Memories of a passionate team principal: Gerhard Schneider, GS Sport

Gerhard Schneider was fascinated by motor racing. He had made it his mission, on the one hand, to win championships with experienced drivers and, on the other, to give young talents a genuine chance. Thanks to close ties with BMW, the exceptionally talented Markus Höttinger and Hans-Georg Bürger benefited from Schneider’s support.

Markus Höttinger 1979 im GS Sport-BMW 320 mit BMW F1 Turbo auf Testfahrt

Foto: Kräling

Procar-Serie 1980: Schneider mit seinem Lieblingspiloten Hans-Georg Bürger

Foto: BASF

Höttinger quickly made his mark in the DRM in a BMW 320, and Bürger followed the same path with Schneider a year later. Through M1-Procar, the GS Sport patron ultimately guided both young stars, with BMW works support, all the way to the European Formula 2 Championship.

However, within just three months, the Formula 2 venture turned into a double nightmare for both drivers, for BMW and for Gerhard Schneider, who had co-financed the project. Höttinger and Bürger died in quick succession in 1980 as a result of highly tragic Formula 2 accidents at Hockenheim and Zandvoort.

Nevertheless, Schneider had no regrets about having provided the two promising young drivers with a solid foundation for their professional careers. And he didn’t hesitate for a second to answer the question of which of his many top drivers he had enjoyed the best times with in motor racing: “Markus Höttinger and Hans-Georg Bürger. They were really good lads; to me, they were almost like my own sons.”

Between 1970 and 1981, Schneider’s GS Team was regarded as a fixture in German motor racing. Touring car stars such as Dieter Basche, Hans-Joachim Stuck, Albrecht Krebs and Jörg Obermoser claimed victories in the BMW 2002 and 320 models from the Freiburg-based tuning workshop. Stuck and Nelson Piquet even won the 1,000 km race at the Nürburgring in 1981 in a GS-BMW M 1 prototype.

Schneider pulled off what was arguably his greatest coup with the surprise Lancia deal for Hans Heyer, who had been driving for Ford for many years up to that point. Because Heyer had been annoyed that it was not he, but of all people his close friend and Ford returnee Klaus Ludwig, who had been awarded the drive in the new Super Capri for the 1980 DRM, Heyer and his mate Domingis Piedade hatched the Lancia plan.

Piedade, who had an excellent international network and was also team manager at GS Sport, brokered the deal with the Italians, with the result that Heyer won the 1980 DRM in the Lancia Beta Turbo – and did so just ahead of Klaus Ludwig. For Schneider and his GS Sport team, this was undoubtedly one of their most significant successes ever.

And yet, from 1981 onwards, despite a solid base of sponsors such as BASF, Warsteiner and Jägermeister, Schneider’s racing team and business empire began to go into decline.

The BMW dealership, including the racing team and tuning business, the car hire firm, the distribution of Winnebago luxury motorhomes and the Fruit of the Loom sportswear mail order business all had to be given up one after the other due to financial difficulties.

Schneider suddenly found himself facing a huge shambles. Frustrated and disappointed, he disappeared to Turkey. Even his closest associates, such as Mario Ketterer from Freiburg, had no idea for years where the former racing team owner and then-chairman of the FC Freiburg football club was.

It was only after many years that the former racing team boss returned to Germany and took stock, with a degree of self-criticism: “Yes, I made mistakes that led to the collapse of my group of companies. But I was also too trusting for the cut-throat world of motor racing; in the end, I was shamelessly exploited. I paid a high price for my willingness to help and my good nature.”

The well over 100 victories achieved by his cars and drivers were just as much a thing of the past for him as motor racing itself. In a telephone conversation in 2002, Schneider had told me bitterly: “I now know how I must shape the rest of my life – anything to do with cars is most certainly no longer part of it.”

Twenty years later, on 11 August 2022, Gerhard Schneider died at the age of 86. He would have turned 90 in 2026.