NIKI LAUDA
Racing Driver
Dis-owned by his aristocratic, industrialist grandfather for pursuing the folly of Formula One racing, Austrian Niki Lauda had accumulated debts of more than $200,000 by the time he finally secured a salary on the British BRM Formula One team in 1973.
Lauda possessed a potent combination of driving ability, intelligence and relentless determination, and having being lured to the Ferrari team he quickly reached the pinnacle of his sport in 1975 to become World Drivers’ Champion.
Lauda had won five of the first nine races of the 1976 season—on course to defend his Drivers’ title— when he arrived for the German Grand Prix at the mighty Nurburgring, boasting a 14-mile track notorious for its 174 corners. Lauda, 27 at the time, loved the unique challenge posed by the Nurburgring yet called on his fellow drivers to boycott the race because he knew the organizers could not provide sufficient ambulances, fire engines and safety staff for such a giant racetrack.
His protest lacked support and the race went ahead. With a terrible twist of irony, it was Lauda who suffered from a slow emergency response when his suspension failed and he drove his Ferrari into a bank. The car caught fire with Lauda unconscious in the cockpit. Other drivers became first responders, with Italian Arturo Merzario risking his own life by plunging into fierce flames to unbuckle Lauda and pull him from the wreckage. The burns suffered by Lauda were so severe that comatose in hospital that night, a priest read his last rights.
Lauda made it through the night and then had to endure agonising treatment for his burns and the reconstruction of his eyelids with skin grafted behind his ears. The fire had claimed half of one of Lauda’s ears, but he rejected the surgical rebuild because it would have delayed his return to racing.
Just six weeks after the crash the racing community was astonished when Lauda climbed back into the cockpit, his head bandaged, weeping and wedged back into a helmet. Ferrari had already hired a replacement driver and Lauda took this as an insult. He only missed two races and while he could not successfully defend his Driver’s title—the ambition for which had forced him out of hospital so soon— no-one could stop the irrepressible Lauda from re-claiming the title in 1977, completing the greatest driver rejuvenation in motor racing history.
Lauda won his third and final Driver’s title in 1984 before retiring from racing in 1985. His death, at the age of 70 in May this year, was mourned deeply by the Formula One community.