by Tom Rubython
All three of us witnessed the ups and downs of making it to the top and, then, surviving at the top. The difference between them and me, I guess, is that they had the good fortune (especially James) to be in the two top teams in 1976. I was with a good team, but it was new, and the car was not initially as good as the Ferrari or the McLaren.
Being toward the front of the grid that season gave me a bird’s-eye view of the battle for supremacy that developed between Niki and James. There is no doubt in my mind that Niki would have been world champion but for his accident. Niki’s Ferrari was incredibly reliable, and when he retired, it was a shock, as such events happened so rarely.
And then Niki’s accident changed everything. I came upon the scene 20 seconds after the cars of Arturo Merzario, Brett Lunger, and Guy Edwards.
Niki’s car had been on fire in the middle of the track, but the fire was out by the time I got there. Arturo had lifted Niki out of his car, and I found him lying down at the side of the track in a pool of fuel and oil. We helped him up and looked for somewhere clean and dry to lay him down. I found a clear area. He had been badly burned, but he was fully conscious, although he really didn’t know what was going on. He must have been in great pain.
Somehow his helmet had been wrenched off without killing him, and it was a miracle he survived. I was just glad Niki was conscious and we could talk. I rested his head on my thighs and cradled him as best I could.
He was talking away in English to me, and I remember he asked how his face looked. In truth, it didn’t look good, but I told him it was okay and not to worry.
After what seemed like a lifetime, an ambulance arrived, and Niki was on a stretcher and inside the vehicle within seconds. With that, I put my helmet on and drove back to the pits assuming that the race would be restarted.
At that stage, I had no doubt Niki would survive, as the internal injuries he had suffered were not obvious at that time. But it seemed clear he would be away from racing for a long time.
Following the accident, I indirectly helped Niki by competing as hard as I could against James in the following two races. I managed to win one of them and could have won both with better luck. Niki was delirious with joy when I beat James in Austria. The following Monday, my team manager and I called Niki in the hospital, and he thanked me for preventing James from winning another Grand Prix. I said I would do my best to repeat the performance in Holland at the next race, and I very nearly did.
But if you came up against James in the right mood—when he was ready to fight the world—he could work miracles, and I could not pull it off a second time. After a titanic battle with James for the lead, my gearbox broke and James romped to victory on his birthday—much as I tried to spoil his party.
I was, like everyone else, astonished when Niki reappeared at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix. His quick return to the cockpit from the horrible accident in Germany was the most heroic act ever witnessed in our sport.
Niki had an iron will, and no other man could have pulled it off. To finish fourth at the Italian Grand Prix barely six weeks after having received the last rites from a priest was an out-of-the-ordinary event no one could have predicted.
The final drama in Japan could not have been made up by the most imaginative fantasist, and the emotions that Niki must have experienced were simply beyond what any human being could handle.
In the end, it was the aftereffects of the accident that ruined his world championship chances. He simply had no control over the tear ducts in his right eye, and it impaired his vision in the wet. The rain was so bad that a lake formed on the circuit at the end of the main straight. It was the worst possible condition for Niki and yet another variable that made such a difference to that season’s ending. If the weather had been good, Niki certainly would have wrapped up the championship in Japan. The gods smiled on James that day.
John Watson
Oxford
England
June 20, 2011
CHAPTER 1
Niki and James before 1976
Years of Struggle to Succeed
1947–1975
It was a source of permanent rankle to James Hunt that, although he was 18 months older than Niki Lauda, the Austrian beat him into Formula One by a whole 12 months. Hunt always considered Lauda his benchmark, his main contemporary and, ultimately, his chief rival. Everything he did was measured against Niki Lauda. In fact, one of the reasons that Hunt thought he could succeed in motor racing was Lauda. Hunt always thought that if Lauda could do it, then he definitely could.
The difference between the two men’s characters was the sole reason that Lauda got there first and was initially more successful and ultimately enjoyed a much longer career. The difference was purely determination.
Lauda possessed an iron-willed determination to succeed, which Hunt didn’t. Hunt may have been determined, but he always realized there were things in life other than motor racing, and this continually held him back.
But Hunt was, arguably, a more naturally talented driver than Lauda, and it was inevitable that he would eventually succeed.
And there was also the time lapse. Lauda wanted to be a racing driver from the age of nine and got started on his ambition then. Hunt only got the bug after his 18th birthday and began his quest from a long way back.
For Lauda, at that time, there was nothing else. In fact, Lauda’s strong will became the driving force in his life. He would certainly not have become a racing driver without it.
Born on 22 February 1949, he was the son of a wealthy Viennese paper mill owner. He enjoyed a privileged upbringing at a time when much of the rest of Austria was still impoverished after the war. The family wealth had been accumulated by his grandfather, Hans Lauda, who was a very rich man with a town house in Vienna, a country estate in the Austrian countryside, and a house in St Moritz.
The young Lauda, lacking any intellectual or sporting talents, developed an affinity for cars almost from the moment he was born. On his 14th birthday, his grandparents gave him some money, which he spent on a 1949 convertible Volkswagen Beetle that was virtually a wreck. He stripped it down and dismantled the engine. Then he rebuilt it meticulously over the next two years. By the end of the process, had a really good knowledge of how cars worked. He used to drive the Volkswagen around the private roads of his grandfather’s country estate long before he obtained a license.
But the young Lauda proved a severe disappointment to his family. He left school with no academic qualifications and no particular prospects. He got a job as a mechanic at a local garage. But even that did not go well; on his first job he stripped the threads on the sump of a customer’s Volvo during a routine oil change, necessitating the engine to be removed to fit a new sump. The job did not last long, and he drifted, seemingly interested only in motor racing. It became his all-consuming obsession.
When he was old enough to get a provisional license, he started driving illegally on public roads before he passed his test. But after he passed, his parents refused to buy him a car unless he returned to his studies. It forced him to return to college to try to complete his education and graduate. His father told him that there would be no more money until he did. There was little chance of that, as he was not made to pass exams. So he forged a diploma that showed he had graduated when he hadn’t. It fooled his parents, and they patted him on the back and released him some money.
He explained his problem with academia: “Studying or having a normal profession was totally alien to my way of thinking.”
His graduation was important because it triggered a series of payments from his family and he bought his first road car, a newer Volkswagen Beetle that he could drive on the road. He then also began looking for a race car to buy.
Like James Hunt, his choice fell on a Mini as the ideal first racing car. But he promptly crashed it while driving on the road too fast in icy conditions.
After it was rebuilt, he competed in his first motor race, a hill climb on April 15, 1968. He was
just 19 years old.
Lauda described his attitude in the early days: “The only thing is to go to the track, get into the car, and drive your tail off.” He added: “There was not one single thing in the world that interested me even a fraction as much.”
He finished second in his first race, but there was no celebrating by his parents, who were totally against his racing. They cut off all further funds to stop him. His father told him that his funding would only be resumed when he solemnly promised to stop racing. He did promise, but it was a promise he couldn’t keep.
He carried on secretly and actually won his next hill climb event in the Mini. But there were journalists present, and his win was recorded in the local newspapers, which were avidly read by his father.
Lauda knew the game was up; when his father read about the race, he flew into a rage. He realized his son was dishonest. As honesty and integrity were a Lauda family tradition, his father threw him out of the family home.
As Lauda remembered: “That was it. He’d finally had enough of me.”
The lack of support from his parents for his racing ambitions troubled the young man, and there was a degree of estrangement from then on that was never really reconciled. But Lauda’s time at home was over, and he knew that his forced exit from the family bosom was inevitable.
Luckily, he had just started dating a girl called Mariella von Reininghaus.
Meeting Mariella was a piece of very good luck: Not only was she very beautiful, she was also financially stable. Lauda met her while she was skiing at Gastein with a group of friends from Graz, which also coincidentally included another Austrian racing driver named Helmut Marko.
Lauda took a bad fall in the snow, and when he looked up, there was Mariella staring into his eyes asking him if he was all right. Lauda didn’t bother with any pleasantries and responded by asking her if she would accompany him the following week to the upcoming Vienna hunt ball.
A surprised Mariella agreed. A week later she drove down from Graz and they went to the ball together. Bored with the stuffy ball after 10 minutes, they left to go to a local bar and, from that moment, were inseparable companions. Together they rented a small apartment in the middle of Salzburg, moving from their respective homes in Vienna and Graz.
By then Lauda was absolutely determined to become a race driver, and Mariella, whose own parents were very wealthy, was able to support him day to day. He remembered: “Mariella was very pretty, intelligent, level headed, and composed. Her reasoned approach to life and her self-control rubbed off on me during these early hectic days in racing.” He added: “Being around her had a pronounced influence on my character. I have much to thank her for.”
Mariella gave him a new confidence, and he went to a Salzburg bank and obtained a loan for his racing. His grandfather’s reputation stretched to Salzburg and meant there was no problem with the bank advancing money to a member of the Lauda family.
Just like James Hunt, he only did a few races in his Mini before realizing its limitations. He quickly traded up for a Porsche 911, which was financed by more bank loans and what can only be described as begging visits to both his grandmothers. He mainly raced the Porsche in hill climbs, popular in Austria at the time.
He may have appeared feckless, but Lauda always thought things through before he went to banks for money. Although he very rarely told them the complete truth, he never let his obsession with racing cloud his thinking. As he said: “Once in the sport, my approach has always been very level headed and pragmatic. I have always thought my career through one step at a time, dealing with each subsequent problem as and when it came up.”
In 1968 he suffered a setback when his boyhood hero, Jim Clark, was killed. Clark’s death reverberated throughout Europe, not least with the Lauda family. It made financing a career in racing even more difficult. No one wanted to give him the money to potentially kill himself.
In 1969 Lauda moved up to Formula Vee, the European equivalent of Formula Ford and, in 1970, to Formula 3. By this time he was deeply indebted to more than a few banks. He leveraged his family’s name and reputation as far as he could to get the cash.
But Formula 3 was his entree to the big time of motor racing, and he was competing for the first time with the best young talent around. But in his first ever Formula 3 race he had his first big accident, at Nogaro circuit in the south of France. His car went over the rear wheels of another car in front and flew through the air, destroying itself on landing. He was very lucky to escape with his life, entirely uninjured. It didn’t put him off at all, and he quickly paid to have the car rebuilt.
It was the first of three serious accidents that year, all of which he managed to walk away from. He wrote off another car at Brands Hatch but somehow managed to keep going. As the season wore on, he found himself competing ever more frequently against James Hunt, who was also trying to make his way in Formula 3 on the circuits of Europe that summer.
In truth, neither man distinguished himself. They were both far from successful, and neither shined. It was only Lauda’s continued access to borrowed money and handouts from his grandmothers that kept him competing. Hunt only kept going thanks to his rich new patron, Lord Alexander Hesketh. And, like Lauda, Hunt kept crashing cars.
When he wrote off his third car, Lauda was forced to rethink his career. Just as James Hunt had also discovered, he too decided he was going nowhere in Formula 3 and realized he had to move up to Formula 2.
Somehow, deep within him, he believed he had what it took to succeed as a racing driver, despite the lack of any results to prove it. He decided to go for broke in 1971 and secured a new loan of $25,000 from the Erste Öesterreichische bank.
The money enabled him to buy a Formula 2 drive in the works STP-sponsored March-Ford team for the 1971 season. The bank also agreed to waive interest on the loan in exchange for a sponsorship deal. Lauda explained his deal with March: “They had young superstar Ronnie Peterson as their number one and, as a result, did not feel the need for anyone any good in the number-two slot. They were prepared to take on board someone like myself, provided, that is, I paid my way.” Lauda admitted he was lucky to get the drive, but only because he was the best of a bad bunch who wanted it. As he said: “I didn’t have too bad a pedigree. I was competent, and I could probably argue my candidacy better than most other 21-year-olds anxious to get out of Formula 3.”
March was a new manufacturer, and 1971 was its second year of competition in Formula 2. By luck, the latest March 712 car, designed by Robin Herd, proved to be very competitive. The car gave Lauda a chance to make his name.
Lauda also formed a strong bond with Robin Herd, who found him to be an excellent test driver. It was his ability as a test driver that sustained him in the early years, when he showed little promise on track. But he did just enough in 1971 to inspire sufficient confidence in others to enable him to make the move up into Formula One the following year. In reality it was a year too early and he would have benefited from another year in Formula 2. But it was then that he first discovered that he had a real survivor’s instinct to succeed. That realization drove him on when others would definitely have given up.
Somehow he managed to secure a big loan and attract personal sponsorship, which enabled him to buy a Formula One drive with March in 1972. Max Mosley offered him a driving package that included a full season of Formula One and Formula 2 for an all-in price of $100,000. Lauda responded to Mosley’s offer by saying it was “no problem.” In reality it was a big problem, but a problem that he knew he could solve.
He arranged a new deal with the Erste Öesterreichische bank that combined a $100,000 loan and sponsorship space to cover the interest payments. He also took out an insurance policy that guaranteed the bank repayment if anything happened to him.
But Lauda made the crucial mistake of announcing the deal with the bank and March before it was signed. Jochen Rindt’s death a year earlier inspired his grandfather to take decisive action to stop his grandson’s racing activ
ities, and Hans Lauda stepped in to halt the deal.
The bank could not afford to ignore him. So after Lauda had signed the deal with Mosley, the Erste Öesterreichische bank’s directors voted against granting the loan under pressure from the Lauda family.
This left Lauda in deep trouble, and he telephoned his grandfather to beg him to change his mind. But Hans told him simply, “A Lauda should be written up in the financial pages, not the sports pages.” Hearing that, Lauda slammed down the telephone and never spoke to his grandfather again.
Lauda rushed round to all the other Austrian banks he knew and ended up at one called Raiffeisenkasse. Amazingly, the manager there, Karl-Heinz Oertelit, took him seriously when he asked for $100,000 for motor racing. Lauda explained, “I made the acquaintance of a man who had a very acute feel for what is feasible and what is not.”
Raiffeisenkasse agreed to virtually the same deal as Erste Öesterreichische, and this time Lauda kept it secret until he had signed the loan agreements so his grandfather couldn’t interfere again.
He drove to England and gave Mosley a check for the exact amount, which left him with nothing for his living expenses and around $50,000 of old debts to pay back. It was a last throw of the dice.
To pay for his living expenses, he raced saloon cars and sports cars for private owners. Private owners paid handsomely for Formula One drivers to compete in their cars, and Lauda earned $20,000 that year from this activity and also gained valuable experience. He remembered, “I had never before and have never since driven in so many races in one season as I did in 1972.”
However, all the circumstances that had prevailed for him in 1971 worked against him in 1972. Robin Herd had designed a radical new Formula One car with a transverse gearbox called the March 721X.
When Lauda first tested the car, he was considerably slower than Ronnie Peterson, his teammate, who had praised it after his first drive. Lauda thought the car was an absolute dog from the first time he drove it and couldn’t understand why Peterson didn’t feel the same way. For the first time in his life, Lauda experienced self-doubt and wondered whether he was as good a driver as he believed himself to be.
