MOTORSPORT HERITAGE

adidas has enjoyed a long and successful involvement in motor sport through the manufacture and supply of race boots for the performing athlete.

Performance race boots, in common with countless other technical footwear innovations developed by Adi Dassler, came about as a result of a direct collaboration with the performing athlete. Adi Dassler was a close friend of Fritz Huschke von Hanstein, who after a successful racing career worked as head of the Porsche racing department. Beginning in the early 1960’s Adi and Fritz, in cooperation with racing drivers including Wolfgang von Trips, began to design race shoes that met the exacting demands of the racing driver.

In 1974 Adi developed his very first “fireproof” race boot. Legend has it that Adi acquired a Brabham Formula 1 racing car for the purposes of understanding the environment in which a racing driver has to operate. He placed the experimental shoes in the foot well of the racing car and then set it on fire. The exercise was repeated more then 30 times in order to identify weaknesses and make improvements to his race boots.

The late 1970s through the early 90s saw the Monza become most successful race boot produced by adidas to date and the choice of champions including Mario Andretti. Walter Röhrl, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna.

To see Walter Röhrl putting both his adidas Monza Race-Boots and an Audi Quattro through their paces, see this video.

adidas continues to work in cooperation with some of the world’s leading drivers, who have recently included David Coulthard, Bernd Schneider and Jacques Villeneuve, to provide them with a technical race boot that meets their exacting demands.