As a small kid, I admired my father who was a successful Rallye driver with Porsche and took us (me and my brother) to the racetracks early on. Visiting the likes of the Nürburgring, Hockenheim and Zeltweg as a boy, really inspired me and I absolutely wanted to follow his footsteps and become a driver – circuit rather than Rallye though. After he passed when I was still10, I had to wait until I was 18 to start participating in something like motorsport, which was affordable for me at the time. So I worked myself through slalom races and hill climbs into the Renault 5 cup, where I managed to finish 3rd in the Championship in my 3rd season and won the new Renault Clio Cup, which followed the Renault 5 Cup, participating as well in the support race of the Monaco GP, which was definitely a highlight for me. As a winner, I got excluded from the Renault Clio Cup, since it was supposed to develop new talent. At the same time, I moved to Italy to work for Bugatti. With no network in Italy and Germany being quite distant, I basically stopped racing on my own and focussed on working. Loads of fun test-driving the EB110 at the limit and mainly develop its brakes (including road homologation for carbon brakes) and ABS system. In 1994 I got involved into the Le Mans project there, coordinating the factory with the team racing the car – Synergie, based very much at Le Mans. With my experience racing cars, I got into testing it as well in Paul Ricard and the Bugatti circuit at Le Mans, which was really impressive! In all that, I understood, that it was genuinely much better earning my money in motorsport, rather than spending it in racing, which put a definitive end into my driving ambitions and into permanently working in motorsport from then onwards