Slovakia: a little country in central Europe. It has mountains, beer, beautiful women and a Formula One driver who would go on to become a representative prime minister.
Written By Lucas Pielsch, Edited By Ryan Lack & Umut Yelbaşı
At first that might sound a little bit crazy, but in this article I’m going to tell you a bit about Jirko Malcharek.
Jirko was born in 1966 in a little city called Jesenik. He was passionate about motorsport as a child but never went into karting professionally. His career started in 1988 when he got a 3 year contract in the Czech Touring Car Championship, but unfortunately the results of this championship are nowhere to be found. However, Malcharek has to have been good, because in 1991, he got a 4 year contract in the Czech Ford Fiesta Cup, where he finished P2 in the championship. Malcharek continued racing in this series and even won the championship in the last season he competed there in 1994.
After two years in the Czech BMW Cup, his racing career slowed down. He participated in the Porsche Supercup for 3 years and finished P19 and P17 in his first two seasons, but he wasn’t even classified in his final season in 2000. In 1998, while still competing in the Porsche Supercup, he joined the Slovakian SOP (Party of Civil Understandings) where he actually was quite popular. He ended up getting voted into the Slovakian national council, while also participating in the FIA GT Championship – but he flopped and finished P32 in the championship.
Then it all went uphill for him again in 2002. That year, he was the Formula One test driver for the Minardi team, at the age of 36.
2002 got even better for him as he got voted into the National council for the second time with the AON (Alliance of the New Citizen) party. From then on, he concentrated solely on politics and went on first to become Slovakia’s economy minister in 2005, and the representative Prime Minister of Slovakia.
He wasn’t done with racing just yet, as he took part in the European Ferrari Challenge in 2007 where he finished P19.
The last chapter of his racing career was in 2011 at the European FIA GT3 Championship (FIA-GT3-EM), where he finished P59.
I think we can say that Malcharek had a quite interesting career, both in politics and in racing. It may have been short, but it sure was exciting.
source of photo: facebook.com/jirko malcharek
