Bernd Schneider
This native of Saarland from St. Ingbert was already sitting in a kart at the age of five. In 1980, at the age of sixteen, he became German karting champion for the first time. After winning further titles, he left this entry-level category in 1983 and entered Formula Ford in 1984. Two years later, his path led him to the German Formula 3 Championship, which he won in 1987 in a Dallara-VW.
Parallel to his formula racing career, the trained reinforced concrete builder was also involved in touring car racing and drove a Ford Sierra in individual rounds of the German Touring Car Championship from 1986 to 1989. His best position in the championship table was 15th in the 1987 season.
During this phase, however, his main focus was on Formula 1, in which he raced for the Niederzissen-based Zakspeed racing team in 1988 and 1989. The mixture of an inexperienced Formula 1 driver and an overambitious team turned into a disaster: In two complete seasons with a total of 32 Grands Prix, Schneider qualified for only eight races and saw the chequered flag only twice.
After this frustrating experience, the Saarland native turned to Group C racing and completed numerous races for the Porsche Kremer Racing and Joest Racing teams from 1990 to the spring of 1992 in the Sports Car World Championship and the Interseries in a Porsche 962. Here, he took advantage of the opportunity to clock up a multitude of successes, which he achieved together with team-mates such as Sarel van der Merve, Bob Wollek, Massimo Sigala and Louis Krages, who competed under the pseudonym "John Winter".
Schneider's racing career only really took off with his renewed involvement in the DTM, where he drove a 190 E 2.5-16 Evolution II DTM for AMG-Mercedes at the start of the 1992 season. In his first year, he already took four race wins and other top placings. This put him in third place in the overall drivers' standings. He occupied this position in the following year as well, but in 1994 he had to settle for tenth place.
In the 1995 season, everything went smoothly for Schneider, and he won his first DTM championship title in the AMG-Mercedes C-Class DTM with a V6 engine in superior style after five race victories. He also secured first place in the parallel International Touring Car Championship with six wins. In the final ITC season in 1996, Schneider finished second overall.
In the two years that followed, Schneider drove for Mercedes-Benz in the FIA GT Championship. in 1997, he won no less than six of the 11 rounds in the CLK-GTR, mostly in a duo with Alexander Wurz or Klaus Ludwig, and took the drivers' title in commanding style. The following year, from the second race at the wheel of the new CLK-LM, he was able to win five races alongside Mark Webber, but had to give way to team-mates Klaus Ludwig/Ricardo Zonta in the overall standings.
When the newly designed DTM, now called the German Touring Car Masters, was launched in 2000, Schneider was again at the forefront. From the very beginning, he made his mark on the series. Always in the service of HWA and always competing in the latest AMG-Mercedes DTM race cars, he won the championship title in the first two seasons of the new DTM. Although he was narrowly beaten by French Audi driver Laurent Aiello in 2002, Schneider restored the usual balance of power in the following season and won the championship for the third time in four years.
In 2004 and 2005, Schneider faced opponents from his own camp for the first time. His British team-mate Gary Paffett secured his first DTM title in the 2005 season after finishing runner-up in 2004, and Dutchman Christijan Albers, also driving for HWA in a current C-Class DTM, also managed to finish ahead of him in the overall standings in 2004. Schneider had to settle for fourth place this year and sixth the following year.
Schneider accepted the challenge posed by the young talents in the team and once again put them in their place at the end of the 2006 season with his fourth championship since the inaugural year of the new DTM. In 2007 and 2008, however, the pressure of the next generation of drivers became overwhelming. In 2007, Bruno Spengler, Jamie Green and Paul Di Resta, three brand colleagues, were placed ahead of the previous dominator of the series, with Di Resta even sitting at the wheel of a 2005 C-Class DTM. In the overall drivers' standings, Schneider remained only sixth, the same place he occupied in 2008, when the three young stars – albeit in a different order and exclusively driving the latest car equipment – left him behind again.
Now 44 years old, Bernd Schneider ended his active career at the end of the 2008 season. Five DTM, one ITC and one FIA GT championship titles, 227 DTM and ITC races, 43 first places, 25 pole positions and 59 fastest laps made him the most successful DTM driver to date – an impressive result of 16 years as a works driver for Mercedes-Benz.
After his full-time career ended, however, Schneider was by no means moving into retirement: From then on, he worked as an ambassador, instructor and test driver for Mercedes-AMG, using his enormous experience to help develop racing cars such as the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 and the Mercedes-AMG GT3. He also competed sporadically, but all the more successfully, for various Mercedes-AMG Customer Sport teams in GT endurance racing from 2010 to 2014.
Highlights included Schneider's overall wins in the VLN Endurance Championship Nürburgring and the Australian GT Championship, both in 2012, as well as individual victories in the 24-hour race in Dubai, the 12-hour race in Bathurst, the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring, the 24-hour race in Spa-Francorchamps and finally the 12-hour race in Abu Dhabi, all in the 2013 season.
It wasn't until the end of 2014 that the now 50-year-old Saarland native decided to hang up his helmet for good. But racing fever was to grip the most successful DTM driver of all time once again: after a few wins with Mercedes-AMG customer teams, Schneider crowned his career in 2016 with another overall victory in the legendary 24-hour race at the Nürburgring.
Together with his driver colleagues Adam Christodoulou, Maro Engel and Manuel Metzger, Schneider led a quartet of no less than four Mercedes-AMG GT3s, whose quadruple victory clinched the biggest success of the Mercedes-AMG customer sports programme to date.