Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry

by Tom Rubython

James Hunt cleared his mind of everything but the task at hand and streaked into a lead that remained unthreatened. He called that first lap “probably the most aggressive piece of driving I did all year. I was absolutely determined to get as big a lead as possible, and everything turned out right.”

  It was dry, and this time there was no uncertainty about tires. Hunt was 10 seconds clear at the end of the first restarted lap. As he remembered: “I put in a blinding first lap and the others were spinning and falling about all over the place, which helped me, so I virtually had the race won by the end of the first lap. It was only a matter of controlling things from the front.”

  Hunt was followed home by Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell-Ford, with teammate Jochen Mass coming in third. By the time he finished, he was half a minute ahead of Scheckter. He would later call the victory one of his most satisfying drives. But his abiding memory of the day was seeing Teddy Mayer’s reaction: “McLaren had never won at the ring, and it was tremendously gratifying to me to see him so happy.”

  With no competition from Lauda, the victory had suddenly brought James Hunt to within 14 points of his rival. It was a dramatic turnaround from a seemingly hopeless position just a few weeks before.

  CHAPTER 20

  Near-Death Experience

  Niki Lauda Nearly Dies

  August 1976

  Niki Lauda started the first lap of the German Grand Prix from the front row of the grid, and like everyone else in the race, he was on wet-weather tires. He made a poor start, which was out of character for him. Later he explained that because of the damp track, he elected to get off the line in second gear instead of first. But he miscalculated, and there was more traction and the track was dryer than he thought, and eight cars powered past him. He remembered: “I accelerated too much. The wheels rotated too fast, which is even worse in second gear. With a higher gear, you practically stop still if the wheels start to spin. That’s what happened to me.”

  The track dried very quickly, and like every other driver, Lauda went for slick tires. As he explained, “As it got more and more dry, I went into the pits for a tire change—a good quick change.”

  Lauda changed from grooved wet to dry slick tires and drove out of the pits. Speeding away on the new tires, he tried to make up lost time on a mostly dry track that was still damp in places. But straightaway he misjudged the conditions, and his Ferrari mounted a curb with the left front wheel. The shock of the impact went right through the car and caused a tie-rod in the suspension to loosen. Unaware of what had happened, Lauda thought nothing of it. But Ferrari had had problems before with tie-rods failing; it was one of the car’s principal weaknesses and had not been fixed.

  As he approached Bergwerk Corner, the magnesium tie-rod (one of the components that secured the suspension to the engine block where it was mounted) completely broke and detached from the engine. As a result, the rear wheel mountings collapsed straightaway and the car lurched to the right. Lauda was traveling at more than 130 miles per hour when the component failed.

  The car went sideways into the catch fencing just before Bergwerk on the outside of the corner, but it lost hardly any speed at all. With the fencing unable to contain it, the car slammed into the embankment behind and was airborne. It bounced back onto the track with Lauda helpless at the wheel. The car slammed down hard on the track, and the fuel tank became detached and flew through the air, spilling lighted fuel on the track. The stunned Lauda was stationary in the middle of the racing line and looked around, wondering what would happen next. It was too dangerous to move. The next car through was Guy Edwards’s Hesketh-Ford. He managed to avoid the Ferrari and stopped beyond it when he saw the burning fuel and realized that Lauda was still in his car. Then the Surtees-Ford car of Brett Lunger came through. Lunger was completely unsighted and smashed straight into the Ferrari with Lauda still inside. The Ferrari burst into flames, and the two cars traveled at least 90 meters (295 feet) down the track from the force of the impact. Harald Ertl’s Hesketh-Ford then piled into the wreckage of both cars.

  Amazingly, Lunger and Ertl were unhurt, and they leapt from their cars to help Lauda, who was now in serious trouble from three impacts. His car was a fireball, and Lauda was waving his arms in front of his helmet to ward the flames away from his face. His helmet was askew and had been half wrenched off his head in the accident.

  Now all the cars behind Lauda stopped. Because the track was so long, the fire marshals were nowhere nearby, and it was up to the drivers to rescue Lauda.

  Arturo Merzario in a Williams-Ford was the last to stop, and by then some marshals had arrived. But they had no fireproof clothing. Edwards, Lunger, and Ertl were doing their best but couldn’t get Lauda out of the flames. Merzario rushed along the road, and without thinking dived straight into the flames with only his overalls and flameproof balaclava to protect him. In a moment of incredible foolhardiness, the Italian went in with total disregard for his own life. As quick as a flash, Merzario unbuckled Lauda’s seatbelts. However, as he did so, Lauda’s helmet came off and the flames licked his face.

  Meanwhile, Harald Ertl had found a fire extinguisher and had no choice but to squirt it straight at Lauda to put out the flames. It was then that Lauda breathed in some of the toxic fumes. With the fire temporarily out, Lunger leaped onto the top of the car and lifted Lauda out. Amazingly, Lauda stayed on his feet and staggered around in great pain. Meanwhile, John Watson, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Hans Stuck, all of whom had been behind the accident, stopped their cars and ran down the road to help. Finding Lauda lying on the dirty track, Watson walked him to a dry area by the side of the track and lay him down.

  It was clear to Watson that Lauda had suffered bad burns to his head and face, but it was inexplicable that Lauda’s helmet had come off without killing him. It later emerged that Lauda was wearing a specially modified AGV helmet with extra foam padding to make it more comfortable to wear. The extra foam had compressed when pressure was put on the helmet, and it had easily slid off his head after the accident. The modified helmet, almost certainly not legal, left his face exposed to the fire.

  Max Mosley stamped on this practice when he became president of the FIA and remains convinced that drivers are their own worst enemies when it comes to safety. As he said, “When the crash happened, it just came off. And of course that was the attitude in those days.”

  Bizarrely, David Benson wrote in the Daily Express: “In the force of the impact, Lauda’s head had momentarily shrunk and his crash helmet had briefly expanded.”

  That was one way of putting it, but of course it was total nonsense, and Benson was probably part of a cover-up to hide what had really happened. The fact was that Lauda should never have been allowed to compete with that helmet and in many ways was totally responsible for the injuries he received as a result of his helmet coming off.

  As Lauda lay by the side of the track, all the drivers who had been behind him on the track stopped their cars and gathered round him for support. Watson put Lauda’s head between his own thighs and cradled it. The other drivers carefully removed his flameproof balaclava but could see he was badly burned. Although still conscious, Lauda remembered nothing of the accident itself. He continued speaking—in Italian to Merzario and in English to Watson. He asked Watson how his face was. He replied in a noncommittal way—this was not the time to tell Lauda the truth.

  An ambulance was on the scene in less than three minutes, and Lauda was taken away. Luckily there had been an ambulance stationed at Adenau Bridge, near where the accident had happened.

  At the medical station, Lauda spoke to Daniele Audetto and told him in detail where his road car was parked in the paddock. Lauda asked Audetto to telephone his wife and tell her he was all right and to ask her to find him a good hospital. Audetto told Lauda that he should go to Ludwigshafen Hospital, about 45 minutes away, where they had a specialist burns unit. Audetto was superb in this situation and knew exactly what to do.

  No more than 40 minutes after the accident, La
uda was transferred to the circuit helicopter and airlifted off the track. Upon seeing the extent of his injuries, doctors anesthetized him in the helicopter and he gradually lost consciousness. Lauda had endured his injuries incredibly bravely and had been fully conscious for over three-quarters of an hour. As he drifted off, the last thing he would remember was the clatter of the helicopter blades as they took off. He recalled: “The first thing I remember is the sound of the helicopter engine starting up. I asked the pilot where we were and where we were going.”

  As he watched the helicopter take off, it was a moment that Lauda’s personal airplane pilot, Hans Klemitinger, had always dreaded. He had long rehearsed in his own mind what he would do if his boss was ever injured and taken to hospital. He knew immediately that his duty would be to go to Marlene Lauda’s side. So anticipating events, he decided to fly to Salzburg the moment he saw the helicopter go off. He took off in Lauda’s Cessna Golden Eagle airplane as quickly as he could. Klemitinger knew Marlene would want to be at her husband’s side as quickly as possible.

  Marlene was still recovering from the miscarriage she had endured in May and was now suffering from low blood pressure. But she put that to one side, and immediately upon hearing about the accident, she also anticipated Klemitinger’s actions and got in her car and drove the 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to Salzburg airport to await the plane landing.

  So she was already at the airport when Klemitinger landed, and they were at the hospital within hours of her husband’s arrival there. Marlene said later: “At the time I had no idea how badly injured he would be. I was told he was all right, but that he was in hospital. It was not until I spoke to the doctors and was allowed to see him that the shock hit me.”

  As the helicopter landed at Ludwigshafen, Lauda’s luck was in. As he explained: “From that moment, all the bad luck turned to good luck. They sent me to the best hospital in Germany. Remember that it was a Sunday afternoon, but when I got to Ludwigshafen burns unit, the boss of the whole place just happened to be there at the time. He took one look at me and immediately decided that the burns on my face were secondary to the burns in the lungs. So he sent me to the intensive care unit in Manheim. There my luck was still good. The youngest professor in Germany just happened to be working that Sunday. His name is Professor Peter, and I owe him my life. He did everything absolutely right and never made a wrong move.” And the one thing he did right in particular was to not give Lauda oxygen. As he ruefully recalled to Daily Express motoring editor David Benson a few weeks later: “You must realize that the medical knowledge about treating lung damage is not as great as in some other areas. If, for example, I had been given oxygen—which would seem logical for someone with damaged lungs—I would have been dead immediately.”

  A team of six dedicated doctors and 34 nurses tended to Lauda. His injuries were diagnosed as first- to third-degree burns on his head and wrists, several broken ribs, and a broken collarbone and cheekbone. But as the doctors at Ludwigshafen Hospital had observed, of much more serious concern were the poisonous fumes and toxic gases he had inhaled. His windpipe and lungs were scorched, and the subsequent build-up of fluid in his lungs was already life threatening.

  That night the doctors thought he was going to die as they battled to drain the fluids in his lungs through that first 24 hours. While there had been no single great injury, serious damage had been done to his lungs and to his bloodstream, which was poisoned as a result of inhaling the fire extinguisher fumes, smoke, and petrol vapor. The burns on his face, head, and hands were severe, although not critical. And, crucially, there was no impairment to his mental capacity.

  Lauda later recalled that first night and his fight to survive: “On the Sunday night, they put a tube down my throat into the lungs and connected it to a vacuum pump to drain off the liquid and the infections. This was critical, because if the pump was used too much, it would destroy the lungs. From the Sunday night, my brain was always functioning, but I felt that my body was giving up. I could just hear voices very far away and a little out of reach. I concentrated on these voices to stop myself becoming completely unconscious.”

  The world woke up on Monday morning to newspapers full of stories of how Niki Lauda, the world reigning Formula One world champion was clinging on to life and that his doctors did not think he would pull through.

  That Monday morning, when James Hunt heard that Lauda was fighting for his life, he was devastated. Although they were rivals and their friendship had suffered as a result, he said, “It was suddenly very important for me that Niki should live, in a way I hadn’t realized. And I felt awful because there was nothing I could do about it. There I was, sitting at home, enjoying life when I didn’t even particularly want to; I wanted to go and help or do something, and I couldn’t.”

  Lauda’s lungs were in a terrible state, and when they X-rayed him on Tuesday, the X-rays revealed they were getting worse. The oxygen count in his blood, which was below the life-maintaining level of a figure of 8, went down to 6.8, an extremely dangerous level.

  Marlene Lauda was entirely unprepared for the ordeal she faced but has never spoken of the moment she was told her husband would certainly die. As Lauda recalled: “The doctors told my wife that there was no hope that I would survive.”

  For four long days and nights, Marlene Lauda watched as her husband’s life hung by a thread. She moved into a hotel near the hospital, visiting her husband for only an hour at a time. Each visit to the hospital was accompanied by a barrage of flashbulbs and journalists looking for answers to questions and hoping to record her anguish. She said, “I was deeply shocked by the accident, but it gave me my first real understanding of motor racing. Before that, I had no idea of the dangers of the racetrack. I used to smoke maybe one or two cigarettes a day, but from the time of the accident, I have become a chain-smoker. I know that this is not good for my health, but it helps me through the crisis.”

  Lauda said of that period: “All the time, I was listening to the doctors and trying to cooperate as much as possible—no matter what personal pain it would cost. For example, they could only use the vacuum pump to my lungs for about an hour at a time. But when I felt the lungs filling up, then I called for them to switch it on, even though the pain was enormous. The doctors told me that it was the first time that anyone had asked for the pump to be switched on himself. But I knew that I could only survive if I followed every instruction of the doctors.”

  Lauda recalled: “My wife, Marlene, was marvelous. It was very shocking for her, but never once did I feel what she was going through when she was with me at the hospital. She would hold my hand and keep on telling me that I was going to get well again. She must have been terrified by my face, but she only made me feel that I was a great man and gave me the will to get well. So many women would have cried or have become hysterical. I discovered that there was a much greater depth to Marlene than even I had realized.”

  On Wednesday, as he deteriorated further, a priest was brought into Lauda’s room to give him the last rites. Wavering in and out of consciousness, it was clear that Lauda did not like the intervention of the priest. As he admitted: “At one point I was asked if I wanted to see a priest. So I said, ‘OK.’ He came in and gave me the last rites, crossed my shoulder, and said, ‘Goodbye my friend.’ I nearly had a heart attack! I wanted someone to help me to live in this world not pass into the next. So I clung on to the voices and to my wife’s strength. I would not let myself become unconscious, because I was afraid that I would die. I wanted to keep my mind awake to start the body working again. I knew that if I gave up mentally, then I would be dead. My life was also saved because I was very fit before the accident. And as I have never smoked in my life, my lungs had maybe an extra percent capacity, which helped me work against the infection.”

  Lauda survived by sheer force of will, although some people did suggest that the reading of the last rites was a ruse by Lauda to mislead Hunt about the extent of his injuries. Lauda admitted, “I do not believe in
a personal God, but I believe that there is something more than this life. And I live by the rules. My strength to live after the accident came from this, from my own mind. And from my wife.”

  But after only four days in intensive care, there started to emerge hope that he would pull through, although from reading newspapers no one would have been aware of that. Lauda remembered that moment well: “Three days after the accident, the lungs began to get better. My blood count though was still bad, with the oxygen at the 6.8 level. This stayed the same for a week. “Nobody knew if my system would start working again and produce enough oxygen for the blood. If it didn’t restart, then they could have changed my blood every so often, but they knew that I would then only have one or two years in which to live. So they put new blood into me and waited to see the reactions. After four days it slowly improved, and they changed the blood again. By now my system was working and I was back to normal with the right amount of oxygen in my blood. They did not have to change it anymore.”

  Immediately after the accident, newspapers, especially in Germany, began writing tasteless articles speculating on the extent of Lauda’s facial burns, relying on very sketchy information that had been ferreted from hospital staff. Journalists at the German newspaper Bild were particularly shameless. In an article with the headline “My God, where is his face?” one journalist wrote: “Niki Lauda, the world’s fastest racing driver, no longer has a face. It is no more than raw flesh with eyes oozing out of it. Niki Lauda has survived . . . but how can a man exist without a face?” The story went on to forecast what life would be like for Lauda, continuing: “Horrible as it may sound, even if his body recovers completely, he will not venture into public for six months at least. It will be 1979 before they can build him a new face. By then, nose, eyelids and lips will have been refashioned. But the new face will not bear the slightest resemblance to the one he had before. Lauda the racing driver will only be recognizable to his friends through his voice and his gestures.”