Those who see Helmut Marko as grand prix racing's one-eyed Dr Evil might be interested to know that, 40 years ago, he was a handsome, long-haired daredevil of the racetracks with an unbelievably gorgeous wife and a fondness for music and art: just the sort of chap who might have been played by Steve McQueen.

You could say that he was played by McQueen, almost. In the film Le Mans, shot in 1970, the American actor played a driver who raced a Porsche 917 – the most fearsome racing car of its day – in the celebrated 24-hour race. The following year Marko competed in the real-life race in a similar Porsche. And he went one better than McQueen: whereas the fictional Michael Delaney finished second, Marko won.

Four decades later, Marko is the motor racing consultant to his Austrian compatriot Dietrich Mateschitz, the man who made billions from an energy drink called Red Bull and now owns a couple of Formula One teams. A few months ago Marko earned notoriety among grand prix fans when he blamed Mark Webber for the crash that cost the Red Bull cars a one-two finish in the Turkish Grand Prix, an incident that most observers believed had been caused by the rashness of the team's other driver, Sebastian Vettel.

Whereas the 34-year-old Webber joined the team three years ago, the 23-year-old Vettel is the star product of Red Bull's driver-training scheme, supervised by Marko, whose declaration was seen as evidence of favouritism. And so, in the public mind, the 67-year-old Austrian assumed the role of baddie in the 2010 Formula One soap opera, which reaches its conclusion today in Abu Dhabi with Vettel starting from pole position.

To a racer, however, all you need to know about Dr Helmut Marko is that, as well winning Le Mans, he holds in perpetuity the lap record for the Targa Florio, the legendary sports car race around the hills of Sicily. Marko set his record in 1972, in the penultimate edition of the race, hustling a 12-cylinder Alfa Romeo through the 45-mile circuit of winding mountain roads and narrow village streets in 33min 41sec, at an average of a fraction under 80mph.

Six weeks after that feat, Marko was driving a BRM in the French Grand Prix at Clermont-Ferrand when a stone was thrown up by Emerson Fittipaldi's Lotus and pierced his visor. It cost him the sight of his left eye and ended a grand prix career that had lasted nine races.

Marko had grown up alongside Jochen Rindt, who was killed at Monza in 1970. David Tremayne's fine new biography of that year's posthumous world champion tells us that the two boys raced each other around the streets on mopeds, got expelled from the same school, and saw their first grand prix together at the Nürburgring in 1961.

"Let's talk about the modern world," Marko barked as he sat down in the Abu Dhabi paddock on the eve of today's grand prix. But he started by telling the story of what happened after his accident.

"First of all you think it's the end of the world," he said. "Then you find there's a life afterwards." Hotels, restaurants and property occupied his time for a while. Eventually, however, the lure of racing proved too strong. "I worked for Ford and Renault, and I had various teams of my own in various categories." For a while his team in the German touring car championship included Franz Klammer, the 1976 Olympic downhill skiing champion: "He was a good racer. Unlucky, but good."

The relationship with The relationship with Mateschitz, who is a year younger, grew slowly. "I'm from Graz in Styria and he's from Murztal, 60 or 70kms away. He was always racing-minded. When we first met he didn't have a budget to go into anything, but Red Bull became bigger and bigger and it seemed natural to come together.

"First the Junior Team was created, which was an unbelievable chance for young drivers. Then we had to put them somewhere, and the natural step was buying a Formula One team. Soon we realised that being in Formula One is one thing but being a winner is completely different, so we changed the approach."

Vettel is the end product. Spotted by Red Bull at 12, he soon came under Marko's wing. "It was unbelievable – a 15-year-old boy telling an established team that winning every race was not enough, telling them that there was more in the car. Everybody was thinking, 'What does this youngster want?' But already at that stage he was going for the maximum, under any circumstances.

"Besides that, he finished high school, which is a part of our programme. You never know what can happen in racing, and it does no harm if you have a head that you can use sometimes, and not only put a helmet on. With the complexity of sport these days, it helps because you can stand the pressure more easily, you can sort out the technical issues, you can cope in the public eye."

The best example of Vettel's maturity, Marko said, was in South Korea last month, when his engine blew up on a disastrous day for the team. "He was getting out of the car and saying, 'Well, it can happen – let's just go for it in the last couple of races.' He was the one who took it really well. That wouldn't have been possible a year before. He would have thrown things around."

Red Bull's approach, he said, is to have their drivers compete with each other. "The more you nurse them, the worse it is. They have to survive." But do they have as much fun as he and his fellow carousers of 40 years ago?

"No. Unfortunately not. I remember when Mike Hailwood couldn't get the alcohol out of his body before a race. He was leading at Kyalami when a stupid technical failure put him out. And with two other people, I carried him to his room, he was so pissed. But I don't think we should tell them those stories."