Helmut Krackowizer (29 April 1922 – 22 October 2001) was an Austrian motorcycle racer and motor journalist with an international reputation, specializing in vintage motorcycles.
Early life
Krackowizer's life was shaped in large part by motorcycles and also by automobiles. Born in Austria in 1922, he started to create motorcycle drawings while he was a schoolboy, long before he was able to ride his first motorcycle, a 250 cc NSU, at the age of 16. He soon replaced this motorcycle with a 500 cc Norton "International".
During his school summer vacations, Helmut worked as a mechanic and went to races whenever possible. In 1932, he attended one of the first races on the Gaisberg near Salzburg. He took advantage of any opportunity to ride a motorcycle, to buy one (A Rudge 250 cc two valves, his first racing motorcycle after the Second World War), or to rescue one. He saw the end of the war as a fighter controller of the Air Signal Corps in a night interception troop – on a motorcycle – in Norway.
The Motorcycle Professor
After Krackowizer retired from active racing in 1955, he began to track down historic Motorcycles all over Europe. He kept some of these finds and had them restored, others he exchanged and sold again. In 1967 he founded the third Motor Veterans Club in Austria, the Motor Veterans Club Salzburg. In 1976 Krackowizer also became president of the Austrian Motor Veterans Association for a short time.
Helmut Krackowizer knew almost every historical motorcycle in detail, knew the stories of rare motorcycles and the biographies of their racers, most of whom he had also met personally and were also among his friends, such as Sammy Miller [trial world champion], John Surtees [only automobile and motorcycle world champion], Walter Zeller, Luigi Taveri (multiple motorcycle world champion on Honda from Switzerland), Hans Haldemann (sidecar racer from Switzerland, Georg "Schorsch" Meier (in 1939 Meier was the first non-British to win the 500 cc class, the so-called Senior TT, at the infamous Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man), Alfred Neubauer, the legendary Mercedes-Benz race director, and many others from the motor racing scene. He was a member of the Rudge Enthusiasts Club in England.
He fulfilled a lifelong dream by realizing the great motor veteran race on the Salzburgring, the "Oldtimer Grand Prix", which took place between 1974 and 1987. Stars like Niki Lauda, Juan Manuel Fangio (Argentinean automobile racer), Hans Herrmann, and other former automobile and motorcycle racers came to these veteran races for historic automobiles and motorcycles. Well over 100 automobiles and up to 300 motorcycles came to this event at the Salzburgring in the best years. Mercedes Benz sent the famous Silver Arrows, BMW and Audi brought historical racing cars from their museums to Salzburg.
However, his efforts to establish a Motor Veteran Museum in Salzburg were unsuccessful. Attempts were made to convert the Stadl in the Hellbrunn Palace Park for this purpose, but these failed due to bureaucratic considerations on the part of the municipality of Salzburg. Thus, some collections of vintage motorcycles and automobiles whose owners Krackowizer had already won over for the project (such as Walter Brandstetter from St. Pölten) went to domestic and foreign motor museums. And until today (as of 2019) no suitable space for historical technology (of all kinds) has been created in Salzburg to present rarities to posterity.
Career
Motorcycle racing
In the autumn of 1946, he rode his first motorcycle race with his Rudge 250 cc under heavy rain during the first post-war race in Salzburg-Nonntal, Austria. He came in third.
Then in the spring of 1947, the first dirt track race in Salzburg, organized by the just-founded SAMTC (Salzburg automobile motorcycle and touring club), attracted 20.000 spectators on the trotting racecourse in Salzburg-Aigen. The SAMTC's first motorcycle race took place on the motorway in Salzburg-Liefering on 6 July 1947. 1958 this race became the Grand Prix of Austria for motorcycles, which moved later on the motorway Anif-Grödig, also near Salzburg, and at the end on the Salzburgring, where the race had been upgraded in 1970 to a world champion race.