Jochen Mass 1946-2025

Mass was born in Dorfen, Bavaria on 30^th September 1946 and, following the guidance of his grandfather, began life as a sailor in the German merchant navy. Despite retaining a passion for boats and sailing that would stay with him for the remainder of his life, he decided to chase another dream after he had his first experience of motorsport in the late 1960s.

After finding work at a local Alfa Romeo dealership, Mass was presented with an opportunity to get behind the wheel, standing in for an absent driver. He duly demonstrated his talent to such an extent that Ford approached him with an offer to race Capris in the European Touring Car Championship, which he won in 1972, along with the series’ blue riband race, the Spa 24 Hours.

Suitably impressed, Ford supported his transition into single-seaters, finding him a seat with the March Formula 2 team in 1972. He was picked up by Team Surtees in 1973, winning twice that season and gaining promotion to the Formula 1 team for three Grands Prix, before becoming a full-time F1 driver in 1974.

The dismal reliability of his Surtees TS16 made results difficult to come by, but there was no ignoring his speed when the car was working, and he was rewarded with an opportunity to drive the third (Yardley-sponsored) McLaren M23 at the final two races of the ’74 season. His performances were impressive enough to earn a seat with the McLaren team proper when Denny Hulme retired, where he would race alongside the reigning World Champion, Emerson Fittipaldi.

In the space of seven years, and at the age of 28, Mass had made it to the absolute pinnacle of global motorsport. He scored his only F1 victory that year, at the ill-fated 1975 Spanish Grand Prix at Montjuïc, but only took half points from the truncated event.

In all he claimed seven further podium finishes during three seasons at McLaren, coming closest to a second victory at the 1977 Swedish Grand Prix. He’d had a previous near miss at the Nürburgring in 1976, after his local knowledge of the weather gave him the insight to start on slick tyres, a decision that gave him a huge lead when his rivals were forced to pit at the end of lap one. Sadly, Niki Lauda’s fiery crash resulted in the race being red-flagged, and his advantage was wiped out. He finished third in the restarted race.

Jochen left McLaren at the end of 1977, off the back of his most successful F1 season, in which he finished sixth in the drivers’ standings. He threw in his lot with Gunter Schmid’s nascent ATS team, but the car was uncompetitive, and his season was cut short by a leg-breaking accident in testing at Silverstone caused by suspension failure. With interest from both Arrows and Williams for 1979, he made what turned out to be the wrong choice – the new Williams FW07 was soon the class of the field, while two seasons at Arrows netted only five points finishes.

Mass spent what would turn out to be his final season in F1 at March in 1982, a tenure marred by his innocent involvement in Gilles Villeneuve’s fatal accident during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder. He retired from F1 abruptly, following a crash in the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard from which he was lucky to survive, when his car vaulted the barriers and landed in a spectator area.

With 105 Grand Prix starts to his name, Mass held the record as the highest points scoring German driver until Michael Schumacher surpassed him in 1993.

But there would be another chapter to his remarkable motorsport story, as he turned his attention to endurance racing. Having been a regular works Porsche driver since 1976, he joined the Rothmans Porsche line-up full-time alongside Jacky Ickx at the mid-way point of the 1982 season and took victory at the second attempt at the Spa 6 Hours. Another win at Fuji was the second of 32 triumphs he would claim over the next decade, first with Porsche and later with Sauber-Mercedes. That tally placed him second on the list of World Sportscar Championship winners, behind Ickx.

One prize had eluded him, however. Having made his Le Mans debut at the wheel of a Ford Capri 2600RS in 1972, Mass returned to the Circuit de la Sarthe with Porsche in 1978, and finished second overall in 1982 alongside Vern Schuppan in a Porsche 956. Five more attempts at the world’s greatest endurance race yielded little in the way of luck, but he finally made it in 1989, when he drove the Mercedes-backed Sauber C9 to overall victory, sharing with Manuel Reuter and Stanley Dickens.

Alongside his success as a driver, Mass’s role grew to become that of senior figure in the now-legendary Mercedes-Benz Junior Team, as co-driver and mentor to three young Germans making the step up from Formula 3: Michael Schumacher, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Karl Wendlinger. His openness, generosity of spirit, and complete lack of ego, made him the perfect person for the role, and he left a lasting impression on all three.

After his final Le Mans outing in 1995 (sharing a McLaren F1-GTR with John Nielsen and Thomas Bscher, they led the first half of the race before retiring with a clutch issue), he retired from racing and began a new phase of his career, as a TV commentator, Mercedes-Benz ambassador and regular at Goodwood. He raced and demonstrated anything and everything, from Edwardian leviathans to humble saloons, thundering pre-war Silver Arrows to Group C and F1 cars, always with a broad grin and a heavy (but perfectly balanced) right foot. Even into his 70s, it was common for him to race four different cars at a Revival or Members’ Meeting.

His enthusiasm and joy were infectious and unrelenting, and absolutely everyone within the entire Goodwood fraternity would have their day improved by his unerring kindness. Everything about him encapsulated what we love about this place, and he was an obvious choice to be one of the Members’ Meeting House Captains – a role he fulfilled for a decade. It was said that Jochen Mass was a great driver, but an even greater human being, and that is how we will fondly remember our friend.

Jochen Richard Mass died on 4^th May 2025, following complications from a stroke he suffered in February. He is survived by his second wife Bettina, their two daughters, and his two sons from his previous marriage to Esti.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.