Red Bull’s motorsport adviser Helmut Marko will have six of his protégés on the grid in Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix. Yet, despite bringing so many top drivers through the motorsport ranks – including Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen – the Austrian has a reputation to be feared in racing circles. But as David Tremayne discovered, the former driver has earned the right to be forthright... Back in 2013, at the height of Red Bull’s ‘Multi 21’ scandal when Sebastian Vettel ignored team orders to cheat Mark Webber out of victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix, Dr Helmut Marko refused to censure him. Indeed, he seemed positively supportive of the driver many believed he favoured over the Australian. “He can’t do that!” exclaimed one party who was very close to the centre of the affair. But the simple truth was, he could. Nicknamed Dr Evil by some in the paddock, the taciturn Austrian is seen as the puppet master who can do as he pleases at Red Bull. But to understand why, you need to understand his background. Marko, who not only has team owner Dietrich Mateschitz’s ear but, even more crucially, his trust, is a case-hardened racer who is without question one of the toughest alumni of F1’s school of hard knocks. Born in Graz in April 1943, he was close friends with Jochen Rindt, who would become the sport’s only posthumous World Champion 27 years later. Each displayed a wanton wildness that would prepare them for the tough environments they would later meet in their racing careers. They had something in common very early on: they were both expelled from the Pestalozzi School in Graz. “Let’s put it this way,” Marko explains: “If we left, they would give us a positive report. If not, we wouldn’t make it. So it was a very attractive offer. We messed about, we skipped lessons. We were a wild age and we really didn’t fit in this system of nice boys. “So then we went to a boarding school called Bad Aussee, in the mountains, and that was a really wild time because whatever you had to do, you had to organise yourself. Climbing out of the windows during the night…”

To survive in my era was already some achievement... Marko on growing up at speed

First they raced each other on motorcycles, later in cars. “We were 16 or 17 when we were together in school at Graz and that was when we got our first ‘wombats’ - motorcycles - and there it started. Whatever we did on these motorcycles, it was on a competitive level. When we had a car we didn’t have licences, but we managed to go nearly every weekend to Graz where we had our parties. “Most of the time we managed someone in the car who had a licence and the system was: Everybody gets a drive, but only as long as he doesn’t make a mistake. A mistake means he was not on the limit, so he was judged by all the others. And some wild driving started! I can’t say who was quicker, me or Jochen, because it was a normal road, but it was competitive. “To survive this era was already some achievement,” he chuckles. “It was unbelievable! There are so many stories, we would sit here for hours… We had this German licence plate on the VW that Jochen borrowed from his grandparents and normally we wouldn’t stop for policemen...” Marko would borrow his father’s Chevrolet without paternal permission, naturally, and once crashed it down a hill. The deal between the friends was that if you screwed up, you were on your own. It was a harsh fraternal environment. So the young Marko, the electrical dealer’s son, was used to fending for himself. That goes a long way to explaining why he has left the racing battlefield strewn with the careers of the myriad drivers who didn’t quite cut it in Red Bull’s programme. Guys such as Tonio Liuzzi, Patrick Friesacher, Sebastien Bourdais, Scott Speed, Sebastien Buemi, Christian Klien, Jaime Alguersuari, Lewis Williamson and, most recently, Daniil Kvyat. “When I was racing we had to help ourselves,” he muses. “But tell me any of the drivers we finished with in the Red Bull programme, who made it afterwards. All of them had a certain talent and a certain speed. But they were just not working hard enough, that was the problem.” Others have, of course, argued the support was withdrawn just when they most needed it… His typically-Austrian candour leaves many either scandalised or dumbfounded. Niki Lauda is exactly the same, and so was Rindt. In the latter’s case, the trait was frequently mistaken for arrogance. When others took umbrage, all of them would simply look puzzled, and say, “But you asked me what I thought…” No euphemisms for them! In December 2012 Marko was widely attacked for criticising Mark Webber, at the time perceived by the media to be disfavoured within the RBR camp to Vettel’s enduring advantage. He has a simple view when collaborations don’t work out – in other words, if drivers don’t perform and don’t address their weaknesses. “You have to make a solution. Unfortunately, that means normally if they are not delivering, you have to finish the cooperation.”

All of them had a certain talent and a certain speed. But they were just not working hard enough, that was the problem... Marko on the drivers Red Bull have dropped

His comments about Webber, a popular figure, came across as a tirade about the Australian’s modus operandi, and were doubly wounding insofar as they were printed in Red Bull’s own in-house Red Bulletin magazine. At the time he explained: “I was asked why Vettel is champion and why Mark isn’t, so I tried to explain the difference and there were just some facts. I didn’t think it should be taken to criticise Mark, but I said if he was able to keep his performance over the whole season, then he would have been the champion. They get the same treatment here with us. Mark was already a driver with a good reputation, and it was always, ‘If he is in the right car, he will be a winner.’ And then came the right car, but unfortunately along came Vettel as well. So psychologically it must be very, very hard for Mark. “All these circumstances were what I tried to express, and the magazine thought that I was against Mark, which is not true. In 2010 we all believed that he would be the champion because all the chances were completely on his side. For sure I wouldn’t say he should focus where his weaknesses are, but rather that he should focus in areas where he is not as strong as Vettel. Work on that. Sometimes somebody has to tell a driver that.” Marko was genuinely concerned at the way his comments were perceived at that time - and keen to set the record straight now. “With Mark it was a misinterpretation,” he added. “I don’t set out to be unkind, but I say what I believe and I say it to make something better, to help people to come up with their own solutions.” What tends to get forgotten is that Marko himself was a great racer. Back in 1971 he was all set to be 'Niki Lauda' before Niki Lauda, before anyone realised that his compatriot had the skill that would take him to three titles. He had seen his friend Rindt die at Monza during practice for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix just when he was on the cusp of clinching his World Championship. And he had started to carve a reputation of his own in a Lola T212, then with a record-setting victory at Le Mans in 1971 in a Martini Racing Porsche 917K shared with Dutchman Gijs van Lennep, and a superb drive for Alfa Romeo in the 1972 Targa Florio.

I was asked why Vettel is champion and why Mark isn’t, so I tried to explain the difference and there were just some facts... Marko on straight-talking