Paul
Pietsch

Paul Pietsch was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1911 and began racing in 1932 with a privately owned Bugatti and an Alfa Romeo. Driving an Alfa Romeo, he won ice races in Sweden in 1933 and 1934. From the 1935 German Grand Prix he took part in three Grands Prix for Auto Union and finished third in the 1935 Italian Grand Prix. He left the team because of its difficult rear-engined cars. From 1937 he ran a private Maserati. In the 1939 German Grand Prix he led from the second lap until an ignition failure dropped him to third.

After the war he started three Formula One World Championship races, which made him the first German to take part in a World Championship Grand Prix. He made his debut in September 1950 in a Maserati. In 1951 he drove for Alfa Romeo and in 1952 for Veritas. His drive in a works Alfa Romeo in the 1951 German Grand Prix ended in a crash. He scored no championship points.

Pietsch also worked as a journalist and publisher, and founded the magazine Das Auto. He died in 2012 at the age of 100, the first Grand Prix driver to reach that age. From the death of Karl Kling in 2003 until his own death, he was the oldest surviving Formula One driver.

Source: Wikipedia, “Paul Pietsch”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.