyota from the Bertrand Schafer Racing team. In 1979 he finished 2nd in the Championship beaten by Michael Kortenonce.
That year he also drove a BMW in the German Sportscar Championship. Driving with Eckhard Schimpf, they won their class in the Nurburgring 1000 km and finished 6th overall. Invited to drive a works BMW M1 Procar in the German Grand Prix support race, Bürger passed Didier Pironi to take an impressive third place against the established Formula 1 stars of the day. Late in November Bürger shared another BMW M1, entered by Dr. Helmut Marko, with Markus Höttinger in the Kyalami 1000 km, in which they retired.
He and Höttinger were close friends, they both started racing the German Renault 5 Cup, then they were teammates in Team GS Sport and together graduated to the Procar series, becoming the most promising young German drivers, under the guidance of Jochen Neerpasch, general manager of Team BMW.
He continued in Procars in 1980 with GS Tuning’s BASF-sponsored M1 and also raced a Tiga F280 BMW in the European F2 Championship, finishing 8th at Thruxton and starting on the front row of the grid at Nurburgring on the 14-mile Nordschleife and was running second until the Tiga’s gear linkage broke.
At the Dutch round at Zandvoort he was 6th during the first practice session. Then getting to the end of the second session he had a minor off in the chicane. He returned to the pits and even though the mechanics managed to repair the broken suspension and changed the nose, he couldn't get out again until the warm-up session on the Sunday, 20 July 1980.
He did two shakedown laps before putting in a lap a full speed. On the next lap he went off at Scheivlak at about 200 kph and crashed head-on into the Armco. He hit his head on one of the posts and his helmet split in two.
He was quickly transferred by ambulance to the EG Elizabeth Hospital of Haarlem and, an hour later, he was transferred to the intensive care unit of the Wilhelmina Hospital in Amsterdam, where sadly he succumbed to his head injuries two days later leaving a young widow and nine-month-old son.
His close friend Markus Höttinger had been killed 13 weeks earlier.
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