1,000 Greatest Drivers: Hans Herrmann
If you look at the Wikipedia page for the Triple Crown of endurance racing, it will tell you that Phil Hill and Dan Gurney were the first two drivers to win it. I do not agree because I don’t think their wins in the 2000 kilometers of Daytona and 3 Hours respectively should count as 24-hour wins. I don’t think any such wins should count unless they were originally scheduled for 24 hours, so that’s why I say here that Herrmann was the first.
I don’t think I have a good segue to mention this in the actual column, but I wanted to mention that long after his retirement in the ‘90s, Herrmann was actually kidnapped, locked in the trunk of a car, and escaped. Some of the stories surrounding this guy’s career are really wild (especially driving underneath a railroad crossing at the Mille Miglia and escaping injury), yet he still lived to 97 and only just died last month. He was the last living F1 podium finisher of the ‘50s, even if his F1 career was basically a footnote.
HANS HERRMANN………….GERMANY
Born: February 23, 1928
Died: January 9, 2026
Best year: 1968
Best drive: 1968 24 Hours of Daytona
The first driver to complete the overall endurance racing triple crown by winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 24 Hours of Daytona, and 12 Hours of Sebring, as well as the first driver to win each of those races overall for Porsche, Herrmann plays a vital role in sports car history, particularly when considering that Porsche is the winningest manufacturer in all these races. In this era, both German drivers and manufacturers valued sports car racing more than any other discipline, so you could argue he was the best German driver of his era.
Originally a baker for his family’s cafe in Stuttgart, Herrmann began racing in 1952. The next year, he finished second in class at Le Mans and made his F1 debut in the German Grand Prix, where he placed ninth in a self-owned Veritas, outqualifying and outfinishing the six other Veritas cars entered. In mid-1954, Hermann joined the Mercedes F1 team. Although Juan Manuel Fangio and Karl Kling outran him, Herrmann was still competitive despite having older cars, earning a third and two fourths and briefly becoming the youngest driver to set a fastest lap before an injury in practice for the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix put him out for the rest of the season. He only made spot appearances in F1 afterward, usually in the German Grand Prix.
Most of Herrmann’s wins came in the World Sportscar Championship, where he earned 10 overall wins and 17 more in class. 18 of his wins came in marquee events. His first major class win came in the 1954 Mille Miglia, where he proved his utter fearlessness by driving beneath a lowering railroad crossing; both he and his navigator, Herbert Linge, ducked their heads to make it. In 1960, Herrmann earned his first overall wins at the 12 Hours of Sebring with Olivier Gendebien and the Targa Florio with Jo Bonnier. From 1962 to 1967, he earned at least three wins each year. He peaked in 1968 by sweeping both Daytona and Sebring overall with Jo Siffert, but I think Siffert was better that year. After his fourth Le Mans class win in 1969, Herrmann promised his wife that he would retire upon winning Le Mans overall, which he did in 1970 with Richard Attwood in heavy rain, paving the way for Porsche’s eventual Le Mans dominance.
I admit I find Herrmann rather difficult to evaluate because nearly all his major accomplishments came in sports car races with co-drivers. While he was on the first winning Porsche team in most marquee sports car races, many of his Porsche teammates outperformed him in shorter races, so it seems like some of his success generally came down to better reliability and avoiding injuries. On the other hand, he was probably the linchpin of his teams since he had different co-drivers in all his Le Mans class wins. Still, his unusually good luck and lack of solo wins explain why I rated many of his seasons lower than you might think.
Open wheel model: #459 of 931 (-.056)
Teammate head-to-heads: 8-12 (4-0 vs. Edgar Barth, 1-2 vs. Jo Bonnier, 1-0 vs. Colin Davis, 0-1 vs. Carel Godin de Beaufort, 0-4 vs. Juan Manuel Fangio, 1-3 vs. Dan Gurney, 1-0 vs. Graham Hill, 0-1 vs. Karl Kling, 0-1 vs. Peter Revson)
Year-by-year: 1953: C-, 1954: C+, 1955: C-, 1956: C-, 1958: C-, 1960: E-, 1962: C+, 1963: C+, 1964: C, 1965: C, 1966: C+, 1967: C+, 1968: E-, 1969: C, 1970: C+