Top Gear chats to Niki Lauda

There are many great moments in Rush, but although the film is a cocktail of fast racing, faster women, old-school male bravado and general chicanery, Niki Lauda’s fiery crash during the 1976 German Grand Prix puts it all into brutal perspective. It’s the section that anchors the film, the one that elicits audible gasps among the audience before plunging them into a contemplative silence.

And no wonder. Ron Howard handles the aftermath with elegance and sensitivity, but he doesn’t hold back on the unimaginable pain Lauda endured as he defied the priest who read him the last rites and the doctors who doubted he’d ever recover. This is a man who had his lungs vacuum pumped repeatedly, and had a nurse peel off his bandages under neon lighting while his wounds were at their worst. They were still raw when he climbed back into his car at the 1976 Italian GP 43 days after his crash, to finish fourth in front of a stunned tifosi and bemused paddock.

All this stuff ricochets around your head when you meet Lauda for the first time. It doesn’t much diminish the second time. In fact, it’s difficult not to be cowed in his presence no matter how often you meet him. He’s that guy. Formula One’s ultimate survivor. The driver who won two world championships for Ferrari, quit the sport to set up a successful commercial airline, then returned to win a third title in 1984 driving for McLaren. It’s also well known that this scion of an Austrian banking dynasty doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I know this because I was the fool who asked him a stupid question back in 2001 when he was running the ill-fated Jaguar F1 team, and got a blast of the Lauda hair-drier for my trouble.

Perhaps age has mellowed him. He married again a few years ago, and his wife Birgit gave birth to twins, Max and Mia. Talking about fatherhood makes his eyes sparkle, and he concedes that he was simply too selfish to be much good at parenting the first time round (he has two sons, Matthias and Lukas, from his first marriage, and another son, Christoph, from another relationship). I met him in Vienna last year, on Ferrari-related business, then again at Monaco earlier this year. On that occasion, the more mellow Lauda was nowhere to be seen: news of the Mercedes F1 team’s opportunistic Pirelli tyre test had just broken in the paddock and watching him - these days non-executive chairman of the Merc F1 team, remember - was like watching hell bubbling up before your very eyes.
The logic-driven, apparently unemotional young Lauda is brilliantly captured by the German actor Daniel Brühl in Rush. The more seasoned Niki insists he wasn’t quite as serious as he comes across in the film. Based on the meetings across a decade, I’d be inclined to agree. It’s better than arguing with him…

Top Gear: Are you as cool and calculating as you appear in Rush?
Niki Lauda: I am emotional. But I also have everything well under control and I can analyse things properly. What drives me crazy is the amount of talking that goes on. I like to make my life simple. I get straight to the point. If it’s my mistake, it’s my mistake. In motor racing, you learn to achieve the best result in the shortest amount of time. It applies in life too. Be quicker than the others. And don’t make mistakes. Even if things fail, have the discipline to find a new way, rather than embarking on a pointless emotional journey.

TG: Your family wasn’t happy when you decided to become a racing driver.
Niki Lauda: My biggest problem was my grandfather. He was president of the Red Cross and ran a huge company in Austria. I had a good relationship with my mother and father, but my grandfather… I fought my grandfather like you wouldn’t believe. I went my own way, and decided to become a racing driver. I don’t think I would ever have fought that hard if my grandfather had been a reasonable person.

TG: So you had to pay your way into your first drive.
NL: I joined March with Max Mosley at the time. I was an unknown driver who could bring money to help their budget. I had sponsorship from an Austrian bank. It went to the supervisory board, and my stupid grandfather stopped it from happening! So I went to another bank, and he said, ‘what happens if you die?’ So I secured the loan against my life insurance. I put their logo on my helmet, which is how I got out of the mess my grandfather put me in.

TG: Did your grandfather ever say, “sorry Niki, you did well…”
NL: No. I broke with him, and the poor guy died before we had a chance to make peace.

TG: You raced for BRM, run by Louis Stanley, when it was a fading force. But it was still enough to get you noticed by the most famous team of all.
NL: ‘If Ferrari calls, don’t forget to tell me’. It was a running joke. I would always say this as I left my little office in Salzburg. I got back on Tuesday, and my secretary said, “Ferrari called”. “Don’t joke,” I replied. “No really, someone called Monteprezelo or something…” I called him, I went to Maranello, I saw the Old Man and he said, “I want you to drive for me”. Why? “Because you are ahead of Ickx and you are an unknown and nobody knows why you are so fast…” I told him I’d just had dinner with Mr Stanley. The Old Man said, “I’ll fix it”. Then we got to Brands Hatch and there was a rumour that the British police weren’t going to allow the Ferrari transporter through because of a dispute between BRM and Ferrari over the driver Niki Lauda! This was the rumour in the paddock. Actually, it was Bernie [Ecclestone] who helped sort that.

TG: How was it meeting Il Commendatore the first time?
NL: It was quite simple negotiating with him because I didn’t have very much to negotiate about. I think he paid the equivalent of 50,000 euros today. I said, “at least let me have a car”, and they sold me one - at a discount. A cheap car but not free, not part of the deal. Then I came over to do my first test. The 1974 car was very uncompetitive, remember. At Fiorano TAG Heuer had installed the photocell timing equipment, which was very clever, and I thought, ‘they have this technology, and yet they can’t make a competitive car, I don’t understand the world any more’. I told Piero [Ferrari], “the car is s***, it understeers everywhere…” He replied, “you can’t say that, it’s a Ferrari!” “Tell the Old Man I think the car is no good”, I said. It doesn’t turn in properly, and there is no balance. Then Forghieri [Mauro, Ferrari’s famous technical director] was brought back from Siberia. We decided we could go half a second faster. Piero said, “that’s very brave. If you say this, you have to make it happen.” Forghieri fixed the geometry, and I went 8/10ths of a second quicker. And for whatever reason, the Old Man trusted me from that moment on.

TG: You’d passed some sort of test. Or perhaps simply proved yourself.
NL: Ferrari’s interest was only to win. He didn’t really care about the drivers. He liked Villeneuve because he was crazy. And he liked me because I told him the truth, and didn’t bulls*** him. He was friendly with me, accepted me. I would simply knock on his door. Looking back now, after all the fights I had with him after my accident, he was a very egocentric man. Absolutely focused on his cars, on his ideas, being successful in a brutal way. But in the end, he was Italian and he had a heart. I had the opportunity to experience it on the odd occasion, but the rest of the time it was not funny. Let me tell you this. Audetto [then team manager] visited me in hospital, after my accident, and went back to the paddock, went up to Fittipaldi and said, “Lauda is dead, we want to offer you a two-year contract”. Emerson rang me when I was better, and said, “nobody knew if you were dead or alive and they were already talking to me about a contract! Replacing you for a few races, that I would understand…” And this was not Audetto. This was an order from Ferrari himself. But listen, in terms of charisma and personality, none of today’s Formula One managers can compare with Enzo. Think how long he has been dead, and we’re still talking about him!