Niki Lauda: 25 F1 Wins, Three World Titles, and the Greatest Comeback in Racing

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Formula 1 Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the man in the red cap.

The Short Version

Niki Lauda won three Formula 1 world championships, two with Ferrari and one with McLaren, across 171 grand prix starts and 25 wins. Six weeks after a crash at the Nurburgring burned him so badly that a priest read him the last rites, he pulled a helmet back onto his unhealed head and finished fourth at Monza. He lost one title by a single point and won another by half a point, still the closest championship margin in the history of the sport. Nobody in Formula 1 has ever been more clear-eyed about what the job actually costs.

He Bought His Way In

Andreas Nikolaus Lauda was born on February 22, 1949, in Vienna, Austria, into a wealthy paper-manufacturing family that wanted nothing to do with motor racing. When they would not bankroll him, he went around them, taking out a bank loan against a life insurance policy to buy a seat at March, then another to buy a drive at BRM in 1973. He was deep in debt, in cars that mostly did not work.

What saved him was that he was quick and, more importantly, that he could explain why a car was slow. His BRM teammate Clay Regazzoni moved to Ferrari for 1974 and told Enzo Ferrari to bring the Austrian along. Lauda told Enzo plainly that the car was no good, then told him he could fix it. Ferrari paid off his loans, and within a year the team that had not won a title since 1964 was winning again.

Two Titles, Then the Nurburgring

Lauda won twice in 1974, then ran away with 1975: five wins, nine poles and 64.5 points made him Ferrari's first world champion in 11 years. He started 1976 the same way, winning five of the first nine races and building what looked like an untouchable lead over James Hunt.

Then came August 1, 1976. On the second lap of the German Grand Prix at the old 14-mile Nurburgring, Lauda's Ferrari snapped away from him near Bergwerk, hit the barrier, bounced back onto the track and caught fire with him trapped inside. Four other drivers, Arturo Merzario, Guy Edwards, Harald Ertl and Brett Lunger, stopped and pulled him out. He had severe burns to his head and face, and he had breathed in flame and toxic fumes, which did more damage to his lungs than the fire did to his skin. A priest gave him the last rites at his hospital bed.

Forty two days later he was back in the car at Monza, head still bandaged, and finished fourth. Jackie Stewart called it the most courageous comeback in the history of sport.

The season ended in the rain at Fuji. Lauda arrived three points clear of Hunt, drove two laps in standing water, decided the conditions were not survivable and parked the car, saying afterward that his life was worth more than a title. Hunt finished third, which was exactly enough. Lauda lost the championship 69 to 68 and never apologised for it. He answered the only way he knew how: in 1977 he won three races, took the title with two rounds still to run, and walked out on Ferrari before the season was even over.

Quitting, and Then Coming Back for More

Lauda spent 1978 and 1979 at Brabham, winning twice in 1978, including the Swedish Grand Prix in the notorious "fan car." Midway through 1979, at Montreal, he climbed out and quit on the spot, saying he was tired of driving around in circles. He meant it. He went home and built an airline.

Two and a half years later McLaren talked him back, and he won twice in 1982, at Long Beach and Brands Hatch. In 1984 McLaren gave him the MP4/2, the best car on the grid, and gave him Alain Prost as a teammate. Prost outqualified him constantly and won seven races to Lauda's five, but Lauda kept finishing, kept scoring and kept his head.

It came down to Estoril, Portugal, on October 21, 1984. Lauda qualified 11th. Prost started on the front row and won. Lauda picked his way to second, and second was enough: 72 points to 71.5, a margin of half a point that remains the smallest in Formula 1 history. That half point existed only because the Monaco Grand Prix that year had been stopped early in the rain and paid half points.

Niki Lauda by the Numbers

Here is the career laid out in the parts that matter. Every number below is a Formula 1 world championship career figure.

The Man Off the Track

Lauda was never romantic about racing. He talked about it the way an engineer talks about a machine, and the thing he actually loved was aviation. He founded and ran three airlines across four decades, Lauda Air, then Niki, then Laudamotion, and flew the jets in his own fleet on a commercial licence. He married Marlene Knaus in 1976 and they had two sons, Lukas and Mathias, before divorcing in 1991. In 2008 he married Birgit Wetzinger, a flight attendant from his airline who had donated him a kidney three years earlier, and their twins Max and Mia were born in 2009.

His health never recovered from 1976. The fumes he breathed at the Nurburgring damaged his lungs permanently, and he lived with that for 43 more years. He had kidney transplants in 1997 and 2005 and a double lung transplant in August 2018, and died in Vienna on May 20, 2019, at 70.

The red cap he wore everywhere was not a fashion choice. It covered the scarring on his head, and he turned it into advertising space that reportedly earned him more than a million euros a year. That was Lauda in one object: take the worst thing that ever happened to you and bill somebody for it.

The Job He Did After Driving

Lauda never left the paddock. He consulted for Ferrari, ran Jaguar as team principal in 2001 and 2002, and in September 2012 became non-executive chairman of Mercedes. That last job changed modern Formula 1: Lauda personally pursued Lewis Hamilton and convinced him to leave McLaren for a Mercedes team that had won one race in three years. Mercedes then won eight straight constructors' championships, and Hamilton won six drivers' titles there. The team painted its halo red at Monaco in 2019 in tribute to his cap, and every Mercedes F1 car built since has worn a small red star for him.

Niki, 1949 - 2019

- Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) May 21, 2019

Fun Stats

• He won one of his 25 races without crossing the line first. Lauda came second in the 1976 British Grand Prix behind James Hunt and was awarded the win two months later when Hunt was disqualified on appeal.
• Nine seasons separated his first title in 1975 from his last in 1984, and between quitting at Montreal in 1979 and returning at Kyalami in 1982 he did not enter a single grand prix.
• His final win came at Zandvoort in the 1985 Dutch Grand Prix. He started 10th and held off Alain Prost at the flag by 0.232 of a second.
• Rivals nicknamed him "the Rat" because of his front teeth. He put it to work in his own marketing.

The Bottom Line

Plenty of drivers have been faster than Niki Lauda over one lap. None of them ever calculated the sport more honestly. He bought his way in on borrowed money, nearly burned to death chasing a title, came back six weeks later, walked away when it stopped being worth it, came back again, and won a third championship by half a point. Then he built the team that owned the next decade. Three world titles only tells you part of it.

Shop Formula 1 Gear

Lauda won his first two titles in a Ferrari and his third in a McLaren. Everything below is real Formula 1 gear, in stock right now:

• McLaren Racing F1 New Era Shadow Beanie - the team that gave Lauda his 1984 title.
• McLaren F1 Lifestyle New Era 9Fifty Camo Baseball Hat
• Men's New Era McLaren F1 Team Snowflake Cuffed Knit Hat
• Red Bull Racing F1 Austria Spielberg GP T-Shirt - the Austrian Grand Prix, which Lauda won in 1984.
• Formula 1 Tech Limited Edition Belgian GP Hat - Belgium, which he won in 1975 and 1976.

Browse the full Formula 1 collection, or see the newest arrivals.