Memories of Helmut Krackowizer from his son Peter

When my father wrote a letter — for example to a friend in England — he drove about 15 kilometres across the Austrian–German border to post it from Germany because postage was cheaper there. On his way back he stopped at my travel agency to send the same letter by fax. And when he arrived home, as my mother told me, he phoned his friend to let him know that the letter should already have arrived by fax. Well, that was my father.

And there are many other memories of “Mister Rudge” …

… such as my first encounters with Luigi Taveri. He often came to the Oldtimer Grand Prix with one of his former Honda works racing motorcycles. He always appeared too late at the pre‑start area at the paddock exit. Since it was my duty to refuse late‑arriving participants for safety reasons, I intended to do the same with Mr Taveri. But my father always explained that his racing motorcycle had to be started only shortly before the start because of its mechanical peculiarities … so I let him go.

Racing remained in my father’s blood throughout his life — not in the sense of high‑speed driving. He always said he did not drive fast, but briskly. What he truly hated was being stuck in a traffic jam and not getting anywhere. Two recurring behaviours made this very clear:

First: He loved passing traffic jams on the motorway on the right‑hand lane reserved for breakdowns. Once, on the motorway between Rosenheim and Kufstein, he even did so directly in front of a police patrol.

Second: To avoid traffic hold‑ups in the city, he preferred taking long detours. They rarely saved time, but — as mentioned above — he simply could not stand sitting senselessly in a tailback. From that time I know a whole network of “secret roads” across the city. Many of them are now closed to traffic or so well known that they no longer offer any “advantage”.

As far as real racing is concerned, my father was still in the saddle of motorcycles well into the 1990s. Of course always in regularity or demonstration events — but, as I learned from him, “the most constant race is the one you ride at full throttle”. Thinking back to the Oldtimer Grand Prix events of the 1980s at the Salzburgring, my father truly gave everything he had when it came to speed.

Crash helmet (see photo above, in his hand) I would like to mention something unique here: My father rode all his races during his active years until 1955, as well as later at the Oldtimer Grand Prix and other regularity events, always with the same crash helmet — an open helmet in red‑white‑red, as was common at the time. That is how I still recognise him in photos today. The helmet is still with us at home. As a child, I loved putting it on and playing “racing motorcyclist”.