Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (24 page)

With his personal deals, he would earn over half a million dollars in 1977, guaranteed.

So it was little wonder he was starting to think more deeply about the dangers of racing at Nürburgring. Now he had far more to lose than when he was a penniless, struggling 19-year-old. For the first time, he admitted he was scared of racing at the circuit: “I’m glad to see the finish line every lap. I’m frightened, I don’t mind telling you.” But he added, “You either don’t come or you get on with the job of racing. So I’ve got on with the job and I’ve wound up on pole position again.” But not quite this time.

Despite all of the obvious fear and trepidation, Lauda was a racing driver, and like all racing drivers, deep down he always thought it would happen to the other fellow. So qualifying got under way as usual, just as it always did, regardless of the obvious dangers. But it was clear that with safety on his mind, Lauda, as he readily admitted, was not driving as fast as he could.

Otherwise, qualifying was uneventful at the front of the grid, with the now-familiar cars of Hunt and Lauda occupying the front row. When the two days ended, on Saturday afternoon, James Hunt was on pole position. Lauda was second on the grid and only a second slower than Hunt. Over a seven-minute lap, it was ridiculously close. Afterwards, Lauda summed it up: “My personal opinion is that the Nürburgring is just too dangerous to drive on nowadays.”

Behind them was a mixed-up bunch of drivers, which reflected the way the season was panning out. There was Lauda and Hunt, and then there were the rest. Apart from the obvious tail-enders, it seemed that all the rest had been in contention at some point during the season. This time it was Hans Stuck’s turn to shine, and he claimed fourth spot on the grid in a March-Ford.

On race morning the weather was unpredictable, and Lauda received some bad news from home, from his friend the Austrian journalist Helmut Zwickl. That morning the Reichsbrüke, the largest bridge in Austria, had collapsed into the Danube in the early hours, resulting in the loss of one life. At any other time of the day, hundreds of people would have been killed. Lauda was stunned by the news, and he wondered if this was another omen. He didn’t like omens.

Because of the circuit’s length, the race was only 14 laps and the average speed was expected to be close to 120 miles per hour. On the starting grid, it started to rain. Every driver except Jochen Mass chose to start on wet-weather grooved tires. Mass was totally familiar with the meteorological conditions at his home circuit, and believed the track would soon be clear. When a stiff wind rose up and quickly blew the circuit dry, his instincts were proved right.

Straightaway, Mass, who started from row five, was contesting the lead as Lauda and Hunt slithered away from the start. Lauda had a terrible start and seemed to be racing in reverse, dropping as low as 20th place on the unsuitable tires.

By the end of the first lap, Mass was in the lead, followed by Hunt and Ronnie Peterson’s March-Ford. Everyone stopped on lap two for dry tires.

Everyone, that is, except Peterson, who was fooled by Hunt into thinking he was going to do another lap on the wet tires and so followed suit. Hunt slowed down and let the Swede by before suddenly diving into the pits.

After changing tires, Hunt’s McLaren-Ford rejoined the race in second place, but already 45 seconds behind Mass.

And then Lauda had his accident, which stopped the race. By this time the red flag had been shown to the rest of the field, and there was a loudspeaker announcement in the pit lane that a serious accident had blocked the track at Bergwerk, the most northerly corner of the circuit. The leading cars came round and parked in front of the pits, ready for the restart.

Only the seven drivers who had witnessed the accident and its aftermath knew the extent of Lauda’s injuries. The accident had happened a mile or so behind the front of the pack, and the drivers had been behind Lauda before the accident. Although both tail-end drivers, Guy Edwards and Arturo Merzario, had witnessed the horror of the accident, they got back to the start line just in time for the restart and did not speak to any of the other drivers. Neither did John Watson, Emerson Fittipaldi, nor Hans Stuck.

The only news that reached the pits was that Lauda had been walking around after the crash. As he got back in his car for the restart, James Hunt believed that Lauda had escaped serious injury. He said, “He was taken off to hospital and obviously wouldn’t be racing again that day, but we thought he’d have his burns patched up and we’d see him at the next race in Austria. That was what we felt then; there were no alarm stories, so one was able to get into the car and go racing again with no qualms.”

All except Chris Amon, the 33-year-old veteran driver, had arrived at the accident just after it happened, and when he stopped his Ensign-Ford and saw Lauda lying by the side of the track, he was horrified. According to Amon, he didn’t think the Austrian would survive. He drove back to the pit lane and threatened to retire on the spot, saying he was finished with Formula One. Amon had also been witness to how slowly emergency services had responded to Lauda’s accident. He spoke to no one and left the circuit.

The biggest loser from the restart was Jochen Mass. Mass had made the right choice of tires, had established a big lead, and was certain to win the race. Now it was all for nothing; as Hunt said, “Fate intervened and ruined it for him.”

James Hunt cleared his mind of everything but the task at hand and streaked into a lead that remained unthreatened. He called that first lap “probably the most aggressive piece of driving I did all year. I was absolutely determined to get as big a lead as possible, and everything turned out right.”

It was dry, and this time there was no uncertainty about tires. Hunt was 10 seconds clear at the end of the first restarted lap. As he remembered: “I put in a blinding first lap and the others were spinning and falling about all over the place, which helped me, so I virtually had the race won by the end of the first lap. It was only a matter of controlling things from the front.”

Hunt was followed home by Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell-Ford, with teammate Jochen Mass coming in third. By the time he finished, he was half a minute ahead of Scheckter. He would later call the victory one of his most satisfying drives. But his abiding memory of the day was seeing Teddy Mayer’s reaction: “McLaren had never won at the ring, and it was tremendously gratifying to me to see him so happy.”

With no competition from Lauda, the victory had suddenly brought James Hunt to within 14 points of his rival. It was a dramatic turnaround from a seemingly hopeless position just a few weeks before.

CHAPTER
20

Near-Death Experience

Niki Lauda Nearly Dies

August 1976

N
iki Lauda started the first lap of the German Grand Prix from the front row of the grid, and like everyone else in the race, he was on wet-weather tires. He made a poor start, which was out of character for him. Later he explained that because of the damp track, he elected to get off the line in second gear instead of first. But he miscalculated, and there was more traction and the track was dryer than he thought, and eight cars powered past him. He remembered: “I accelerated too much. The wheels rotated too fast, which is even worse in second gear. With a higher gear, you practically stop still if the wheels start to spin. That’s what happened to me.”

The track dried very quickly, and like every other driver, Lauda went for slick tires. As he explained, “As it got more and more dry, I went into the pits for a tire change—a good quick change.”

Lauda changed from grooved wet to dry slick tires and drove out of the pits. Speeding away on the new tires, he tried to make up lost time on a mostly dry track that was still damp in places. But straightaway he misjudged the conditions, and his Ferrari mounted a curb with the left front wheel. The shock of the impact went right through the car and caused a tie-rod in the suspension to loosen. Unaware of what had happened, Lauda thought nothing of it. But Ferrari had had problems before with tie-rods failing; it was one of the car’s principal weaknesses and had not been fixed.

As he approached Bergwerk Corner, the magnesium tie-rod (one of the components that secured the suspension to the engine block where it was mounted) completely broke and detached from the engine. As a result, the rear wheel mountings collapsed straightaway and the car lurched to the right. Lauda was traveling at more than 130 miles per hour when the component failed.

The car went sideways into the catch fencing just before Bergwerk on the outside of the corner, but it lost hardly any speed at all. With the fencing unable to contain it, the car slammed into the embankment behind and was airborne. It bounced back onto the track with Lauda helpless at the wheel. The car slammed down hard on the track, and the fuel tank became detached and flew through the air, spilling lighted fuel on the track. The stunned Lauda was stationary in the middle of the racing line and looked around, wondering what would happen next. It was too dangerous to move. The next car through was Guy Edwards’s Hesketh-Ford. He managed to avoid the Ferrari and stopped beyond it when he saw the burning fuel and realized that Lauda was still in his car. Then the Surtees-Ford car of Brett Lunger came through. Lunger was completely unsighted and smashed straight into the Ferrari with Lauda still inside. The Ferrari burst into flames, and the two cars traveled at least 90 meters (295 feet) down the track from the force of the impact. Harald Ertl’s Hesketh-Ford then piled into the wreckage of both cars.

Amazingly, Lunger and Ertl were unhurt, and they leapt from their cars to help Lauda, who was now in serious trouble from three impacts. His car was a fireball, and Lauda was waving his arms in front of his helmet to ward the flames away from his face. His helmet was askew and had been half wrenched off his head in the accident.

Now all the cars behind Lauda stopped. Because the track was so long, the fire marshals were nowhere nearby, and it was up to the drivers to rescue Lauda.

Arturo Merzario in a Williams-Ford was the last to stop, and by then some marshals had arrived. But they had no fireproof clothing. Edwards, Lunger, and Ertl were doing their best but couldn’t get Lauda out of the flames. Merzario rushed along the road, and without thinking dived straight into the flames with only his overalls and flameproof balaclava to protect him. In a moment of incredible foolhardiness, the Italian went in with total disregard for his own life. As quick as a flash, Merzario unbuckled Lauda’s seatbelts. However, as he did so, Lauda’s helmet came off and the flames licked his face.

Meanwhile, Harald Ertl had found a fire extinguisher and had no choice but to squirt it straight at Lauda to put out the flames. It was then that Lauda breathed in some of the toxic fumes. With the fire temporarily out, Lunger leaped onto the top of the car and lifted Lauda out. Amazingly, Lauda stayed on his feet and staggered around in great pain. Meanwhile, John Watson, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Hans Stuck, all of whom had been behind the accident, stopped their cars and ran down the road to help. Finding Lauda lying on the dirty track, Watson walked him to a dry area by the side of the track and lay him down.

It was clear to Watson that Lauda had suffered bad burns to his head and face, but it was inexplicable that Lauda’s helmet had come off without killing him. It later emerged that Lauda was wearing a specially modified AGV helmet with extra foam padding to make it more comfortable to wear. The extra foam had compressed when pressure was put on the helmet, and it had easily slid off his head after the accident. The modified helmet, almost certainly not legal, left his face exposed to the fire.

Max Mosley stamped on this practice when he became president of the FIA and remains convinced that drivers are their own worst enemies when it comes to safety. As he said, “When the crash happened, it just came off. And of course that was the attitude in those days.”

Bizarrely, David Benson wrote in the
Daily Express:
“In the force of the impact, Lauda’s head had momentarily shrunk and his crash helmet had briefly expanded.”

That was one way of putting it, but of course it was total nonsense, and Benson was probably part of a cover-up to hide what had really happened. The fact was that Lauda should never have been allowed to compete with that helmet and in many ways was totally responsible for the injuries he received as a result of his helmet coming off.

As Lauda lay by the side of the track, all the drivers who had been behind him on the track stopped their cars and gathered round him for support. Watson put Lauda’s head between his own thighs and cradled it. The other drivers carefully removed his flameproof balaclava but could see he was badly burned. Although still conscious, Lauda remembered nothing of the accident itself. He continued speaking—in Italian to Merzario and in English to Watson. He asked Watson how his face was. He replied in a noncommittal way—this was not the time to tell Lauda the truth.

An ambulance was on the scene in less than three minutes, and Lauda was taken away. Luckily there had been an ambulance stationed at Adenau Bridge, near where the accident had happened.

At the medical station, Lauda spoke to Daniele Audetto and told him in detail where his road car was parked in the paddock. Lauda asked Audetto to telephone his wife and tell her he was all right and to ask her to find him a good hospital. Audetto told Lauda that he should go to Ludwigshafen Hospital, about 45 minutes away, where they had a specialist burns unit. Audetto was superb in this situation and knew exactly what to do.