Page 34 - Ferrari in F1

NIKI
LAUDA
TON WATSON FINE BOO
He entered Formula 1 at his own expense in 1972,
Niki Lauda’s talent was not immediately obvious.
with a loan guaranteed by his life insurance. He was
part of the March team, where one of the sport’s
greatest figures, Ronnie Peterson, was first driver. The Swede
was fast – very fast. Without even knowing how he did it, his
natural talent made up for his car’s weaknesses. Lauda was much
more technically inclined. He worked on his vehicle with the
mechanics, analyzed problems, and carried out fine-tuning. Only
then, once all the settings were optimized, he would drive fast.
After a year’s apprenticeship at March, he moved on to BRM,
where he distinguished himself sufficiently for Clay Regazzoni to
recommend him to Enzo Ferrari.
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The Scuderia had just endured the worst season in its history.
The last World Championship title won by the Prancing Horse
was almost 10 years ago. Old Enzo knew well that only a driver
with a solid technical grounding and an analytical mind could
bring the team back to the top. He invited Lauda to Maranello.
“He was a serious young man who knew what he wanted,” he would
later say of their first meeting, during which the Austrian was
impressed by the Scuderia’s enormous resources. “I found it
incomprehensible that such a large team could not win,” he observed.
He signed with Ferrari in the autumn of 1973, and some
weeks later, he began work on upgrading the team. “I’ve done tests,
tests and more tests to improve my car little by little,” Lauda reported
later. By the start of the 1974 season, Ferrari was back on top, but
the Austrian driver lacked experience and, above all, luck. While
starting nine times from pole position, he won only two races, and
placed fourth in the World Championship.
Learning from the mistakes he had made in 1974, he went
on to win the 1975 championship. He was well on the way to
a second title in 1976, when the German Grand Prix was the
next scheduled race. Lauda, the most reasonable of drivers – and
perhaps the most intelligent – realized that the 23 km of the
Nürburgring had become far too dangerous for Formula 1. He
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to administer extreme unction. Through the mists of his half-
consciousness, Lauda grasped his situation. “The priest was gibbering
in Latin without saying anything positive. Not a word which suggested
that I might survive,” said Lauda indignantly, who turned his anger
at the clergyman into a will to survive. And indeed, he overcame
his injuries, and only six weeks after the accident, felt ready to face
the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He wore a specially designed
needed to be changed between two training sessions.
tried to initiate a boycott of the German circuit, but the drivers
decided to take the risk one last time.
On the second lap, Lauda lost control of his Ferrari on a
damp patch, hit the barrier and caught fire. In the absence of
any first aiders in the area, the driver was extricated from the
flames by Arturo Merzario and other colleagues who stopped
at the scene of the accident. He was severely burned, with lung
lesions so alarming that Mannheim hospital called in a local priest
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helmet, large enough to fit his head and hold his dressings, which
The accident significantly soured relations between Lauda and
Ferrari. The driver did not appreciate how the team, on the very
day of his mishap on the Nürburgring, immediately offered his
place to other drivers. Argentinian Carlos Reutemann accepted
the offer, and Ferrari found itself in an embarrassing situation,
when Lauda re-emerged for the race in Monza. Hence the need
to field three cars – one for Lauda, another for his teammate Clay
Regazzoni and a third for Reutemann.
Even though he missed three races due to his accident, Lauda
put up a good fight right up to the final race in Japan at the
Fuji Motor Speedway, some 100 km from the center of Tokyo.
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