"Industrial espionage has never been so easy"

Would you like to have an original Formula 1 car in your garage? At the Wings for Life charity auction on eBay from March 13 to 30 you can bid for Coulthard’s RB3 as well as numerous other original memorabilia belonging to well-known athletes. How you can make the world a bit better in doing so is explained by Wings for Life founder Heinz Kinigadner in an interview.

Mr. Kinigadner, how do you talk a Formula 1 team into donating an original car for a benefit auction?

It helps if you know the team owner personally [laughs]. But even Didi Mateschitz had to pull out all the stops in his convincing, because no team likes to make all their car’s secrets available to the public. If I were the head engineer of another team, I’d throw my whole budget onto the scales. For industrial espionage has never been so easy.

Alongside David Coulthard’s car there are about 40 other original signed parts up for auction ...

... in the meantime there are even about 54. But at some point we had to say ‘stop’ ...

... What articles are you particularly proud of?

I was especially happy about Michael Schumacher’s helmet: He sent it to us immediately, without hesitating. But I don’t even know where to begin with the list. We’ve got the winning Dakar motorbike from KTM, Hermann Maier’s skis, Thomas Morgenstern’s helmet. Or the Red Bull Air Race offer, where you can take part in flying the original course - an invaluable experience.

Each article has a minimum bid of one euro. What proceeds do you expect from the campaign?

For the Formula 1 car I’m expecting about 600,000 to one million euros ...

... which in its entirety will go to Wings for Life. Could you briefly explain the idea behind the project once more for those who haven’t heard of it yet?

We want to find a cure for paraplegia. After my son Hannes’ accident I contacted specialists all around the world and found out that many scientists have a good approach and good ideas but lack the money to develop the elaborate studies and research. That’s why we’re cultivating projects worldwide that are working on finding a cure for spinal cord injuries. At the moment there are more than 20. Because Red Bull is covering all our administrative costs, we can guarantee that every euro or dollar received will go directly into this project.

How realistic is the dream of making wheelchairs obsolete: Are we talking about science fiction or a logical medical advancement?

For today’s scientists the question is no longer ‘if’ the cure for spinal cord injuries is possible but only ‘when’. We now know that severed nerves indeed attempt to grow together. With rats, whose spinal cord has been severed, this already works. Now we have to find out what factors are hindering this healing process in humans.

Going by this, when will Wings for Life have reached its goal of being able to disestablish itself?

That could be in three years, but could also take another 30. In any case we’re hoping that Wings for Life will accelerate the breakthrough by a substantial amount of years.