Horst Kroll

Horst Kroll (May 16, 1936 - October 26, 2017) was a German-born Canadian race driver who won the final Can-Am racing championship in 1986. At age 50 he had became only the second Canadian winner of the Canadian-American Challenge Cup series The Sports Car Club of America's pro racing sanctioning body had dropped the original Can-Am series in 1974, only to revive it three years later when Kroll led the first race at Mont-Tremblant, QC, but finished third. Kroll was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 1994.

Chipwich Charger returns to Mosport

Early life and career

Kroll left his mother and siblings in East Germany in 1954 and made his way to Stuttgart Zuffenhausen where Porsche hired him as an apprentice.

Promoted from assembling 356 sports cars to servicing cars owned by favoured clients and Porsche family members, he'd don his company overalls to gain admission to major races and offer his help in the pits.

His move into racing himself followed Porsche arranging employment as a technical specialist with Volkswagen Canada, where fellow Porsche specialist Ludwig Heimrath already was winning races in a Porsche 356. A third-place finish in another 356 in his first race at Ste. Eugene, a circuit on a deserted airfield in eastern Ontario, hooked him on the sport in 1961 and he soon added ice racing and hill climbing to his resume.

Formula Vee, the low-cost starter series, yielded his first championship in 1964. Wright, John (July, 2002)

Wins in a 356 Carrera at Mosport, the road course since named Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, and Harewood Acres, another airport circuit, led to Quebec star Jacques Duval inviting Kroll to co-drive his Porsche 904 GTS in long distance races. Duval entered them in the 1967 Sebring 12 Hours, then the major endurance event in North America, after the duo finished third in their first outing, Mosport's 6-Hour Sundown Grand Prix. Second in class, 16th overall at Sebring prompted a return in Duval's Porsche 911 S in 1968 for third in class, 9th overall.

"Horst was as accomplished behind the wheel as he was under the hood of a Porsche," Duval wrote in his memoir, crediting Kroll for preparing the cars for the endurance races as well as setting the pace.

Mike Rahal recruited Kroll to co-drive a Porsche 906 in the 1971 Watkins Glen, NY, 6-Hour. Despite failing to finish they partnered again in Rahal's Lotus 47 in the 1972 Glen 500-km and the 250-mile Daytona Finale.

Kroll's best Sebring result came in 1979, second in GTU and seventh overall, driving a Porsche 911 Carrera RSR with Rudi Bartling, a fellow member in Toronto's Deutscher Automobil Club. Kroll won the Sundown Grand Prix with the DAC's Harry Bytzek in the Bytzek RSR in 1975.

Wife Hildegard and two-year-old Birgit share the moment.

He captured the Canadian Road Racing Championship in 1968 driving the Kelly Porsche, a clone of the Lotus 23B sports racing car engineered by his friend Wayne Kelly. He put the honour in perspective with his oft-quoted remark after the awards banquet, "I got a busted trophy and a handshake.At least my mechanic won a set of tools."

He also raced the Kelly Porsche against first-generation Can-Am cars in four races of the 1968 United States Road Racing Championship in which many Can-Am regulars competed prior to their series commencing in the fall. Although the Kelly's Porsche engine was less than half the size of the American V-8's, Kroll scored a 9th at Watkins Glen and 12th at Mid-Ohio, both races won by Mark Donohue in the Penske McLaren M6A."

The Canadian championship switched in 1969 to open-wheeled cars - called Formula A in Canada and Formula 5000 in the U.S. - in the new Gulf Canada series. Intent on defending his title, Kroll flew to England that April and bought a new Lola T142. But Eppie Wietzes dominated the Gulf Canada races; Kroll finished second to Wietzes in four consecutive races and the first two of four in 1970, making him runner-up in the championship in successive years.

Racing south of the border was tougher. In the SCCA Continental Formula 5000 Championship new cars from AAR, McLaren and Surtees challenged the Lolas. Underlining the standard of driving, Jody Scheckter, Alan Jones and Mario Andretti all advanced from the American series to Formula One world championships. Kroll persevered, complaining that inadequate prize money for mid-field finishers made it difficult to advance. Whereas prize money for the top three finishers in the 1972 season opener at Laguna Seca, CA. totalled $27,060, Kroll in eighth was paid $600. Worse, car breakdowns at Lime Rock, CT and Road Atlanta, GA produced $225 checks. Kroll's most successful F5000 campaign came in 1976: he stood twelfth in championship points with a fifth at Watkins Glen his best race finish..

Can-Am years

Mounting the top step of Mosport's victory stand followed years of frustration

The SCCA called on its teams to rebuild their F5000 cars enclosing the wheels to resemble the legendary Can-Am monsters that had commanded international attention from 1966 through 1974. In so doing Kroll gained a fresh start in the Lola T300 in which he'd previously contested 26 F5000 outings, sporting a new body crafted by fellow Canadian Roy Hayman. OLD RACING CARS

He led the first race of the 'new' Can-Am at rain-slicked Mont-Tremblant, QC, June 6th, 1977, as other drivers pitted for slick tires better suited to the drying pavement. Staying on rain tires put Kroll in front but slowed his pace so he finished third - a bittersweet podium that would be his best result over the first eight years of the revived Cana-Am.

In his next 39 races he counted three top-five finishes and top-10's. His Volkswagen-Porsche repair shop funded his racing, but left him perennially short. His daughter, Birgit, described how he'd tour tracks' paddocks the night before races searching other teams' garbage bins for parts like camshafts. Although cast off as overly worn, they were good for a second life in Kroll's car.

He became newly competitive in 1983 when his first major sponsorship enabled him to re-body his Lola T330 as a near clone to the Galles Frissbee that Al Unser Jr. drove to the 1982 championship and acquire a 550-horsepower VDS-built Chevrolet engine. This was Lola HU2, a F5000 car in which Alan Jones had won at Brands Hatch a decade earlier. Also working in Kroll's favour, front-running teams VDS, Rick Galles and Paul Newman follow four-time champion Carl Haas's 1982 move to Indy Car racing, levelling the Can-Am playing field by their absence.

While fellow-Canadian Villeneuve Sr. raced the ex-Unser Galles Frissbee to the 1983 championship, Kroll wasn't far behind. He counted fourths at Trois-Rivieres, QC and Sears Point, CA along with fifths at Mosport and a second Sears Point race in the Chipwich Charger (so named promoting the sponsor's new ice cream sandwich, officially dubbed the Frissbee KR3) for fifth in championship points. 

He climbed to third in 1984 and the optics changed again in 1985 when Kroll won the season opener at Mosport, his first victory in eight years and 62 Can-Am starts. American newcomer Rick Miaskiewicz captured the lead off the start - in the same Galles Frissbee Unser Jr. and Villeneuve Sr. drove to their championships - but Kroll was in position to take over when Miaskiewicz spun off at Turn One. Making the day even more celebratory, Joe DeMarco earned third in another Horst Kroll Racing entry.

Miaskiewicz scored three victories and the 1985 championship, but Kroll took second behind him each time for second in points as well. As the 1986 schedule again commenced at Mosport, Kroll improved on his first win a year earlier by qualifying fastest and leading from the start, winning ahead of IMSA star Bill Adam in another Kroll entry, a Frissbee KR4.

Following the SCCA's announcement the series would fold after four races, Kroll became its final champion with a fourth at Summit Point, WV, second at St. Louis, MO and another second at Mosport's fall race - won by Paul Tracy in the KR4, the 17-year-old's first outing beyond the starter formulas on his way to Indy Car stardom. 

In an attempt at salvaging their brand of racing the Can-Am competitors formed a new organization, Championship Auto Teams, adding a single race at Hallet, OK to the Can-Am races to create the CAT Thunder Car Championship. Kroll took its title along with his Can-Am laurels by finishing sixth at Hallett.

He committed to defending his CAT championship in 1987 and pledged his team's cars availability for guest drivers to create larger starting fields, as he had with young Tracy at Mosport's Can-Am finale. So it was Villeneuve Sr. drove the KR4 to second behind Bill Tempero in CAT's visit to Canada's best-known oval, Sanair Raceway, QC with Kroll fourth in KR3 and John Macaluso sixth in KR5. Kroll also took third behind Tempero at Milwaukee and eighth at Phoenix for third in points as the American oval racing veteran won the championship.

Can-Am cars were relegated to the sidelines when Tempero introduced the American Indycar Series for superannuated Indy cars in 1988.  Kroll retired from professional racing at the age of 52, only returning to Mosport for a handful of endurance races co-driving with friends, firing up KR3 for parade laps at a 2007 vintage festival.