The German racer was chasing Jacky Ickx’s factory Porsche in the 1000 km of Spa on 1 September 1985 when he lifted at Eau Rouge for the third time in three laps, refused to lift a fourth, and went for the inside. The two 956s touched. Bellof’s car speared into a concrete barrier. He was 27 years old.

F1i.com used the 41st anniversary to rank Bellof as the best Formula 1 driver never to win a Grand Prix, a driver who “appeared to defy the laws of physics” and who was “often racing on a tight-rope but oblivious of motorsport’s perils.” He had made his F1 debut only 17 months earlier.

The Nürburgring lap that stood 35 years

The single lap that fixes Bellof in motorsport memory came in late May 1983, in qualifying for the Nürburgring 1000 km. In a Rothmans Porsche 956 he went round the Nordschleife in 6 minutes 11.13 seconds, the first driver ever to average more than 124 miles per hour on the 12.9-mile circuit and half a minute quicker than the reigning F1 world champion Keke Rosberg had gone the day before.

“I could have gone even faster,” Bellof said afterwards. “But I made two mistakes. And a 911 briefly got in my way.”

Read also: Rafael Leao grabs the flag as Galatasaray shift 50,000 of his shirts in three days

The time stood untouched for 35 years and 31 days until Timo Bernhard finally beat it on 29 June 2018, in a stripped-out Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo built specifically to attack the record.

Monaco 1984: catching Prost and Senna in the rain

Bellof’s Formula 1 career lasted a season and a half, all of it in a Tyrrell running the underpowered normally aspirated Ford DFV against the turbos. In the wet at Monaco in 1984, he made the equipment irrelevant. In his debut F1 season he was running third and closing on the two leaders, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, when the race was red-flagged early.

The result never counted. Tyrrell was later disqualified from the entire 1984 championship over a fuel irregularity found on the car of his team-mate Martin Brundle, wiping out every point Bellof had scored that year. His best official F1 finish stayed at fourth, at Detroit in 1985.

The Ferrari seat that never was

Alongside the Tyrrell drive he kept his Porsche factory seat, and in 1984 he and Derek Bell won the World Endurance Championship drivers’ title, Bellof taking the crown at the Nürburgring 1000 km.

Read also: Mercedes' Antonelli swap sparks Hakkinen's title-battle backlash warning

By the summer of 1985 he had a Marlboro sponsorship deal for the following season and, according to Autosport, a meeting scheduled with Ferrari before the Spa weekend. That meeting never happened.

The car he crashed at Eau Rouge was not the Rothmans works Porsche he had built his reputation in but a privately entered Brun Motorsport 956. Ickx, in the faster factory car, had come out of the pits ahead of him and, on Bellof’s telling to his crew over the previous laps, was holding him up on the straights while he closed through the corners. On the fourth run at Eau Rouge he committed to the inside.

Bernhard broke the Nordschleife record in 2018 in a car built for one lap, on closed roads, on slick tyres, with active aerodynamics and no fuel-flow limit. Bellof’s 6:11.13 was set on a race weekend, in a car that had to last 1,000 kilometres.

Read also: Illness ends Mads Pedersen's Vuelta with Montreal Worlds 25 days out

Read also: Infantino's re-election math runs through a 64-team World Cup