Bruno Schaffner: A life on the edge

For Bruno Schaffner, limit is a concept or condition that reveals itself again and again in life in various ways. As a racing driver, especially in historic racing, the Zurich native has always explored it. Numerous great successes bear witness to this.

Drive to peak performance
As a tuner and team boss, the Zurich native, now 72, always got the last out of the engines and the entire technology of the racing cars - mainly Lotus - that Schaffner Racing looked after.

Bruno Schaffner was also never squeamish with his customers. He pushed them to their driving limits - and they rewarded him and themselves with victories, podium finishes or simply personal bests.

Inconceivable loss of the son
In their private lives, too, Bruno Schaffner and his wife Sonja pushed themselves to a limit that surpassed any other. Son Mike, with whom the father also had an intimate relationship through their shared passion for racing, died in a traffic accident on November 22, 2000, at the age of just 26, while a passenger on a test drive.

Cars, especially fast ones, have given Schaffner a lot to this day - but they have also taken away something of the most important things in life. You can feel this all the time when reading "Limit" and grieve with him.

As if sent from heaven
Bruno Schaffner not only deals with this stroke of fate in his very personal book, but one that is absolutely worth reading for every racing fan. He tells the interesting story of how his company Schaffner Racing, which has been run by Bruno Weibel for several years, came into being.

His namesake is also a gifted racer, himself shaped by the early loss of his parents, and has become like a son over the years. Schaffners knew Bruno Weibel from racing duels with Mike beforehand-but in retrospect, the two-year-younger Lotus fan seemed heaven-sent.

Acknowledgement in book form
Bruno Schaffner also looks back on his own racing career in emotional but never exaggerated terms. And he does not forget his most important companions.

On the contrary, he thanks them with some chapters of his own. In this way, one also learns a lot about other racing drivers or other personalities who hardly ever appeared in the broad media. Urban Fässler (†), Fredy Kumschick, Jürg Mallepell, Peter Stobinski, Peter Studer (†), Alois Willimann and Edi Wyss are some of the names.

350 photos with many stories about it
Of course, the 224 pages in landscape format 22 by 29 centimeters are richly and generously illustrated. "Limit" is almost more a photo book than a book - a scrapbook, a biography with many memories and anecdotes, and thus also a colorful cross-section of national and international Swiss motorsport.

Just right for a cold winter day or evening, when reading "Limit" really warms your heart. You can read through it in one go without getting bored, then put it on the shelf, file it away and take it out again. For example, to look up the last chapter with its precise listing of all the racing cars and their drivers ever supported by Schaffner Racing up to the present.

This appendix reads like a "who's who" of racing. Proof of the significance of this small but fine and efficient racing team and Lotus brand representation from Birmensdorf in Zurich.

First edition practically sold out
The first small edition of 500 copies was practically sold out in no time among friends and acquaintances alone, without much advertising. A second edition will therefore be launched on the market in spring 2021.

Limit" can be ordered at the price of 59 francs plus shipping costs directly by email from the author bruno.schaffner@bluewin.ch or in writing to Sonja Schaffner, Schweizäckerstrases 9, 8955 Oetwil a.d.L.

There is much worth reading in Bruno Schaffner's book (Photo: Bruno Schaffner / Repro Zwischengas.com).

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