Lauda hospital scare

NIKI LAUDA is back in intensive care five months after a double lung transplant.

Austria’s three-time world champion (below) was flown to AKh Wien, Vienna’s general hospital, after being taken ill with flu while on holiday in Ibiza. Austrian newspaper Krone

Zeitung said Lauda should be well enough to be released later this week.

Lauda was badly burned in a crash at Germany’s Nurburgring in 1976, when his lungs were damaged after he inhaled smoke and fumes from his burning car. Lauda later went into the airline business before becoming non-excutive chairman of the Mercedes formula One team. he had the lung transplant in August and was recuperating from the difficult surgery over Christmas with his family in Ibiza. Lauda won the world drivers’ title in 1975 and 1977 with ferrari and again in 1984 with McLaren.