NIKI LAUDA: NO REGRETS

Niki Lauda: No Regrets

During the Canadian Grand Prix weekend in June 2011 I did an exclusive interview with Niki Lauda for Auto Action, which appeared in issue #1446. One of the final questions I asked him was when looking back over everything, did he had any regrets.

By DAN KNUTSON

“No,” he said. “No regrets at all.”

I’ll bet if he’d been asked the same question during his final days, he would have made the same reply.

Niki Lauda began his career in the uncompetitive March 721

I first saw Lauda race in the 1972 South African Grand Prix. He drove a March 721 – with that silly-looking high-mounted front wing – to seventh place in what was his third championship F1 race start. I got his autograph – the classic one in which he printed NIKI, but extended the first stroke of the N down to become the L for the Lauda signature below it. I still have it today.

I will also bet that Lauda would brusquely brush off many of the praising tributes, however well deserved, that have been paid to him since he passed away last week. But there would be a twinkle in his eye nonetheless because the gruff, abrupt Lauda we’ve known all these years, had mellowed a bit.

During our chat in 2006 I asked him if he had a favourite race in the 171 grands prix he drove in.

“Not really because I had good races and bad races, like in any career,” he said. “But generally speaking I was happy with what happened to me. Even with the accident – thank God I survived and I am still here! – but I mean for me it was a normal development because I knew about the risk, and I worked hard to win championships.”

That accident was the fireball crash that nearly killed him during the 1976 German Grand Prix.

I saw some of Lauda’s memorable races. I was in the grandstands for the 1977 U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, where he finished fourth to clinch the championship and then walked away from the Ferrari team. I took photos trackside and reported on the race during the 1983 U.S. Grand Prix at Long Beach, when McLaren drivers John Watson and Lauda went from 22nd and 23rd on the grid to first and second respectively in the race.

And I did the same at the 1984 Portuguese Grand Prix where Lauda managed to beat McLaren teammate Alain Prost by half a point to earn his third world title. By 1984 I was
a fulltime F1 journalist, so I had dealings with Lauda during his final two seasons as an F1 driver, and then in subsequent years in his managerial roles at Ferrari, Jaguar and finally Mercedes. It was at the latter that he really found his niche.

Lauda says he did not have to do much to convince Lewis Hamilton to switch from McLaren to Mercedes in 2013, but boy did that move pay off for both team and driver!
Lauda was always approachable, always ready to answer questions and give his blunt opinion. Here is a good example of his candor.

Instead of holding a press conference during the 2006 Italian Grand Prix weekend for Michael Schumacher to announce his retirement, Ferrari issued a press release while he celebrating his win on the podium. Okay, he and Ferrari didn’t want any distractions before the race, but this was a page of paper stating that the most successful F1 driver of all time was going to retire. Things could have been done better.

I asked Lauda about the situation later that same day, and his reply was uncensored and to the point.

“We have to accept it as it is,” he told me. “The way it was handled was terrible. After he won, we just had a piece of paper in our hands that says he retires. Any human being, this is the worst thing you can do. He should say so himself, so we can see him and understand him, but to give a shitty copy of a Ferrari press release around in the paddock, I have never seen anything handled that stupid.

“Thank God he said it afterwards (in the post-race interview), but we were faced with this piece of shit. How could this happen? Afterwards he explained, but they should have done it the other way around. Let him explain and then put the paper out.”

Other candid Lauda quotes include:

On Enzo Ferrari: “For me, Enzo Ferrari is the most charismatic guy I met in all my life. There is no question about it. I had really a good time there. There were the normal ups and downs after my accident. He treated every driver in his own way, but I think with me we had a very good relationship and it worked out in the end.”

On Ayrton Senna: “Senna was sensational because of his charisma, his personality and his performance.”

On the Mercedes domination in recent years: “It’s up to all the others to try to bring down our lead. But you can’t artificially manipulate the sport to make it more exciting. Once you start doing that, motorsport is dead.”

When then F1 czar Bernie Ecclestone said he needed to talk to Lauda, who was chatting to a group of journalists at the time: “The Godfather calls.”

About Ecclestone when he was still running the show: “My biggest worry is if Bernie one day for whatever reason will leave us, because he is the combination of the perfect businessman and an ex-team owner. He is the master of all this success, and everything is in his head. So he has to continue, otherwise this business that is worth six billion dollars, will go down very quickly. All this will be destroyed in no time.”

On his rival drivers: “They have been all tough and hard. Some more, some less. But this was part of every year. Prost, in the end, was the toughest, for me to win the (1984) championship by half a point over him.”

On James Hunt: “James was my friend. I was happy that when I could not win the (1976) championship because of my accident, that he did win it. I always liked him.”

Talking about inter-team feuds such as the one between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost at McLaren: “If you have an enemy in another team it is much easier because you don’t see him every day. You cannot win being a nice guy. You have to be a bastard to win in Formula 1.”

During these past years Lauda was the only team member who would walk from his office at the Mercedes hospitality unit in the paddock and enter Ferrari, Red Bull or any of
the other team’s hospitality units, without having to ask permission. He was an F1 citizen like no one else. In spite of his massively politically incorrect views, which he expressed with gusto, Lauda had no enemies in the paddock.

Article originally published in Issue 1762 of Auto Action.

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