Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (23 page)

And it was his dislike of travel and subsequent isolation that caused most of his problems.

He lived in his own world, entirely dependent on others for his opinions or on what he read in the newspapers. Lauda said, “His information was supplied by lackeys.”

In July, as Lauda had moved from zero to hero, the same Italian journalists who had wanted him replaced began clamoring for his contract to be extended lest he move to Brabham. As usual, Enzo Ferrari reacted to the newspapers and called Lauda in.

Enzo was frantically worried about losing Lauda, who he knew was unhappy after Luca di Montezemolo’s departure. He was also scared by talk of big money offers from Ecclestone’s Brabham. The fact that Brabham had Italian engines made that notion completely unacceptable.

But Enzo was most concerned that there had been friction between Lauda and Daniele Audetto. For all these reasons, he was desperate to get Lauda’s signature on a contract for 1977.

Renegotiating a contract midseason was a major departure from normal Ferrari practice. This was not Enzo Ferrari’s usual style; he normally liked to keep his drivers on the hook until there were no other drives available, thereby limiting their bargaining ability and pushing down their retainers.

In fact, Enzo considered himself a very shrewd tactician where drivers’ contracts were concerned. But this time his street smarts deserted him. With Lauda refusing to negotiate with Audetto, Ferrari asked his son, Piero, to join the meeting to help out.

So in late June, Lauda finally sat down for negotiations with Enzo and Piero in the back room of the Cavallino Restaurant, situated opposite the Ferrari factory in Maranello. Ferrari’s son was mainly there to interpret Enzo’s Italian into English. While Lauda’s Italian was pretty good, Enzo always professed to speak no English, so the role of an interpreter appeared vital to the theater of the negotiation.

But negotiating it with the then 78-year-old Enzo and his son, Piero, was the stuff of pantomime. Enzo was not known as “
Il commendatore
” for nothing, and he loved to play the part during the negotiations.

Lauda told Enzo straightaway that part of his contract must ensure that the team be limited to two drivers in a two-car team. Enzo agreed but rejected Lauda’s attempt to keep Clay Regazzoni as his teammate for 1977. Enzo told him straight out that Regazzoni would be fired at the end of the season. In truth, Lauda wasn’t terribly upset about that after Regazzoni’s games with Audetto in Long Beach, and he conceded the point.

Enzo then asked Lauda how much money he wanted, to which Lauda replied with an amount in Austrian schillings. As Lauda recalled in his autobiography,
To Hell and Back:
“[Mr. Ferrari] said nothing, but he stands up, goes over to the telephone, calls his accountant, Signor Della Casa, and asks him how much so and so many million schillings are in lire? He waits for a reply, replaces the receiver, walks back across the room, and sits down facing me.”

Lauda recalled that Enzo was silent for a moment and then, after a pause, suddenly screamed in Italian at the very top of his voice: “You insolent pig! How dare you? Are you crazy? We have nothing more to say to each other! We are parting company as of this minute.” Or words to that effect. His son rapidly translated the string of obscenities, and Lauda later recalled that having an interpreter somehow made the expletives more abstract. Admittedly, for Lauda the spectacle of a 78-year-old man, a legend in motor racing and a hero for all Italy, shouting at him in an unpleasant manner was very disconcerting. And that was how Enzo had planned it. But Lauda had come prepared as well. Remaining completely calm, he replied in English and said to Enzo’s son, “Please tell him that, as we are parting company, I’ll be flying home immediately.” But Piero, realizing that Lauda was not joking, said of his own volition, “Sit where you are.”

Lauda did sit, but the row continued until he invited Enzo to make him a counteroffer. Enzo, by now realizing that his intimidating tactics were not working, tried a new approach of conciliation and reasonableness. He replied that he could not make a counteroffer because he only wanted his drivers to be happy, and any counteroffer he made would only make Lauda unhappy. Lauda then said, “In that case, I really will fly home, because there’s surely no point to this if you won’t accept my price and you won’t make a counteroffer.”

After a long pause, Enzo finally offered him a contract with a retainer at 25 percent less than the figure Lauda had originally named, believed to be $300,000. It was now Lauda’s turn to get angry. He told Enzo that Daniele Audetto, in the previous informal conversations, had already offered him much more and added, “Are you trying to make a fool of me?” Feeling that Enzo was being disrespectful, he said, “You want to buy my services, and that is what they cost.” Enzo, believing Lauda was bluffing, yelled at him again: “What is that you say about Audetto?” With that, Enzo rose and called Audetto on the telephone. He ordered him to come to the Cavallino and explain himself. He was calling Lauda’s bluff. But when the hapless team manager arrived at the restaurant, he confirmed he had already offered Lauda that sum informally. Enzo scowled at Audetto, but with a twinkle in his eye. He looked at Lauda and said, “Well, if one of my employees is mad enough to offer that kind of money, I guess I’ll have to go along with it. But that’s my final offer.”

It still wasn’t high enough for Lauda, who made a counteroffer. Calling him “incorrigible,” Enzo reminded him of his blood pressure. He asked if Lauda was trying to kill him with such unreasonable demands. Lauda said to his son, “Tell him you would never have been world champion without me.” But Piero refused to translate it, knowing his father would explode again. Lauda later claimed that Enzo’s subsequent rant, heard by the entire restaurant, lasted at least half an hour.

After he had calmed down, there followed another half hour of relatively more reasonable negotiations. Finally Enzo said, “How much do you want?”

Lauda dropped his original price by 4 percent and said, “My final offer.”

Enzo replied: “Okay, Jew boy.”

And, with that, the pantomime was over.

Lauda did not take offense at Enzo’s last remark and shook his hand. His new deal, at the then exchange rates, was worth a shade under $345,000. As soon as the deal was agreed, Ferrari embraced Lauda warmly and openly, as if they had just enjoyed a convivial lunch together. As Lauda recalled: “The next moment he was a charming old man, the most delightful company anyone could imagine.”

But Enzo Ferrari would come to regret signing that contract, which included many other Lauda demands that would later save his career after he was injured. Without it, there is little doubt he would have been fired and replaced with Carlos Reutemann, and James Hunt would have been world champion long before the final race in Japan.

That new contract, signed on the eve of the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, was to save Lauda’s career.

CHAPTER
19

Hunt Takes Full Advantage

Hunt Wins as Lauda Crashes

Nürburgring: July 30–August 1, 1976

M
idmorning on Thursday July 29, 1976, Niki Lauda sat caught up in a traffic jam outside the entrance to the famous Nürburgring circuit in Germany. As he sat there, stationary in his car with the window open, a fan approached and showed him a photograph of Jochen Rindt’s grave. As the fan stared at Lauda, presumably seeking a reaction, Lauda looked at the picture bewildered; he wondered what the point of it was. How was he was supposed to react? Pleased with himself, the fan walked off, but the incident stuck in Lauda’s mind. Rindt was a fellow Austrian and had been world champion in 1970, but he was killed that same year at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, only two years before Lauda had entered Formula One. Lauda hated omens and immediately wondered whether this was one.

It signaled the start of what would be the most difficult weekend of Lauda’s life. He had been a firm opponent of competing on the Nürburgring circuit on safety grounds and had wanted it closed. Thinking it far too dangerous, Lauda had voiced his concerns in public and had taken a lot of criticism in the media for his views. He was wondering what to expect at the Nürburgring and what sort of welcome he would get.

A recent television documentary had shown German fans accusing him of being “chicken-hearted” and “cowardly” because of his views of their beloved circuit. One particular fan interviewed said that if Lauda was so terrified of the ring, he should get out of Formula One. Lauda had watched the program in Germany sitting in a hotel room on his own. Outraged by it, he said afterwards, “I was absolutely livid, knotted with rage at my inability to defend myself.”

The Nürburgring, where the 1976 German Grand Prix was scheduled to be raced on August 1, was a very different track in those days. The old Nürburgring was 14.2 miles long and unlike any other circuit in the world. Situated in the heavily forested Eiffel Mountains west of Koblenz, it was possibly the least suitable venue for a modern-day Formula One grand prix. The circuit, which had opened in 1920, was usually covered in mist and fog and was often damp, with varying weather conditions at each end. The 14.2 miles contained a staggering 177 corners.

It was without doubt the most dangerous circuit in the world. By 1976 over 140 drivers had been killed in 56 years, an average of nearly three a year. It was not until 1974, after a campaign by Jackie Stewart, that safety was addressed. Miles of catch fencing and steel guardrails were installed, finally stopping cars from flying off the circuit into the trees.

Lauda had first visited Nürburgring in 1969 as a 20-year-old driver in Formula Vee, the German equivalent of Formula Ford in Britain. His views were very different back then. As he remembers: “We didn’t think it was at all bad, only exciting.” In fact, for a long time Lauda was a big fan of the circuit, and one of his ambitions was to drive the ring perfectly. He believed it offered a challenge unlike any other. In 1973 he took a BMW saloon car round in 8 minutes and 17.4 seconds, then a record time for that class of car.

Later that same year, and again in 1974, Lauda was involved in several incidents at the circuit. It was a period when drivers were being killed on a regular basis. As lap times became faster, nothing was done about safety. Especially after Jackie Stewart had retired in 1973, the risk factor had become too high. Lauda recalls: “We were endangering not only our lives but the sport of motor racing itself by failing to do something about track safety.”

Despite the installation of catch fencing and barriers, the problems at the Nürburgring were obvious. It was impossible to make safe such a long circuit, especially as much of it was tree lined. Even with the improvements, the circuit was under constant threat of the FIA withdrawing its racing license. Finally, in 1974 a three-year program was launched to make safety improvements.

Nineteen seventy-five saw the first-ever Nürburgring lap of under seven minutes, which Lauda referred to as the “ultimate madness.” Poignantly, it was Lauda himself who drove the lap, and it has not been bettered since. He said, “It was possible only because I was in a special sort of mood that day and ready to go for broke to an extent I have never permitted myself since. As I flashed past the pits, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the mechanics waving their hands in the air. I knew then that I had cracked the seven-minute barrier. To be exact, my new Formula One lap record was 6 minutes 58.6 seconds. And that’s how it stands to this day—no one has ever driven the ring faster.”

It was a whole minute faster than when Jackie Stewart had driven his Matra155 Ford in 1968, seven years earlier. He continues: “My brain kept telling me it was sheer stupidity. I knew every driver was taking his life in his hands to the most ludicrous degree.”

Jackie Stewart, who won at the circuit three times, most famously in the wet in 1968, agreed with him and said, “I was always afraid. When I left home to race in the German Grand Prix, I always used to pause at the end of the driveway and take a long look back. I was never sure that I would come home again.”

The danger levels were so high that at a drivers’ meeting in early 1976, Lauda proposed that the German Grand Prix be moved away from the Nürburgring on safety grounds. He was hoping for a driver boycott of the circuit with immediate effect, but he was voted down, as a considerable amount of money had been spent on safety precautions.

That vote was to change Lauda’s life and the course of Formula One history. If it had gone the other way, James Hunt would never have been world champion and Lauda would have become the greatest driver the sport had ever seen. After the vote, Lauda was heavily criticized, which led to the television documentary.

Before Nürburgring, Lauda had been on top of the world. Comfortably leading the world championship, he looked certain to win again in 1976. It would have made him one of the few men to win back-to-back titles and to successfully defend a title. He had already amassed 58 points, while James Hunt had only 35.

He had other reasons to be pleased: The Ferrari management had not collapsed, as he had expected it to, after the departure of Luca di Montezemolo and the arrival of Daniele Audetto. Audetto was slowly improving as he learned the lessons of Formula One the hard way. Lauda was feeling better about the situation anyway, as he had just signed a brand-new and highly lucrative contract with Ferrari for the 1977 season. The contract was worth six times the money his chief rival, James Hunt, was being paid by Marlboro-McLaren.