Lauda

Born into a wealthy Viennese family on 22 February 1949, Andreas Nikolaus Lauda was expected to follow his father, Ernst-Peter, into the family business. Instead, he was drawn to cars. Against his family’s wishes, Lauda began racing in 1968, starting in the Formula Vee series before moving to Formula 3. His family’s opposition was financial as well as ideological; to continue his career, Lauda took out a bank loan to secure a seat in the 1971 European Formula 2 championship with the March team. That gamble, taken at 22, marked the true beginning of his path toward Formula One. His paternal grandfather was the Viennese lawyer and businessman Hans Lauda, though some sources suggest his roots may have extended to Galicia, in present-day Spain.

Lauda’s path to Formula 1 was neither smooth nor financed by family wealth. Born into a prosperous Viennese family, he was expected to take over the family business, not race cars. In 1968, against his parents’ will, he abandoned his business studies and began racing in Formula Vee, a low-cost entry series. He moved into Formula 3, but progress stalled when he ran out of money. In 1971, he secured a bank loan of around £30,000—a huge sum for a young driver—by using his own life insurance as collateral. That loan bought him a seat in the European Formula 2 championship with the March team. His performances in F2 caught the attention of March’s Formula 1 operation, and later that same year, he made his Grand Prix debut at the Austrian Grand Prix. The loan was repaid within two years. By 1973, he had signed with BRM, and then with Ferrari for 1974, where his career truly ignited.

Lauda made his Formula One debut in 1971 with March, but it was only after joining Ferrari in 1974 that his career took flight. That year he scored his first Grand Prix victory in Spain, finishing fourth in the championship. In 1975 he secured his first world title, winning five races for the Scuderia. The following season, he survived a near-fatal crash at the Nürburgring and, despite missing two races, finished runner-up in the championship by a single point. He rebounded to win his second title with Ferrari in 1977 before leaving the team.

After a brief retirement, Lauda returned in 1982 with McLaren. The team’s partnership with TAG–Porsche engines proved decisive. In 1984, driving the McLaren MP4/2, he won his third world championship, edging out teammate Alain Prost by half a point. He retired for good after the 1985 season, having accumulated 25 wins, 24 pole positions, and 54 podium finishes from 173 starts.

Niki Lauda’s peak arrived with an almost brutal clarity across two distinct eras. His first championship season, 1975, was a statement: driving for Ferrari, he won five of fourteen races, took nine poles, and clinched the title with a round to spare. The following year, 1976, he dominated the early calendar with four wins in six races before the Nürburgring crash that nearly killed him. Remarkably, he returned six weeks later, finished fourth at Monza, and lost the championship by a single point to James Hunt at a rain-soaked Fuji. He reclaimed the crown in 1977 with three wins and a relentless consistency that Ferrari’s internal politics could not derail. His third and final title came seven years later, in 1984, driving for McLaren. In a season defined by the TAG-Porsche turbo engine, Lauda won five races and edged teammate Alain Prost by half a point—the smallest margin in F1 history—with a calculated, cerebral approach that belied his earlier fire. Across those peak seasons (1975–1977 and 1984), he amassed 13 wins, 14 poles, and 27 podiums from 60 starts, a conversion rate that placed him among the sport’s elite.

Lauda dated Mariella von Reininghaus from 1968 to 1975, then married the Chilean-Austrian Marlene Knaus in 1976. They had two sons, Mathias, who became a racing driver, and Lukas, who acted as his brother’s manager. The couple divorced in 1991. In 2008, Lauda married Birgit Wetzinger, a flight attendant for his airline. She had already donated a kidney to him in 2005 after the kidney he had received from his brother in 1997 failed. In September 2009, Birgit gave birth to twins, Max and Mia. Lauda spoke fluent German, English, and Italian. He came from a Catholic family; in an interview with Die Zeit, he said he left the church for a time to avoid paying church taxes, but returned when his two children were baptised.

After the final race of his second Formula One career, at the 1985 Australian Grand Prix, Lauda did not drift into retirement. He returned to the aviation industry he had first entered in 1979, founding Lauda Air, a charter airline that grew into a major carrier. The venture was not without turbulence—a fatal crash in 1991 led to a public and bitter dispute with Boeing over the aircraft’s design—but Lauda’s tenacity saw the airline through. He sold his stake in 1999 but remained in the air, later founding another carrier, Niki, which operated until its insolvency in 2017. His second act in motorsport was equally influential: he served as non-executive chairman of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team from 2012 until his death, playing a pivotal role in the team’s dominant hybrid-era run. He also acted as a consultant to Ferrari in the early 2000s. Away from the track, he authored several books and was a regular, unfiltered voice in the paddock as a pundit.

He died in a Zurich hospital on 20 May 2019, aged 70, with his family announcing the news in a statement. The cause was kidney failure, following years of declining health. Lauda had undergone a lung transplant in August 2018; though he initially recovered well, his condition deteriorated in the months that followed. In early 2019 he was hospitalized again with an infection, and sources reported he had been receiving kidney dialysis in the days before his death. His final resting place is a grave in Vienna.

Niki Lauda’s three world championships, won with two different teams—Ferrari in 1975 and 1977, then McLaren in 1984—place him in a category shared by no other driver. His 25 wins and 54 podiums across 13 seasons were benchmarks of consistency, and his 1977 BBC World Sport Star of the Year award reflected a global recognition that transcended the sport. Yet his legacy is built as much on his return from the 1976 Nürburgring crash—where he suffered severe burns and was given last rites—as on his titles. That comeback, followed by a second championship just a year later, redefined the narrative of resilience in motorsport. Lauda later shaped the sport from the cockpit of boardrooms, serving as non-executive chairman of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team during its dominant hybrid-era run, a period that yielded multiple constructors’ and drivers’ championships. His blunt honesty, technical precision, and refusal to romanticize danger left a permanent imprint on how drivers are evaluated: by results, not mythology. He is buried in Vienna.