1990 Walter Röhrl shook up the DTM in an Audi: Why he doesn’t see himself as a good circuit driver, what bothered him and which victory he mourns
Rallying legend Walter Röhrl was not only known for his top class on unpaved surfaces, but also showed what he was capable of on the circuit: Audi brought him into the DTM as Hans-Joachim Stuck’s team-mate in 1990 – with the aim of helping the ex-Formula 1 driver in the title fight
After giving Stuck the win on his debut at the Norisring, Röhrl won his only DTM race at the Nürburgring. “It was great fun to show the racing drivers that there was someone who could do it better than them,
“It was always great for me, I enjoyed it,” he says. “But it didn’t give me anything. “
Despite his speed, Röhrl sometimes felt like a foreign body in the world of circuit racing, where every detail is fine-tuned. First Opel asked him if he wanted to drive cars, “then it was Lancia, they wanted me to drive long-distance with Patrese,” he says, thinking back to the early 1980s.
“I said: yes, I’ll do it, because it will probably make me even more perfect at driving. But I never found the great joy, except on the Nordschleife. That was driving for me! That’s when I said: If racetracks were like this, I would have loved to be a racing driver too.”
But today he admits: “I wasn’t a good circuit driver.” And thinks back to his 1990 DTM season with Audi. “After training, Biela or Jelinski and Stuck would spend three hours talking to the engineer about what they needed to change,” says Röhrl.
Set-up fiddling? “I can change everything with the steering wheel “
“I said: change what? I have a steering wheel in the car, I can change everything with it. And that’s how I drive – off, that’s it!” You don’t get a crooked car anyway, so you can control everything at the wheel. “If it goes off at the back, then I do it like this, then I have it under control again. That’s not how a racing driver should be.”
Röhrl sees parallels between Gerhard Berger and the former Formula 1 driver, who later became DTM boss. “That was a great talent. He was always faster than Senna in the first training session. It’s just that Berger was then on the road with his wives – and Senna talked to the engineer for three hours. That was the difference. “
Which circuit triumph Röhrl mourns
Even though Hans-Joachim Stuck once said that Röhrl would have had what it takes for Formula 1, he waved it off: “I don’t think so. You have to be different to me, you have to be more technically minded.” Nevertheless, the outings on the circuit “brought him a lot”, he says.
He also drove “a cleaner line” on the rally track afterwards than before, even if the enjoyment was limited. With one exception – the Nürburgring-Nordschleife. “Unfortunately, I was unlucky that I never won the 24 hours,” he mourns the victory.
“It was always something. In 1993, we were leading by three laps at eleven o’clock in the afternoon – that’s 60 kilometers – until something went wrong with the clutch.”