Niki
Lauda

Niki Lauda was born in Vienna on 22 February 1949. He started out in a Mini, moved into Formula Vee and soon drove private Porsche and Chevron sports cars. In 1971 he raced for March in Formula Two and made his Formula One debut with the team at the Austrian Grand Prix. He spent a full season with March in 1972 and won the British Formula Two Championship. In 1973 he joined BRM and scored his first championship points in Belgium.

He moved to Ferrari in 1974. He finished second in his first race for the team in Argentina and won his first Grand Prix in Spain three races later. He ended the season fourth in the championship. In 1975 he won five races and secured his first world title with third place at Monza. In 1976 he was leading the championship when he was badly hurt in a crash at the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. He missed only two races and finished fourth at Monza six weeks later. In the finale in Japan he retired after two laps in torrential rain, judging the conditions too dangerous, and James Hunt took the title by a single point. In 1977 Lauda became world champion for the second time, clinching the title at the United States Grand Prix.

From 1978 he drove for Brabham, winning in Sweden with the fan-equipped BT46B, which the team raced only once, and in Italy. He was winless in 1979 and announced his immediate retirement before the season was over. After a two-year break he returned with McLaren in 1982 and won at Long Beach in his third race back. In 1984 he beat team-mate Alain Prost to a third world title by half a point, finishing second in Portugal to settle it. He took his final win at the Dutch Grand Prix in 1985 and retired at the end of that season.

In Formula One, Lauda made 171 starts, with 25 wins, 54 podiums and 24 pole positions. In 1973 he also won the Nürburgring 24 Hours with Alpina, and in 1979 he took the inaugural BMW M1 Procar Championship. He later worked as an adviser to Ferrari from 1993, was team principal of Jaguar in 2001 and 2002, and from 2012 was non-executive chairman of Mercedes, who won six consecutive Constructors' Championships from 2014 to 2019. Niki Lauda died on 20 May 2019.

Source: Wikipedia, “Niki Lauda”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.