THEY SAID IT
‘There are so many stories about Niki. He was involved in the drivers’ strike in South Africa, he is one of the few men who could sit down with Enzo Ferrari and Bernie Ecclestone, look them straight in the eye and they knew he meant business. He was a remarkable individual. I was certainly one person that looked at Niki and thought, “I’ll never be half the man he was’’.’ Former world champion Damon Hill ‘Everyone at Ferrari is deeply saddened at the news of the death of our dear friend. He won two of his three world championships with us and will always be in our hearts and in those of all Ferrari fans.’ Ferrari respond to the news ‘Somebody realised the actual damage to Niki, the real danger he was in was not from the superficial injuries that we could
see but from the deeper injury which was that to his lung. He’d suffered inhalation of toxic fumes from the burning fibreglass. We didn’t actually at the time appreciate the severity of the injury that he’d suffered. It was only after two or three days the story came out that it was the lung damage that was the injury putting his life in danger. What was really more remarkable was the way the speed of his recovery and what he was able to achieve. Forty days after that accident he was racing at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and for me, it’s the most courageous act of any sportsman I’ve ever seen in my life. His health and his condition - for those that saw him at Monza - it was remarkable.’ Former British driver John Watson, who was a team-mate of Lauda at Parmalat and McLaren in the 1970s and 1980s, was one of the first people to attend to the Austrian following a horrific crash at the Nurburgring in 1976