FORMULA 1’S SEVENTY GREATEST INFLUENCERS

HELMUT MARKO
SEBASTIAN VETTEL
TOTO WOLFF
ALDO COSTA
LEWIS HAMILTON
SERGIO
MARCHIONNE
MAX VERSTAPPEN
LAWRENCE STROLL
CHARLIE WHITING
CHASE CAREY

When the energy-drink billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz arrived in Formula 1, he brought a fellow Styrian with him. Helmut Marko was from Graz, only 40 miles from Mürztal, Mateschitz’s birthplace. What the two men had in common was ambition, and what Marko brought to the operation was a sharp and ruthless eye for what makes a racing driver. If anyone questioned his judgment, he could point to his own record behind the wheel.

Marko raced in only a handful of grands prix. In the ninth and last of them, at Clermont-Ferrand in 1972, a stone smashed his goggles and cost the 29-year-old law graduate the use of his left eye. But one achievement had already defined Marko’s career as a driver: six weeks before the accident he had finished a close second in the Targa Florio in Sicily, setting a lap record for the 45-mile mountain circuit that would stand in perpetuity.

He went on to manage Gerhard Berger and Karl Wendlinger and to run his own racing team, as well as other businesses. In 1999 he set up Red Bull’s extensive junior driver operation for Mateschitz, and when the F1 team was launched in 2005 Marko became its consultant. Typically, he recalled the first exchanges in Milton Keynes after taking over the former Jaguar operation: “They thought we were to them, but we were them.” Within