Niki Lauda

There are some who try to buck the system but usually fail, and others who
play the game and manipulate it to their own ends. Niki Lauda managed to do
both, with the adroitness of his off-track political and business
manoeuvrings being matched only by that of his driving and race craft, which
saw him taking three world titles.

After a couple of seasons in which he struggled to make an impression in
Formula 3 and sports cars, with a Porsche 908, Lauda took a bank loan to
finance a season of Formula 2 in a semi-works March and a one-off drive in
his home GP in 1971. Although his results were hardly inspiring there were
fleeting glimpses of his talent. Already the quiet self-confidence was
there, as was the inner determination to overcome every setback, and he
effectively mortgaged himself to the hilt to buy a seat in the works March
team alongside Ronnie Peterson for 1972. To say the F1 season was disastrous
is almost an understatement, and the dreadful 721X proved absolutely
hopeless. Fortunately the F2 March 722 was competitive, at least allowing
Niki to compete with his peers. His win in the spring John Player F2 race at
Oulton Park was one indication of his potential, his ability to closely
match Peterson's testing times another, but March discarded him right at the
end of the year, and he virtually saved his career by joining BRM for 1973
in a pay-as-you-race deal which he knew it would be difficult to honour.

When Lauda managed to overshadow his team-mates in the early races, took his
first championship points at Zolder and held third place in the Monaco GP,
he was able to put his contract problems behind him, but only by locking
himself into a three-year deal. There were a few successful touring car
races for BMW which proved quite lucrative, but most important was the fact
that he had been targeted by Ferrari for 1974. Contract or not, there was no
way Louis Stanley was going to stop Niki heading for Maranello, and the
young Austrian wriggled his way out of the deal. Displaying typical
pragmatism, he set about his new task at Ferrari with a huge programme of
testing and constant development which paid immediate dividends. There were
a couple of wins and four second places, but a mid-season dip in form cost
him his title chance.

For a driver in his first year with a front-line team he had performed
admirably, but Lauda was privately convinced that in 1975 the title would be
his, and once the transverse-gearbox car was introduced there was no
stopping him. Nine pole positions and five Grand Prix wins (complemented by
victory in the International Trophy) saw the Austrian sweep to his first
championship, and 1976 showed every sign of going the same way until the
fiery crash at the Nürburgring which so nearly took his life. Though badly
burned around the head, Niki returned to defend his title just weeks later
and the fact that he ultimately failed to retain his crown was largely
irrelevant, despite the dreadful treatment the Italian press meted out to
him after his decision to pull out of the Japanese GP. Even at Ferrari there
were doubters who thought he had lost his bottle, however, and Reutemann was
brought into the team, much to Lauda's annoyance.

Inwardly Niki must have relished the challenge, and with a perfect blend of
aggression and circumspection he all but humiliated his new team-mate the
following season to prove to the hierarchy that he was still the boss. A
second title was duly won and, with a characteristic lack of sentiment,
Lauda then announced that he was moving to Brabham. His two years with the
team brought only limited success, Niki winning the Swedish GP in the
notorious fan car and the Italian GP in 1978, and the non-title Dino Ferrari
Trophy at Imola the following season. At Montreal that year, he tried the
new Cosworth BT49 in practice and made the shock decision to retire then and
there.

He stayed away for two years, during which he built up his airline business,
before being tempted back in 1982. Perhaps it was his ego, the money, or
maybe just the challenge of proving the inevitable doubters wrong. One thing
was for sure: once he had demonstrated to himself that the speed was still
there, he wasn't going to mess around. There was a job to be done in
developing John Barnard's innovative McLaren MP4 and Niki was just the man
to do it. True, there were occasional lapses and lacklustre performances in
the Cosworth car, but once his attention turned to the TAG turbo-powered
machine at the end of 1983 Lauda was fully focused. He needed to be for
1984, when he was joined by Alain Prost. Using all his experience, the wily
Lauda hung on to the Frenchman's tail and eventually took his third World
Championship by the narrowest of margins after a fabulous year. His final
season perhaps went according to expectation, as the still hungry Prost
forced the pace, while Niki was happy to adopt a more tactical approach.
Unfortunately the season was blighted by unreliability, but at Zandvoort we
saw Lauda the racer one last time, as he kept his number one McLaren in
front of Prost's sister-car in a Formula 3-style battle to the finish.

This time Niki stayed retired, but in 1992 he was invited to act as a
consultant to Ferrari as they attempted to recapture the glory days that had
been gone for so many years. It has been a long and sometimes painful
process of reconstruction for Maranello, with Michael Schumacher seen as the
final piece of the jigsaw. Niki, however, was no longer part of the
management structure and, after successfully receiving a kidney transplant,
he regularly attended Grands Prix in a commentary role for Austrian
television.

It came as major surprise when in 2001, Lauda was brought into a senior
management role at Jaguar and it was not long before the Austrian had taken
over the team principal's job from Bobby Rahal who carried the can for the
team's lack of progress. His task was to revamp the under-achieving squad
but with the 2002 Jaguar R3 a major disappointment, Lauda found his services
dispensed with in another round of blood letting in November 2002.

Lauda has since returned to the F1 paddock on a regular basis as a
commentator.