Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (25 page)

No more than 40 minutes after the accident, Lauda was transferred to the circuit helicopter and airlifted off the track. Upon seeing the extent of his injuries, doctors anesthetized him in the helicopter and he gradually lost consciousness. Lauda had endured his injuries incredibly bravely and had been fully conscious for over three-quarters of an hour. As he drifted off, the last thing he would remember was the clatter of the helicopter blades as they took off. He recalled: “The first thing I remember is the sound of the helicopter engine starting up. I asked the pilot where we were and where we were going.”

As he watched the helicopter take off, it was a moment that Lauda’s personal airplane pilot, Hans Klemitinger, had always dreaded. He had long rehearsed in his own mind what he would do if his boss was ever injured and taken to hospital. He knew immediately that his duty would be to go to Marlene Lauda’s side. So anticipating events, he decided to fly to Salzburg the moment he saw the helicopter go off. He took off in Lauda’s Cessna Golden Eagle airplane as quickly as he could. Klemitinger knew Marlene would want to be at her husband’s side as quickly as possible.

Marlene was still recovering from the miscarriage she had endured in May and was now suffering from low blood pressure. But she put that to one side, and immediately upon hearing about the accident, she also anticipated Klemitinger’s actions and got in her car and drove the 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to Salzburg airport to await the plane landing.

So she was already at the airport when Klemitinger landed, and they were at the hospital within hours of her husband’s arrival there. Marlene said later: “At the time I had no idea how badly injured he would be. I was told he was all right, but that he was in hospital. It was not until I spoke to the doctors and was allowed to see him that the shock hit me.”

As the helicopter landed at Ludwigshafen, Lauda’s luck was in. As he explained: “From that moment, all the bad luck turned to good luck. They sent me to the best hospital in Germany. Remember that it was a Sunday afternoon, but when I got to Ludwigshafen burns unit, the boss of the whole place just happened to be there at the time. He took one look at me and immediately decided that the burns on my face were secondary to the burns in the lungs. So he sent me to the intensive care unit in Manheim. There my luck was still good. The youngest professor in Germany just happened to be working that Sunday. His name is Professor Peter, and I owe him my life. He did everything absolutely right and never made a wrong move.” And the one thing he did right in particular was to not give Lauda oxygen. As he ruefully recalled to
Daily Express
motoring editor David Benson a few weeks later: “You must realize that the medical knowledge about treating lung damage is not as great as in some other areas. If, for example, I had been given oxygen—which would seem logical for someone with damaged lungs—I would have been dead immediately.”

A team of six dedicated doctors and 34 nurses tended to Lauda. His injuries were diagnosed as first- to third-degree burns on his head and wrists, several broken ribs, and a broken collarbone and cheekbone. But as the doctors at Ludwigshafen Hospital had observed, of much more serious concern were the poisonous fumes and toxic gases he had inhaled. His windpipe and lungs were scorched, and the subsequent build-up of fluid in his lungs was already life threatening.

That night the doctors thought he was going to die as they battled to drain the fluids in his lungs through that first 24 hours. While there had been no single great injury, serious damage had been done to his lungs and to his bloodstream, which was poisoned as a result of inhaling the fire extinguisher fumes, smoke, and petrol vapor. The burns on his face, head, and hands were severe, although not critical. And, crucially, there was no impairment to his mental capacity.

Lauda later recalled that first night and his fight to survive: “On the Sunday night, they put a tube down my throat into the lungs and connected it to a vacuum pump to drain off the liquid and the infections. This was critical, because if the pump was used too much, it would destroy the lungs. From the Sunday night, my brain was always functioning, but I felt that my body was giving up. I could just hear voices very far away and a little out of reach. I concentrated on these voices to stop myself becoming completely unconscious.”

The world woke up on Monday morning to newspapers full of stories of how Niki Lauda, the world reigning Formula One world champion was clinging on to life and that his doctors did not think he would pull through.

That Monday morning, when James Hunt heard that Lauda was fighting for his life, he was devastated. Although they were rivals and their friendship had suffered as a result, he said, “It was suddenly very important for me that Niki should live, in a way I hadn’t realized. And I felt awful because there was nothing I could do about it. There I was, sitting at home, enjoying life when I didn’t even particularly want to; I wanted to go and help or do something, and I couldn’t.”

Lauda’s lungs were in a terrible state, and when they X-rayed him on Tuesday, the X-rays revealed they were getting worse. The oxygen count in his blood, which was below the life-maintaining level of a figure of 8, went down to 6.8, an extremely dangerous level.

Marlene Lauda was entirely unprepared for the ordeal she faced but has never spoken of the moment she was told her husband would certainly die. As Lauda recalled: “The doctors told my wife that there was no hope that I would survive.”

For four long days and nights, Marlene Lauda watched as her husband’s life hung by a thread. She moved into a hotel near the hospital, visiting her husband for only an hour at a time. Each visit to the hospital was accompanied by a barrage of flashbulbs and journalists looking for answers to questions and hoping to record her anguish. She said, “I was deeply shocked by the accident, but it gave me my first real understanding of motor racing. Before that, I had no idea of the dangers of the racetrack. I used to smoke maybe one or two cigarettes a day, but from the time of the accident, I have become a chain-smoker. I know that this is not good for my health, but it helps me through the crisis.”

Lauda said of that period: “All the time, I was listening to the doctors and trying to cooperate as much as possible—no matter what personal pain it would cost. For example, they could only use the vacuum pump to my lungs for about an hour at a time. But when I felt the lungs filling up, then I called for them to switch it on, even though the pain was enormous. The doctors told me that it was the first time that anyone had asked for the pump to be switched on himself. But I knew that I could only survive if I followed every instruction of the doctors.”

Lauda recalled: “My wife, Marlene, was marvelous. It was very shocking for her, but never once did I feel what she was going through when she was with me at the hospital. She would hold my hand and keep on telling me that I was going to get well again. She must have been terrified by my face, but she only made me feel that I was a great man and gave me the will to get well. So many women would have cried or have become hysterical. I discovered that there was a much greater depth to Marlene than even I had realized.”

On Wednesday, as he deteriorated further, a priest was brought into Lauda’s room to give him the last rites. Wavering in and out of consciousness, it was clear that Lauda did not like the intervention of the priest. As he admitted: “At one point I was asked if I wanted to see a priest. So I said, ‘OK.’ He came in and gave me the last rites, crossed my shoulder, and said, ‘Goodbye my friend.’ I nearly had a heart attack! I wanted someone to help me to live in this world not pass into the next. So I clung on to the voices and to my wife’s strength. I would not let myself become unconscious, because I was afraid that I would die. I wanted to keep my mind awake to start the body working again. I knew that if I gave up mentally, then I would be dead. My life was also saved because I was very fit before the accident. And as I have never smoked in my life, my lungs had maybe an extra percent capacity, which helped me work against the infection.”

Lauda survived by sheer force of will, although some people did suggest that the reading of the last rites was a ruse by Lauda to mislead Hunt about the extent of his injuries. Lauda admitted, “I do not believe in a personal God, but I believe that there is something more than this life. And I live by the rules. My strength to live after the accident came from this, from my own mind. And from my wife.”

But after only four days in intensive care, there started to emerge hope that he would pull through, although from reading newspapers no one would have been aware of that. Lauda remembered that moment well: “Three days after the accident, the lungs began to get better. My blood count though was still bad, with the oxygen at the 6.8 level. This stayed the same for a week. “Nobody knew if my system would start working again and produce enough oxygen for the blood. If it didn’t restart, then they could have changed my blood every so often, but they knew that I would then only have one or two years in which to live. So they put new blood into me and waited to see the reactions. After four days it slowly improved, and they changed the blood again. By now my system was working and I was back to normal with the right amount of oxygen in my blood. They did not have to change it anymore.”

Immediately after the accident, newspapers, especially in Germany, began writing tasteless articles speculating on the extent of Lauda’s facial burns, relying on very sketchy information that had been ferreted from hospital staff. Journalists at the German newspaper
Bild
were particularly shameless. In an article with the headline “My God, where is his face?” one journalist wrote: “Niki Lauda, the world’s fastest racing driver, no longer has a face. It is no more than raw flesh with eyes oozing out of it. Niki Lauda has survived … but how can a man exist without a face?” The story went on to forecast what life would be like for Lauda, continuing: “Horrible as it may sound, even if his body recovers completely, he will not venture into public for six months at least. It will be 1979 before they can build him a new face. By then, nose, eyelids and lips will have been refashioned. But the new face will not bear the slightest resemblance to the one he had before. Lauda the racing driver will only be recognizable to his friends through his voice and his gestures.”

Indeed, when Lauda was first given a mirror to see the extent of his facial injuries, he recoiled. As he so colorfully described: “They showed me my face in a mirror. I looked at myself and I could not believe it. I looked like some grotesque animal, because my whole head and neck were swollen to three times the normal size. You would not believe it could be a human being. I’m told that this is because I had been in 800 degrees of heat in the fire and the body had pumped excessive liquid to the burned areas. I was swelling up even as I looked in the mirror, and then my eyes closed and I was blind for five days. Everything was a big mass of nothing.”

Although the newspaper account was all third-hand speculative nonsense, it sold a lot of newspapers that week. True to form, Enzo Ferrari believed everything he read in the newspapers. It was his driver’s second major injury of the year, and this time it was not only Italian journalists who were saying Lauda was finished. Enzo entered into panic negotiations with disaffected Brabham driver Carlos Reutemann to replace Lauda immediately. But a few days later, Lauda had recovered sufficiently to be airlifted to Salzburg Hospital, nearer to his home. There he would begin his astoundingly quick recovery on his way to the starting grid at Monza.

CHAPTER
21

Watson Denies Hunt the Advantage

Lauda Watches from His Hospital Bed

Austria: August 13–15, 1976

N
iki Lauda’s accident and the Ferrari team’s absence from the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix was the worst possible news for the organizers and promoters of the race. Lauda and the Ferrari team were its biggest draw, and their absence cost the promoters hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost ticket income. Enthusiastic Italians had always poured over the borders between Austria and Italy to support the Ferrari team. Now they didn’t come.

The promoters were very surprised when Daniele Audetto withdrew the entire Ferrari team; they had been expecting a replacement driver in Lauda’s car at the very least. The damage was compounded by the loss of Clay Regazzoni, which also decimated the Swiss fan contingent, who usually traveled to Austria to see him race. Tens of thousands of them who normally flocked over the Swiss border stayed away.

In the days after Lauda’s accident, Audetto had argued strongly that the Grand Prix at the Österreichring should be canceled altogether out of respect for Niki Lauda. It would have suited Ferrari perfectly had that happened. But the campaign to cancel the race incensed the organizers, and the compassionate plea was greeted with cynicism by those accustomed to Ferrari’s reputation for manipulating situations to the team’s advantage. There was no possible reason to cancel the race, and Audetto knew it. But it was his job to try.

With that route exhausted, and against Audetto’s advice, Enzo Ferrari withdrew his cars from the Austrian event, ostensibly as a mark of respect for Lauda. But the decision demonstrated that at 78 years old, he seemed incapable of rational decision making. But there was now no doubt that he was back in charge and calling the shots after the departure of Luca di Montezemolo.

Enzo announced he felt cheated by what had happened at the Appeal Court in Paris and at Brands Hatch in the British Grand Prix. Enzo threatened to boycott Formula One until such a time when “the rules were enforced and justice prevailed.” Bizarrely, Enzo also blamed Lauda personally for causing the crash at the Nürburgring, thereby absolving his own engineers of any blame for the mechanical failure that was known to have caused the accident. James Hunt felt very sorry for Lauda and what was happening in his absence. Speaking to reporters, he called Enzo Ferrari “an old man behaving like a child.”