Stuck's experience with cars began in 1922 through early morning milk runs from his farm to Munich. This led him toward hillclimbing, and he won his first race at Baden-Baden in 1923. After a period as a privateer for Austro-Daimler, he became a works driver for the marque in 1927, competing in hillclimbs and making his circuit racing debut at the German Grand Prix that year.
When Austro-Daimler withdrew from racing in 1931, Stuck moved to a Mercedes-Benz SSKL for sports car events. His career changed direction entirely in 1933 when his acquaintance with Adolf Hitler — the two had met by chance on a hunting trip in 1925 — helped connect him to Ferdinand Porsche and the newly formed Auto Union project, which was central to Hitler's ambitions for German motorsport supremacy.
The Auto Union car, with its rear-mounted engine designed by Porsche, provided exceptional traction on the unpaved surfaces where Stuck excelled. In 1934 he won the German, Swiss, and Czechoslovakian Grands Prix, finishing second in the Italian Grand Prix and the Eifelrennen. Multiple hillclimb wins that year brought him the first of three European Mountain Championship titles.
In 1935 Stuck won the Italian Grand Prix and took the European Mountain Championship again. The 1936 and 1937 seasons were leaner, yielding only second-place finishes in major races as team-mate Bernd Rosemeyer and others proved stronger in circuit competition. In 1938, Stuck was dismissed from or quit the Auto Union team — accounts differ between the two parties — but was rehired after a series of injuries to other team drivers. He won his third European Mountain Championship that year, his final major pre-war success.
After the Second World War, while Germans were banned from competition until 1950, Stuck obtained Austrian citizenship and resumed racing immediately. He drove for Alex von Falkenhausen in Formula Two with limited results, and later sampled a Porsche Spyder in 1953 without success. A partnership with BMW beginning in 1957 proved more fruitful. Driving a BMW 700 RS, Stuck became German Hillclimb Champion at the age of 60 — one of the most remarkable feats of longevity in the sport. He chose to retire at the summit of that achievement.
His early BMW drive had included the Type 507, chassis 70079, which passed from Stuck to US Army Private Elvis Presley. That car disappeared for decades before BMW Classic recovered and restored it in 2014; it is now considered the most valuable car in BMW's collection, estimated at $17.9 million.
Stuck was born in Warsaw in 1900 to parents of Swiss ancestry who had settled in Germany. He served in the First World War from 1917. His first marriage, to Ellen Hahndorff in 1922, ended in divorce as his involvement in the fast life of racing strained the relationship. In 1932 he married Paula von Reznicek, a prominent tennis player. Her partial Jewish ancestry created complications during the Nazi period, but Stuck's personal connection to Hitler provided a degree of protection. Following another divorce, Stuck married Christa Thielmann in 1948. Their son, Hans-Joachim Stuck, was born in 1951.
After retiring from professional racing, Stuck worked as an instructor at the Nürburgring, where he passed on the secrets of that circuit to his son, who would become a distinguished racing driver in his own right. Hans-Joachim's sons Johannes and Ferdinand also became racing drivers, making the Stuck family one of the most sustained motorsport dynasties in German history.
Hans Stuck Sr. occupies a distinctive position in pre-war motor racing history. His three European Mountain Championship titles remain a benchmark of hillclimb achievement, and his Grand Prix victories with Auto Union placed him among the elite of the Silver Arrows era. The breadth of his career — from 1922 to his hillclimb championship at sixty — is unmatched in duration among drivers of comparable stature. He died on 9 February 1978.