Motorsport is a beautiful sport, but there are moments when it can also be cruel. Just like life itself. Yet even all the lost victories, unfortunate punctures and sheer bad luck cannot prepare you for the moment when you lose a team member who has been through all those situations with you. We are used to coming back stronger after defeats. Pavel, without you it will be hard without you. Incredibly hard.
Pavel Hortek was born on the cusp of the 1950s into the difficult era of post-war Czechoslovakia, when it was not easy to find joy in life. Perhaps this was precisely what shaped his lifelong love for automobiles and motorsport, which at that time held an exceptional social status. As a young boy, Pavel witnessed the first major successes of the Škoda Octavia TS at the Rallye Monte-Carlo, the involvement of the Škoda brand in single-seater formula racing, as well as the arrival of the competition version of the Škoda 1000 MB. That very model may later have fulfilled one of his childhood dreams. It was in this car that he first sat in the co-driver’s seat and experienced the beauty of rallying first-hand. His career as a co-driver reached its peak in 1976, when he and Miloslav Zapadlocompeted in the Rallye Škoda with the legendary Škoda 130 RS. At the time, he had no idea that he would return to that very event many times in the future – this time leading the factory team as its team manager. However, a long journey still lay ahead.
Thanks to family connections, Pavel gained much-needed international experience and language skills while working for the Black Light Theatre of Jiří Srnec. With this cultural phenomenon he travelled across the world. At the turn of the new millennium, however, he once again found his way back to his great passion – Škoda motorsport. At first, he was involved in the team’s marketing communications, and later he helped with the logistics of the WRC’s international competitions. Yet this was only the beginning.
“When I joined Škoda Motorsport in 2007, I asked all my colleagues to write down what role in the team they would like to take on and why. Pavel Hortek wrote that the role of Sporting Director would suit him best. He had excellent prerequisites for it, which soon proved to be true. Together we began preparing the sporting side of the S2000 programme. It was an extremely intensive two years of work and, looking back, also the foundation of the future success of the factory team. Pavel was one of its key pillars and retained his indispensable role throughout the entire R5/Rally2 programme and during the team’s transition to a purely customer-focused programme,” says Michal Hrabánek, head of the Škoda Motorsport team, describing their early days together.
Pavel’s role as team manager primarily involved monitoring and selecting drivers, coordinating the logistics of rallies and tests and, last but not least, communicating with representatives of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) as well as the WRC promoter. In all these areas he applied his approachable, calm and empathetic diplomacy. The combination of his incredible memory and the contacts stored in his legendary pocket PDA was – and will most likely remain – unmatched, just like his exceptional networking abilities. Pavel believed in calmness and diligent work rather than loud and dramatic statements. Nevertheless, the results behind him were all the more impressive. This is exactly how his closest colleagues, Aneta, Aleš, Honza and many others, remember him today.
“Motorsport is a job to which you must devote a great deal of time, energy and heart. Pavel and I always took that as given. On the flight to this year’s Safari Rally I finally had a little time to reflect on all those years we spent together. I was incredibly fortunate to choose someone as my closest colleague who shared the same outlook, the same sense of humour and a heart full of motorsport. I could always rely on him – without asking and without pleading. That was where Pavel truly excelled. His empathetic nature always understood what needed to be done and when, without the need for complicated explanations. Over nearly 20 years there were only very few days when we were not in touch. Looking back, I sometimes think we might have enjoyed our team’s successes a little more, but there simply was no time for that. And perhaps we would have felt slightly out of place doing so, because there was always a long list of further tasks ahead of us that we had to face together,” recalls Michal Hrabánek about his close colleague.
Life has a peculiar sense of irony. Pavel Hortek passed away in the first half of February 2026, on the eve of the 125th anniversary of Škoda Motorsport, to whose history he himself contributed many golden chapters. Only a few days after the fiftieth anniversary of his first start in his beloved Škoda 130 RS and almost exactly ten years to the day after Pontus Tidemand and Esapekka Lappi secured the first podium finishes for the Škoda Motorsport factory team with the new Škoda Fabia Rally2. Both drivers later went on to win the WRC2 World Championship titles – and both were brought into the team by Pavel Hortek.
The news of his passing has devastated us. We had been preparing ourselves for it for some time, but it did not make it any easier. Because one can simply never be prepared for such a loss. We would like to thank everyone who remembered Pavel and thereby paid tribute not only to him but also to the work he carried out for Škoda motorsport. His friendship, hard work and professionalism will be extremely difficult to replace. Thank you so much, Pavel!
