Race 1 Hockenheim

Very special thanks must go to Gerhard Puttbach and Gert Schreiber for help with this page. They were drivers in the 1976 Junior Cup.

A fleet of Scirocco Cup cars ready for action, car 24 being that of Dieter Muller.

"I started my motorsport activities in a group 1 Rally car, an Audi 80GT, the predecessor of the GTI in 1974. In 1975 I did some track racing with my friends Mini Cooper 1000. So I was used to race front wheel drive cars, which 80% of the other guys were not familiar with. So the big disaster happened at the first race in Hockenheim, when those Opel Kadett and BMW 2002 guys hit the curbs on the inside of the 2nd chicane, that gave the cars the bump to roll over. 5 cars were lying on another as I remember, one of them was the Ski racer Christian Neureuther. My first training was very good, I was satisfied with the 2nd starting row. On the first lap at position 4 I was at the innermost side of the Sachs curve when another over-motivated guy hit me on the left inner side, so he must have been on the grass! I was very upset, my rear wheel arch rubbed on the wheel so I had to jump out of the car and with my hands I pulled it out a little bit to continue my race. At the end I finished 24th of 45 starters."

Willi Bergmeister (pictured inset) under pressure from the following pack. He also entered a Group 2 Touring car race in the famed orange Jagermeister Scirocco immediately before the Scirocco Cup race, necessitating jumping out of one Scirocco straight into another.

Many drivers in the series had additional sponsorship from local VW dealers. Here we see Kurt Konig(18)'Pillenstein', Wolfgand Schutz(38)'Marquardt'and Werner Danz(6)'Adam Hix und Sohn'.

Winkelhock's car had sponsorship from Nickel, a VW/Audi dealership in Winnenden.