Formula One’s forgotten gay pioneer
With an average global audience of 70.3 million per Grand Prix last season, motorsport’s elite championship has conquered Europe and is poised to take the United States by storm.
But as viewing figures grow, the sport faces a challenge to modernize.Those who met, raced against, and socialized with Beuttler reflect on how little they really knew about him.Martine, who was married to Mike’s younger brother, Nick, remembers him simply as a loving brother-in-law. “I loved him very much,” Martine says. “He was a happy man with many friends.“He was close to all the other drivers.
In those days, the 1970s, the drivers knew how to have fun. Mike drank with Lauda and [fellow British racing driver] James Hunt.
They were mad together.”Beuttler was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1940. He took up motor racing in the mid-1960s, first in Formula Three and then graduating to Formula Two.
