Another new acquisition: ‘72STAGPOWER now has a first-class Formula 2 racing car dating from 1977. March only built two Formula 2 racing cars that year, and they were both works cars. This is one of them. Jochen Mass won with it in Jägermeister colours in the 1977 Eifel Race on the Nürburgring. Marc Surer also drove the car.
This March-BMW was owned by the Swiss racing driver Markus Hotz. It was his lovingly well-kept “centrepiece” with which he reappeared over and over again at historic events. Actually, he really didn’t want to sell the March at all. But the outcome was different. Hotz said: “What you are doing there with ‘72STAGPOWER is so super-good. I knew then that the car would pass into the best hands. That made the separation easy for me, especially as I can drive the car again at your site.”
Markus Hotz was, among other things, a BMW works driver in 1978 in one of the country teams at that time. He previously drove in the Formula Super-Vee, and then also built 46 of his own Horag racing cars for Formula Super V. Markus Hotz was considered to be a hill-climb specialist, and in his March he was four-time overall winner in the Schweizer Berg Grand Prix in Les Rangiers, and three times in the Freiburg-Schauinsland hillclimb prize. Hotz also drove for Porsche and was overall fourth in the 1000-kilometre race on the Nürburgring in a 934-Turbo in 1975 (together with Claude Haldi). Hotz’s Horag-Team subsequently built Can-Am cars, and entered a Porsche RS-Spyder in the USA in 2006/2008.
Author: Eckhard Schimpf