Excerpt: Niki Lauda – His Competition History

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emailBy: RACER Staff | January 21, 2020 10:36 AM

The following is an excerpt from the new book: “Niki Lauda: His Competition History,” by Jon Saltinstall. The hardcover book contains 375 pages and 500 photos and is available for pre-order from The RACER Store. Click here for more information.

From the introduction…



For those with little more than a passing interest in the history of Formula 1 motor racing, Niki Lauda is the man who survived a near-fatal conflagration at the Nurburgring in 1976 and came back to win the World Championship a year later, having lost out to James Hunt following the accident.

Those concerned with the history of the sport in a little more depth know of him as the teenager who started racing against the wishes of his family, bought a March works drive, wheedled his way into BRM and, having shown his mettle there, got the call from Ferrari just when things were on the up and was able to shape a winning team around him. A man who turned his back on the Scuderia (after two world titles) much as Enzo Ferrari had done to him following the accident, went to Brabham in a big-money deal with Bernie Ecclestone, then walked away from the sport and went off to run his own airline. A man who then came out of retirement two years later and took a third world title before retiring for good, but stayed close to the sport with roles as a TV presenter and a team principal.

But a closer analysis of Lauda’s career on a race-by-race basis reveals a lot more than this. It shows a man who was always fiercely assured of his own capabilities, but who from the earliest days had a level of self-control and racecraft that would epitomize his career. He had a well-developed awareness of the sport’s risks – he got out of Formula 3 in the last year of its ‘screamer’ era as he found it inhabited by madmen – but was as quick as anyone on the great unsanitized road circuits at Spa, Brno and the Nürburgring; indeed, he holds the outright Formula 1 and touring car lap records for the Nordschleife.

He was a versatile all-rounder who won hillclimbs on alpine mountains and grass-roots ‘Flugplatzrennen’ on concrete airfields, who competed successfully in Group 6 sports prototypes and who was acknowledged as one of the best touring car drivers of his day. In Formula 2 and later Formula 1 he had to measure himself against a teammate who was regarded at the time as the fastest in the business, Ronnie Peterson, and he emerged also with a reputation as a great test and development driver. In 1979, while enduring a season in one of the least reliable Formula 1 cars of his career, he had the motivation and competitiveness in more equal machinery to win the concurrent Procar Championship.

His status as the definitive ‘comeback king’ stands up not just in the context of his return to racing after his Nurburgring accident in 1976, but perhaps, more significantly, in his return to the cockpit after retiring from the sport in 1979. Few other drivers have delivered championships in different eras, let alone after having a two-year hiatus when they did not compete at all. Formula 1 in the 1980s was a very different sport from the one it had been in the 1970s, requiring a step-change in driving style and technique; Lauda not only adapted to it, he mastered it.

1968: Beginnings

Whether or not his family believed in his abilities as a racing driver, Niki Lauda certainly did. Self-confidence was never an issue for the young Viennese, who built his career entirely independently from the wealthy background into which he was born. Living on his wits and his undoubted street-wise intelligence, he later said that in the beginning he was always one car ahead of his career (and his bank account); the one he was actually racing at any one time had not yet been paid for.

The foundation for his first racing season is a story that has entered motor racing folklore. In late-night high jinks on an icy road, he wrote off a Mini belonging to school friend Peter Draxler’s father, then bought the wreck for 38,000 schillings that he borrowed from his grandmother, and almost immediately part-exchanged it for a full-blown two-year-old Group 2 racing Austin Mini Cooper S from state champion Fritz Baumgartner. Baumgartner hit it off with the forthright youngster and helped him reassemble the Mini’s 1,275cc engine in the garage of the Lauda residence, Niki’s parents having been persuaded that he was merely looking after the machine for a friend and that working on it would help him develop his engineering skills. His ability to talk his way out of trouble was already well-developed…

Listed in the program as ‘A.N. Lauder’, the young Austrian’s first motorsport event was the Bad Muhllacken hillclimb, organized by the Motorsportclub Rottenegg. He took part in his ex-Baumgartner Mini that he and the car’s former owner had fettled to deliver some 100hp. The purchase price had included a few exploratory laps at the Semperit tire company’s Kottingbrunn test track, where, to the surprise of the Mini’s vendor, Lauda had immediately found the ideal line, showing none of the hasty overexcitement so often displayed by newcomers.

Baumgartner, one of the quickest touring car drivers in Austria at the time, was impressed, but cautioned the youngster that as these few laps represented his only experience of the car, for his first competitive outing he should use no more than 8,000rpm rather than the 9,000rpm the engine would accept.

Lauda surprised more experienced drivers at Bad Muhllacken with his self-discipline as he dutifully stuck to his self-imposed speed limit to avoid overreaching himself – and also to avoid incurring any damage that he could ill afford to pay for. A clean, steady first ascent was good enough for third quickest time. Using another 500rpm, his second run was fastest outright and gave him second place on aggregate in his class, 1.5 seconds adrift of the overall victor. He reflected later that he could have gone quicker; the car still had something to spare.

 

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The RACER Store

NIKI LAUDA | His competition history — PRE-ORDER

Regular price $67.00 We will fulfill the order as soon as this item becomes available FREE SHIPPING TO US ADDRESSES.
THIS BOOK WILL SHIP IN FEBRUARY 2020

By Jon Saltinstall

Foreword by John Watson
Preface by Doug Nye
Afterword by Kurt Bergmann

Hard cover, 375 pages
500 photos

When, during the tumultuous 1976 Formula 1 season, Niki Lauda nearly perished in a conflagration at the Nürburgring and then, severely scarred, courageously fought back to race again only six weeks later, the Austrian earned admiration and adulation world-wide.

While the saga of that year, and the battle with James Hunt for the World Championship, has been told many times, the rest of Lauda’s racing has received less attention. This new book redresses that by documenting, race by race, his diverse driving career from 1968 to 1985. Through detailed dissection of each of his 316 races, in an eclectic mix of cars, a vivid picture emerges of a hugely determined and vastly talented racer who, despite many setbacks, left a remarkable legacy. All enthusiasts will treasure this comprehensive and richly illustrated examination of Niki Lauda’s entire competition history.

Key content

• Climbing the ladder: starting against his family’s wishes with a Mini in 1968, Lauda drove a Formula Vee Kaimann in 1969 and had a disastrous Formula 3 season with McNamara in 1970 before switching to a Porsche sports car; with progress stalling, he took out a loan to buy a Formula 2 seat at March in 1971.
• Faltering in Formula 1: he débuted with March at the 1971 Austrian Grand Prix, then stayed with the team in 1972; he moved to BRM for 1973, still paying his way with further borrowing and some income from racing touring cars — but in all this time he had only one points-scoring Formula 1 finish.
• The Ferrari years: finally Lauda fulfilled his promise after receiving the call to Maranello, winning the World Championship twice in his four years there, in 1975 and 1977, but he left after tensions with the team arose in his final season.
• The Brabham years: Lauda famously won the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix in Brabham’s ‘fan car’, but thereafter the team’s competitiveness declined and he retired at the end of 1979, tired of ‘driving round in circles’ and focused instead on his new airline, Lauda Air.
• The McLaren years: tempted by a salary of unprecedented size, Lauda returned in 1982 after a two-year absence, silenced doubters by winning his third race, and in 1984 secured his third World Championship; at the end of 1985, with a career tally of 25 Grand Prix victories, he hung up his helmet for good.

Author

Jon Saltinstall grew up near Donington Park, where he witnessed his first motor race at the age of 12 after winning tickets in a local newspaper competition. Already fascinated by the sport and its history, he obsessively pursued his interest while following a career in banking. His admiration for Niki Lauda led him to embark on this book, his first, and after nine years, in 2019, he completed it a matter of weeks before his subject’s death. Married with two grown-up children, he lives in Leicestershire.

 

PART 2

Excerpt II: Niki Lauda - His competition history

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emailBy: RACER Staff | January 28, 2020 9:00 AM

The following is an excerpt from the new book: “Niki Lauda: His Competition History,” by Jon Saltinstall. The hardcover book contains 375 pages and 500 photos and is available for pre-order from The RACER Store. Click here for more information.

1984 Portuguese Grand Prix

Estoril, 21 October 1984

McLaren MP4/2-1 #8

Qualifying: 11th Result: 2nd (fastest lap)

Lauda had set the fourth-quickest time in the acclimatization session that preceded official practice on Thursday at this new circuit on the Formula 1 calendar, but when qualifying started in earnest he was plagued by a series of minor niggles and was never able to get into a rhythm.

His first qualifying run was interrupted by a trip up the escape road at one of the uphill right-handers, flat-spotting his tires in the process. He had just embarked on his last set of qualifying tires when his engine began to lose power, the result of a faulty master switch.

Instead of starting from near the front of the grid, he faced an uphill struggle from only 11th spot in his battle with Alain Prost for the World Championship title. Suitably motivated, he was fastest in the warm-up, almost half a second quicker than his team-mate, but then things again started to go wrong and he was delayed by a jammed wheel nut and the need for the engine to be replaced after showing signs of losing water.



He made an extremely cautious start and ran 13th at the end of the first lap with what looked like an impossible challenge ahead of him. He gained a position when Derek Warwick spun his Renault on lap 13 and easily passed Elio de Angelis’s tire-troubled Lotus, but a damaged turbo on the left-hand cylinder bank meant that his engine was under-performing, keeping him behind Stefan Johansson’s Toleman for a long spell.

Eventually he decided that he had wasted enough time and that his cautious approach would yield no results, so he wound up the boost pressure and went on the attack.

On lap27 Johansson missed a gear into the left-hander at the back of the circuit and Lauda dived through the gap, removing the Toleman’s front wing in the process but luckily emerging with his own car undamaged. Less than a lap later he outbraked Michele Alboreto’s Ferrari at the end of the main straight and surged passed Keke Rosberg’s Williams on lap 31 at the same place. His momentum carried him up to Ayrton Senna’s Toleman and, after two laps, he overtook the Brazilian in a similar manoeuver.

In less than 10 minutes he had progressed from ninth place to third. However, second-placed Nigel Mansell (Lotus) was 35 seconds ahead of him. Although he closed the gap at more than a second a lap, a group of squabbling backmarkers delayed him and he lost most of the time he had made up. Then Mansell, still half a minute ahead, suffered brake failure on lap 51 and spun, allowing Lauda to close to within a few seconds while setting the race’s fastest lap with a better time than he had managed in qualifying.

Next time around the McLaren went past the Lotus, which promptly spun again, but that was of no consequence to Niki as he now held the vital second place that he needed to win the World Championship.

Although he was 50 seconds behind Prost, he could finally ease off and he had a trouble-free run for the last 18 laps as he followed his team-mate to the flag. He was World Champion for the third time after a race that he later described as the most difficult of his career.

 

PART 3

Excerpt III: Niki Lauda - His competition history

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emailBy: RACER Staff | 4 hours ago

The following is an excerpt from the new book: “Niki Lauda: His Competition History,” by Jon Saltinstall. The hardcover book contains 375 pages and 500 photos and is available for pre-order from The RACER Store. Click here for more information.

Sudwest Pokal, Solitude-Rennen

Hockenheim, 5 July 1970, Formula 3
McNamara Mk3B (007/70) #11
Qualifying 11th; Result 5th

The fastest 30 drivers from the large entry were able to take the start after two practice sessions, the first of which was so wet that no drivers could find suitable gear ratios to use.

As usual at Hockenheim, the start and the first lap of this 25-lap were frantic but Lauda, having qualified on the outside of the fifth row, was soon making up places in a very competitive field. After two laps he was among the 10-car leading group and then after five laps he found himself in a private duel with Ulf Svensson’s Brabham that lasted for the rest of the race.

With a lap to go, Svensson towed past Lauda for seventh place but on the final lap they came across David Purley’s slow-moving Brabham, its engine having expired while running second. Lauda used the moment to squeeze by Svensson and beat him to fifth place by just 0.2 second, albeit nearly a minute adrift of the winner.



Nurburgring Six Hours

12 July 1970, Group 2
BMW 1602 (with Rene Herzog) #61
Result: Retired (distributor)

Lauda had intended to make his first racing appearance in Britain for the third round of the Interserie at Croft but instead took up the offer of a paid seat with the Alpina BMW team in the more prestigious Nurburgring Six Hours the same weekend.

Originally the Alpina team had planned to pair Paul Bergner and Rene Herzog in a 1602 model in its bid for the 1,600cc Division 2 crown against 93 other hopefuls, but after a series of breakages in practice Bergner switched to a private 2002Ti and Lauda was installed in his place. The race was run at record speed and was dominated by works Alfa Romeos after the failure of all the best BMWs, that of Lauda/Herzog included. After a fairly nondescript run, their engine expired before half distance due to distributor failure and they posted the race’s 37th retirement. Coincidentally, the sister Alpina entry of Lauda’s Formula 3 racing buddy, Gerold Pankl, stopped on the same lap with a broken engine mounting.