Stommelen was born on 11 July 1943 in Siegen, Prussia, Nazi Germany.
Stommelen finished third at the 1968 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Porsche 908. In 1969 he won the pole position for the race in a Porsche 917 LH and became the first driver to exceed 350 km/h (217 mph) on the circuit's Mulsanne Straight.
Stommelen made his Formula One debut in 1970 with Brabham, with sponsorship secured from the German magazine Auto, Motor und Sport. He raced both sportscars and Formula One throughout the decade, accumulating 63 Grands Prix starts, one podium, and 14 championship points.
His Formula One career was effectively brought to an end by the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix at Montjuïc Park in Barcelona. The rear wing of his Hill GH1 failed, launching the car into the crowd and killing five spectators. Stommelen was seriously injured. The crash contributed to the end of the Spanish Grand Prix's tenure at Montjuïc Park.
In 1976, Stommelen drove the maiden race of the Porsche 936 at the 300 km Nürburgring event. The car carried a black body without its air intake and became known as the "black widow." He qualified second, between the two factory Renault Alpine A442 entries of Patrick Depailler and Jean-Pierre Jabouille. On a rain-soaked race day, Stommelen overtook the leading Renault immediately after the start, then deliberately left room for the pursuit at the Nordkehre. The two Renaults, rushing to retake the lead after only 2 of 300 km, crashed into the catch-fences in tandem. Stommelen led again. When the throttle cable jammed open, he continued by switching the ignition master switch off at each corner to brake and on again after each corner to accelerate, eventually finishing second. The episode gave rise to the saying: "On the Nordschleife, you can never brake later than Rolf Stommelen!"
Stommelen won the Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft in 1977 for the Gelo Racing Team in a Porsche 935.
In 1978, the Porsche factory assigned him to drive the Porsche 935 "Moby Dick" in Martini colours. Powered by a 3.2-litre turbocharged engine producing 845 HP, the car reached 235 mph (365 km/h) on the Mulsanne Straight — faster than that year's prototype entries including the Porsche 936 and the Renault Alpine A442B that won the race outright. High fuel consumption forced too many pit stops to allow a challenge for overall victory.
In 1979, Stommelen came close to winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Porsche 935 co-driven by Dick Barbour and actor Paul Newman. A 23-minute pit stop caused by a stuck wheel nut ended the car's bid; Stommelen had been consistently faster lap by lap than his co-drivers.
Stommelen also drove TOJ SC320 prototype sportscars with some success against the works Alfa team. He competed in one NASCAR Grand National Series event in 1971 at Talladega Superspeedway, in a former Holman-Moody Ford rebuilt as a Mercury Cyclone. He was a consistent winner at the Nürburgring and was considered a master of the circuit.
After recovering from the 1975 accident, Stommelen returned to win further races for Alfa Romeo and added three more victories at Daytona in 1978, 1980, and 1982.
In the early 1980s he drove the Kremer CK5, the Lancia LC1, and the Porsche 956.
Stommelen was killed on 24 April 1983 during the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix, a 6-hour IMSA GT Championship event at Riverside International Raceway. He was co-driving a John Fitzpatrick-entered Porsche 935 with Derek Bell. Having just taken over from Bell while running second, the rear wing of the car failed at 190 mph (306 km/h). The car became uncontrollable, slammed against a concrete wall, somersaulted, and caught fire. Stommelen died of blunt force trauma, a crushed chest, and head injuries.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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