A life lived on the edge

Just days ago the world lost a great sporting pioneer. Austrian Felix Baumgartner was just 56-years-old when he was killed in a paragliding accident in Porto Sant'Elpidio in Italy's central Marche region.

That the extreme athlete should die doing what he loved, pushing the envelope, is a small comfort for his loved ones and legions of fans around the world, his life after all was one that was always lived on the edge.

Baumgartner will of course best be remember for his meteoric jump from the very edge of space in 2012, stunning the world with his record jump from a ballon some 38 kilometres above the Earth. Baumgartner became the first skydiver not only to jump from space but to break the sound barrier, reaching an incredible 1110km/h, while the world watched on in amazement.

His record, which was set on the 65th anniversary of test pilot Chuck Yeager's flight which broke the sound barrier in 1947, has not been broken, and remains the highlight in a career that saw Baumgartner undertake countless death defying stunts.

Just two years after the extraordinary jump, Baumgartner turned his attention to motorsport, and true to form, set his sights on one of the toughest motorsport arenas possible – the Nürburgring 24 Hour race at The Green Hell. After first obtaining his racing licence through the Audi race experience program, Baumgartner joined the Audi race experience team to take on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife, undergoing an intensive program to prepare for one of the most famous and treacherous race tracks on the planet.

His teammates included Audi royalty with five-time Le Mans winner Frank Biela and the three-time Le Mans winner Marco Werner, as well as the GT and sports car pro Pierre Kaffer.

Baumgartner approached the new project with the same singleminded determination and professionalism he brought to all of his sporting endeavours, but acknowledged from the outset that he was on a steep learning curve in this new sport.

“This task is totally exciting and I’m looking forward to driving races in an Audi,” he said at the time. 

“During initial tests in the road-going Audi R8 I got to know the Nürburgring, and in the Audi R8 LMS ultra I’ve clocked a few kilometres on various tracks as well. I regard this task as one of the major projects in my life. The environment is perfect, the atmosphere is fantastic, and I feel really well taken care of by the Audi race experience. But it’s also clear that I’m basically starting from scratch because this sport is new for me.”

His preparation proved to be more than up to the task and Baumgartner and his teammates finished a creditable ninth outright in the gruelling race. Another Audi entrant, driven by Christopher Haase, René Rast and Markus Winkelhock, took top honours in the race.

It was enough to truly whet the Austrian’s appetite for motorsports and he continued to race with Audi, heading Down Under the following year to take on another iconic track, the Bathurst Mount Panorama circuit and the Bathurst 12 Hour race.

Sharing driving duties with Stéphane Ortelli and Christopher Haase, Baumgartner again showed his versatility and fearlessness, once again coming home in ninth in the Audi R8 LMS ultra #16 car for Phoenix Racing. The sister car on this occasion, driven by Markus Winkelhock, Marco Mapelli and Laurens Vanthoor narrowly missed out on winning the race outright, coming in second, just 2.5 seconds behind the eventual winners.

It was yet another highlight in a stellar career that was sadly cut short too soon with latest week’s tragic accident. Felix will be remember as a man who was never satisfied to sit back and rest on past achievements, but continued to push the envelope at every opportunity.