May 20, 2022- When The F1 World Lost Its Scrupulous Father Figure: Niki Lauda

Regardless of whether Hamilton wins any more championships, whether Verstappen defends his 2021 crown this year or whether any among Norris, Leclerc, Albon and Gasly go on to win multiple world titles some day, things that excite F1 will always be dampened by the turn of some events that shook the sport to its core.

One such incident took place on 5 October, 2014,to be precise.

For this was a dark day in the history of the sport. At the wet and wild Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, something spine chilling happened on Lap 41.

At around the Dunlop curve, Marussia’s Jules Bianchi lost control of his speeding wagon, skidded off the track, only to collide with a parked tractor that was tending to Adrian Sutil’s Sauber that had spun off a lap earlier.

Resultantly, Bianchi, sustained serious head injuries, collapsed inside his car and had to be airlifted to a nearby facility, where after a few days’ time, he was declared dead.

Formula 1 lost a star driver in the making, one brimming silently with confidence and elan, the-then up and coming Charles Leclerc lost his mentor, and there came about, although quite belatedly, necessary safety interventions in the sport such as the halo. 

But truth be told, something like the ill-fated event at Suzuka, which that year hosted (the then) thirtieth Formula 1 Grand Prix, would never have happened on Niki Lauda’s watch.

Frankly speaking, had Niki Lauda been in charge of running the sport, such a terrible Grand Prix would never have taken place to the extent it actually did; the organizers rather stunningly deciding to run the rain-marred event until the end of the 44 laps when driving from the onset of lap 30 had become difficult.

And a question that has come about in the mind of everyone connected to the sport ever since the tragic 2014 race is this: 

What does it take to succeed in Formula 1? Surely, great speed, fast reflexes and an even fast and reliable car.

But does it take one to fiddle with the element of mortality to define one’s space in a one of a kind pantheon in the sport?

Do you necessarily have to die in order to be a legend?

Who are we fooling? What high-budgeted Hollywood caper is being made to celebrate your life, which is when you are neither a Jim Morrison nor a James Dean that you have to take the fatal plunge in order to experience the ultimate?

Niki Lauda, who was aware of what happened to Jules, was simply left gutted. His hands all over his head.

There was a reason for it.

Thirty eight years prior to the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix, he had himself experienced a near-death experience and just what it meant facing the unsparing horror of conformity to fear and only miraculously came out of it.

At the 1976 German Grand Prix at Nordschleife, Lauda, then with Ferrari, lost control of his zip zapping machine and crashed into the side of a corner; his red machine nearly reduced to rubble; the sweltering heat created by rising smoke leaving everything around the crash site gutted.

Several marshals had to plunge into the towering inferno to rescue Niki Lauda, who was, believe it or not, administered his last rites as he lay unconscious on his bed, having suffered third degree burns.

But instead of leaving his nearly dilapidated body into the confines of fear and dreadful thoughts- whether he’d ever get back up on his feet- Lauda came back that very year and drove home to collect valuable points at the Italian Grand Prix.
From being nearly dead and buried amid grief (and where there were no hopes) to mounting the most hair-raising albeit inspiring comebacks in modern sport, Niki Lauda was, and shall always be, a great inspiration.

Today, on May 20, 2022, we pause to pay homage to a true champion of the sport who left us this very date three years ago.

For Niki Lauda was nothing less; he was a hero like no other in the sport, his computer chip-like brain perfectly capable of working out the very minute flaws that most could never simply decode in a Formula 1 car.

Lauda was called Mr. Computer during his heydays in the sport for the ruthless details into which his mind would meander in order to come forth with scrupulous, last-minute solutions that even the best ensemble of engineers would fail to arrive at.

He allied his razor-sharp awareness to his incisive, controlled but fast driving style to attain no fewer than three drivers’ titles.

So brilliant and unstoppable were he in the mid seventies in the sport’s top flight that his injury-marked absence in the 1976 season made way for James Hunt’s brilliant and only F1 career title.

With 25 wins, nine of which he won from pole, 24 fastest laps and just as many pole positions, Niki was unrelenting, aggressive, and yet, someone who knew his limits.

He wasn’t a hellraiser who’d dangle with the unknown in the toxic search to seek greatness. In the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix, another race back then which was rain-soaked to the very zenith, Niki took the brave decision of retiring from the race prematurely, when had he continued much longer, it would have assured him of perhaps another title, and thus, snatching the one that eventually went to good friend but close rival, Hunt.

Lauda’s life, therefore, pays testimony to the fact that sometimes, it’s simply mindful not to plunge into the unknown.

He drove for Ferrari, inspired Brabham and solidified McLaren together with Alain Prost.

But his finest contribution to the sport, it should be said, was that at a time where everyone was – and perhaps still is- singularly obsessed about speed and speed alone, Lauda stood for mental toughness.

He showed how that is what one ultimately needed in Formula 1 to go a long way.
Someone who actually broke away from what would’ve been an easy going, well-looked-after banking family dynasty background only to pursue his solitary love of life: Grand Prix racing.

Niki Lauda inspired, stayed true to himself, spoke bluntly, rather put that, said things how he saw them and never tried to be anyone else.

Gone but never forgotten- a true icon of our beloved sport!