Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (9 page)

Lauda was then briefly challenged by Jean-Pierre Jarier’s Shadow-Ford car, which was flying and looked set to overtake him. With nine laps to go, Jarier drove the fastest lap of the race. But at that moment, Hunt inadvertently delivered to Lauda a huge favor. Hunt’s throttle jammed wide open and threw him into the catch fencing at high speed. Catch fencing, widely used in that era of Formula One, had many faults; but that day it probably saved Hunt’s life. That, coupled with his skill in spinning the car around, prevented what would have been a major accident. As it was, Hunt was able to get his car out of the fencing with the engine still running, and he drove it back onto the track. But the oil cooler had been ripped off, and it had deposited an oil slick on the track just as Lauda and Jarier were coming around. Lauda’s greater experience and cunning enabled him to navigate his way through without mishap. But Jarier couldn’t; he locked his tires and skidded off into the barrier, crumpling the car and leaving Lauda to cruise to victory.

Lauda’s win had been heavily aided by the problems of Regazzoni, Hunt, and Jarier, all of whom would most likely have beaten him on the day. But Lauda didn’t see it that way at all and was ecstatic that he had vanquished all his rivals, including Emerson Fittipaldi, who brought his dire Copersucar car in 13th in front of some very disappointed fans. Jochen Mass finished sixth.

Lauda didn’t care how the victory had been achieved and believed he had taken on all comers and demolished them. But Hunt was brutally honest about his own performance: “I wasn’t quite quick enough; I was about five seconds behind Niki when I had trouble. A trumpet fell off and the engine started misfiring, and then, not content with that, it jumped down the throttle slides, which stuck it open in the middle of a great long corner. I wasn’t man enough to handle that, even though it was only on seven cylinders.”

After all the drama of qualifying, Hunt was magnanimous in defeat. And any thoughts that Mayer had had of firing him were completely gone. Both men were relieved when the race was over, and discord turned to complete harmony. In post-race chats to journalists, it was all sweetness and light. In fact, Hunt seemed to have completely forgotten all the acrimony that had gone on over the previous three days: “Fortunately we got it all together, and I think everyone—particularly Teddy, John (Hogan), and me—breathed a huge sigh of relief.”

Alastair Caldwell had also completely changed his tune and now declared how glad he was to have Hunt in the team. He had never imagined that Hunt would be faster than Jochen Mass, and when it happened, he was genuinely stunned. Caldwell famously said, “This unknown bloke came in and blew Mass away. It doesn’t matter if the guy has got number one written on his forehead or tattooed over his whole body, if he’s second fastest, he’s number two—period.”

The same situation, albeit in an entirely different manner, was manifesting itself in the Ferrari garage. Niki Lauda had carried on where he had left off, and Daniele Audetto had won his first race as Ferrari team manager. It seemed both of them could walk on water, and they temporarily forgot their differences.

But there was one crucial difference between the McLaren and Ferrari teams as they both packed up to leave for home: While Caldwell, Mayer, and Hunt had genuinely put their differences aside and harbored no rancor, Lauda and Audetto’s rapprochement was only temporary. Audetto was seething that Regazzoni had not won, and Lauda told friends he believed Audetto was a pompous clown.

In the end, it was the politics that would decide the outcome of the 1976 Formula One world championship—not the drivers, nor the cars, nor the teams.

CHAPTER
4

Niki’s Women Problems

Marlene Replaces Mariella

Summer 1975

S
ometime in the middle of 1975, Niki Lauda fell out of love with his girlfriend of eight years, Mariella von Reininghaus. The sudden realization that, after all, he would not eventually marry Mariella was the equivalent to a volcanic eruption in his emotions.

As romantic as the next man but devoid of many of the emotions of normal human beings, Lauda had always struggled with his love life. He was a man whose metaphysical makeup evolved at different, inconsistent speeds over long and undefined periods of his life—sometimes suddenly changing without warning.

Emotionally he lacked consistency of purpose, which often led him into sudden decisions and diversions that defied logical analysis. It was a trait that followed him throughout his life and at times gave him that special edge that was often the difference between success and failure. When the traits were deployed well, they worked phenomenally well. But when not deployed well, they had the inevitable consequences, which often took years to play out due to the complexity of the thoughts behind them.

To understand Niki Lauda, it was necessary to know him and to have observed him over a lifetime, so unusual was his emotional makeup. In time, the giants of motor racing, including people such as Enzo Ferrari, Bernie Ecclestone, and Ron Dennis were to run up against that curious concoction of emotions and emerge second best.

In contrast, James Hunt was a simple man: easy to understand, easy to fathom, and therefore easy to predict. But that could never be said of Niki Lauda.

The most obvious discrepancy in Lauda’s character was inconsistency. Lauda very often displayed the most inconsistent urges that could possibly be present in a human being. He would strongly criticize and condemn others, sometimes publicly but often in private, and then immediately display the same foibles and failures himself.

Suffice to say that Lauda’s emotional and intellectual constitution was not the standard off-the-shelf variety. And that all manifested itself in the summer of 1975, when he switched off his fiancée of eight years and flicked to another woman, whom he had met at a party.

The Lauda/von Reininghaus relationship was almost an institution within Formula One’s tight-knit community. Outside the sport they were one of Europe’s best-known and loved celebrity couples. In the top social salons of continental Europe, they were the top go-to couple.

Almost everyone regarded their relationship as near perfect. Mariella was an extraordinary woman in every way, striking to look at and owning a personality that was very easy to like. If Europe had then had an eligible woman league table, Mariella would have been at the top.

The fact that she was also one of the best-connected young women in Austria seemed almost inconsequential. Added to that the fact that she was the daughter of an Austrian brewery millionaire and the product of an enormously wealthy family, she was indeed the perfect woman that Lauda had always sought and seemingly found so early in his life.

If Mariella had a fault, it was with her sexuality. Outwardly she had sex appeal, but inwardly she was reserved.

They met when they were both teenagers, and she was his first girlfriend and he her first boyfriend. He was attracted to her smooth beauty and she to his dashing lifestyle. Although he was perpetually broke, he drove a Porsche 911S. She liked his seemingly endless ambition to get on at such a young age and found life around him to be exciting.

He found her totally undemanding and willing to fit in with the life of an aspiring racing driver. She was content to let him take the limelight and to settle down as his shadow. Socially, however, Lauda was in her shadow; he was not in her class.

Success in his career was the objective that both of them worked toward. Mariella devoted years to supporting her young boyfriend as he struggled to make it as a racing driver.

Lauda admitted that Mariella had all the qualities that he really looked for and respected in a woman. As he said many times: “Mariella was very disciplined, quiet, thoughtful, and with endless patience.” So it was no surprise when he proposed to her soon after they met, although no wedding date was ever set.

Lauda was just as keen as Mariella toward that end, and he called his relationship with her a near-marriage. He said about her, “I was almost certain we would get married.” Her personality suited his career perfectly, as Lauda always readily admitted. As he described it: “During test driving and practice, she could sit for hours on a heap of tires without moving or speaking; she was good at yoga! If I came by once an hour and gave her a kiss, she was perfectly satisfied. Her self-control was sometimes almost uncanny.”

But the downside of Mariella, and an aspect Lauda railed against, was the total control she sought over his life. As he explained: “She had great influence over me and tried to have even more. Up to that point, I was glad to let this happen.”

There was, however, a sting in the tail. As soon as he was successful, Mariella expected her boyfriend to retire from racing and to settle into a safer, more predictable career. While he was unsuccessful, Lauda went along with that. And he couldn’t imagine being with anyone except her.

All went along swimmingly until Lauda signed for Ferrari in 1974. For the first time they had money. With some of the cash, they bought land outside Salzburg for their dream home, for when they got married and started a family. It was something that was absolutely taken for granted in the relationship.

Mariella firmly believed that once her boyfriend had achieved his goals and become world champion, he would be true to his promise made many years earlier and would give up his complete obsession with motor racing and devote himself to her and a family—she really believed that. She thought they were an unbreakable team, and so did he.

But she hadn’t counted on success changing Lauda into something he wasn’t when he was 18 and struggling. It has to be said: It wasn’t a change for the better.

As soon as Lauda tasted success, he wanted more and more. When he had been a failure as a race driver, it was easy to think of stopping, as Lauda got no pleasure from losing. But success changed all that, and Mariella failed to notice.

Typically, racing drivers are pleasant people on the way up and after they retire. During the successful years, however, they often change into egomaniacal monsters, and Lauda, although not the worst example in history, was not immune from those pressures. It was reflected in the way Lauda often treated autograph hunters. The coldness with which he dismissed them, even young children, often shocked people.

Mariella did not notice the personality changes that were gradually starting to happen. The difference between them was that she put the relationship first, and he put motor racing first. Lauda explained: “She began to make plans for me to give up driving; become world champion, then finish it. Family, a decent job, that was her line, and she pushed it hard.”

But once he had tasted that success, after years of being forced to swallow failure, Lauda was never going to give up racing. After one world championship, he simply desired a second. He was a consummate risk taker, and she failed to recognize that. Mariella simply wanted a family and a loving husband. His success and retirement to normal life was an essential part of Mariella’s ambitions and her life plan, and she would make any sacrifice to get it. Lauda, however, admitted, “I had no desire to retire at the age of 26. Even though age had little to do with it, I simply didn’t want to do it.”

When that became clear, strife came into their relationship for the first time. Lauda even began to dislike elements of Mariella’s personality—an emotion he had never felt in all the years they had been together. But she simply didn’t notice.

Lauda could see that if he did not retire at the end of 1975, as Mariella expected, there would be trouble. As he said, “I dreaded the endless arguments that would ensue if, in fact, I stayed in racing after becoming world champion. We quarreled more and more often.”

But having money brought matters to a head. It meant they could afford to build a dream home. The building of a new house, their eventual marital home, gave Mariella a real purpose in life for the first time, and she threw herself into it. As Lauda was winning his first world championship in 1975, Mariella was overseeing the architect building the house.

During 1975 they naturally began to see less of each other, and the split happened gradually, without either really being aware of it. As Lauda admits, the house took over Mariella’s life as much as motor racing had taken over his: “Everything to do with my house, the building of which she almost took over.” In 1975 they both had too much else to think about, and when they finally did look to each other, it was too late—it was already over.

There is no question that Lauda was frightened of the consequences of splitting up with Mariella. For all of his success and fame, he was no match for her as a human being. And deep down he knew it. Mariella von Reininghaus was deeply loved by everyone Lauda knew. He knew that everyone, certainly everyone who mattered, held Mariella in the very highest regard.

He too held her in the highest esteem; the only problem was that after eight years, he had fallen out of love with her, and it took the arrival of a new woman in his life for him to do anything about it.

Lauda met Marlene Knaus in the summer of 1975. She was half Latin and half Austrian and worked as a part-time actress and model. Her family was not wealthy like Mariella’s, but it was very distinguished. Her grandfather was a renowned gynecologist and her father a famous Austrian painter.

The relationship started at the Salzburg home of Hollywood actor Curt Jurgens. Jurgens was one of Austria’s best-known celebrities and a Hollywood superstar in his prime. Now aging and past his peak years, he was still in huge demand as a supporting actor in a variety of roles from James Bond films to serious dramas. He had earned at least $4 million over 40 years as an actor. He was also a consummate ladies’ man and a playboy and held legendary parties at his various homes.