To hell and back, p.6
To Hell and Back, page 6
No, says Ferrari, he can’t make a counter-offer, because he only wants his drivers to be happy and any counter-offer he makes will only make me unhappy. In that case, I say, I really will fly home, because there’s surely no point to this if he won’t accept my price and he won’t make a counter-offer.
At last Ferrari names a figure, a good 25 per cent below mine and expressed in lire. I blow my top and say to Piero he should tell him that his team chief has already offered me a few million more lire than that. Is he trying to make a fool of me? I am genuinely angry now because of the lack of mutual respect: we are equal partners – he wants to buy my services and that is what they cost.
‘What’s that you say about Audetto?’ yells the Old Man.
‘Call him in and ask him.’
Audetto is called. How much did he offer me? Is that the amount? ‘That’s right,’ says Audetto. ‘That’s what I offered him.’
‘Well,’ says Ferrari, ‘if one of my employees is mad enough to offer that kind of money, I guess I’ll have to go along with it.’ Audetto is sent out of the room (‘I’ll talk to you later’).
‘But that’s my final offer,’ bellows Ferrari.
As a sign of goodwill, I come down a percentage point from my original demand. Very calm. Ferrari calms down too: ‘You’re incorrigible. It’s mad, it’s too much, enough is enough. Think about my nerves. What are you trying to do, kill me?’
I turn to Piero: ‘Tell him that Ferrari would never have been world champion without me.’
Piero: ‘No, I can’t translate that, I won’t.’
‘Go on, don’t be a coward. Tell him. Now.’
Piero braces himself. He is blushing. He translates.
Ferrari starts his bellowing again. We go at it for another hour or so until he finally asks again: ‘How much do you want?’ And I drop another 4 per cent. My final offer.
‘Okay, ebreo,’ says Ferrari. Okay, Jew-boy.
He’s entitled to say that – he’s paying.
The next moment he is pleasant and friendly again. A charming old man, the most delightful company anyone could imagine.
CHAPTER FOUR
NÜRBURGRING
I CRASHED AT the Nürburgring on 1 August 1976.
The media have played it up as some kind of personal vendetta or overdramatised the whole business along the lines of a Man and his Destiny. They contrived to make a mystery out of something that never existed. Let me start from the beginning.
I first came into contact with the Ring in 1969 as a twenty-year-old driving Formula Vee. We all thought being there was fantastic and went at it hammer and tongs. If you spun out, you ploughed through the shrubbery and it swallowed you up. When all that greenery closed in behind you, no one knew where you were. We didn’t think that was at all bad, only exciting.
By the early seventies I had become more and more involved with the Ring – technically, that is, not emotionally. My ambition was to drive the Ring perfectly and, because it is such an enormously long circuit, it offered so much more in the way of a challenge than any other.
I drove the Ring in my Touring Class days and, in 1973, I clocked 8:17.4 in a twin-valve BMW, sending shivers down the spectators’ spines.
I had shunts on the Ring, too. In 1973 I went for a 300-yard sleigh-ride along one of the embankments. And, in 1974, I collided with Jody Scheckter. Well, that’s all part of the sport.
By then, however, a lot of drivers were being killed – on the Ring as well as on other circuits all over the world. It was increasingly plain that, as lap times got faster and faster, we were endangering not only our lives but the sport of motor racing itself, by failing to do something about track safety. Responsible drivers, responsible journalists and responsible race officials started working to improve matters, with Jackie Stewart as standard-bearer.
The problems posed by the Nürburgring were obvious at a glance. Its layout made it the most difficult circuit imaginable. It was well-nigh impossible to render safe 14.2 miles of tree-lined track. In the long term, a circuit like the Ring couldn’t survive. However, a three-year programme (1974–76) was launched to make some improvements, as regards guard-rails, for example. Even so, it was certain that the FIA, as the sport’s governing body was known then, would subsequently withdraw the Ring’s licence.
The year I won my first world championship – 1975 – saw the ultimate madness: a first-ever Nürburgring lap under seven minutes. This came during Saturday qualifying and 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 rear-view 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 1 lap record was 6:58.6. And that’s how it stands to this day – no one has ever driven the Ring faster. (The record books show how times improved over the years: the ten-minute barrier was broken by Hermann Lang in a Mercedes in 1939; Phil Hill clocked under nine minutes in a Ferrari in 1961; and Jackie Stewart came home in under eight minutes in a Matra in 1968.)
I steeled myself to drive that fast lap in 1975 although my brain kept telling me it was sheer stupidity. The antithesis between the modern-day racing car and the Stone Age circuit was such that I knew every driver was taking his life in his hands to the most ludicrous degree.
At a drivers’ meeting in spring 1976 I proposed that we boycott the Ring. I was voted down and I accepted the decision; after all, I had to admit that a considerable amount of money had been spent to step up safety precautions. However, the mere fact that I had made such a proposal was enough to spark off the legend of Lauda and the Ring and the antagonism I felt towards it. That was nonsense – I had merely expressed a professional opinion.
My shunt came later that season. At the end of the year the FIA licence for the Nürburgring was automatically withdrawn. These two facts were wholly coincidental. The FIA move had nothing to do with what happened to me.
Reporters have urged me repeatedly to return to the scene of the shunt, to act out, as it were, some kind of pious ritual. God knows what they expect of me: that I’ll let my emotions run riot and burst into tears? Or that, by being back at the scene again, all the minutiae of the drama will come flooding back? Unfortunately for them, when I do go back and look at that harmless left-hander that we always took flat-out, I’m more liable to say, ‘Ah, yes, the Grill Room.’ And they’ll go away thinking what a cold bastard that Lauda is.
Returning to the spot where it all took place stirs no emotions in me at all. Even if I go back fifty times, it will always leave me cold.
I recall bits before. I recall bits after. But I recollect nothing during, not a damn thing. Except a big, black hole.
I arrive the previous Thursday and drive through the team trailer park in my own private car. I am caught in a small traffic jam. A man comes over to the car and shoves a picture through the open window: Jochen Rindt’s grave. He is plainly quite delighted with himself because he has been able to show it to me. What is he trying to say? What kind of reaction am I supposed to have? I have no idea.
That scene comes to mind because there was a lot of talk about death then, and the idea seems to have given certain people a kind of perverse pleasure.
Next, I remember a sports programme on television. I am watching it in my hotel room in Adenau. Someone is ranting about that cowardly so-and-so Lauda who is at the root of all this anti-Nürburgring campaign. What it comes down to is this: if Lauda is so chicken-hearted, so terrified, then he should get out of Formula 1. Sitting there alone in front of the TV set, I was absolutely livid, knotted with rage at my inability to defend myself.
I remember bumping into Helmut Zwickl, the journalist, early on Sunday morning. He tells me that the Reichsbrücke has collapsed. This is simply incredible: the biggest bridge in all Austria has toppled into the Danube, just like that. But because it happens in the early hours of a Sunday morning, only one life has been lost, not a couple of hundred as might otherwise have been the case. I don’t know what to make of this grotesque piece of news. I am stunned. I have to get it out of my mind as quickly as possible.
My last recollection before the race is of changing from wets to slicks and driving away from the pits.
Next, the chatter of a helicopter. I’m lying in bed. I’m tired. I want to sleep. I don’t want to know any more. It will all be over soon.
Only after four days in intensive care did it emerge that I would pull through. Serious damage had been done to my lungs and blood as a result of inhaling the smoke and petrol fumes. The burns on my face, head and hands were severe but not critical, although the scars they left are more permanent.
Mercifully, I wasn’t in a fit state to read a newspaper. Bild ran one headline which asked: ‘My God, where is his face?’ The piece explained: ‘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.’ Once I was over the worst (but, fortunately, still unable to read the newspaper reports), Bild ran a follow-up: ‘Niki Lauda has survived … but how can a man exist without a face?’ The story then went on to forecast what life would be like for Lauda: ‘How can he face life without a face? 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 recognisable to his friends through his voice and his gestures.’
Admit it, I seem to have done a bit better than they predicted.
As soon as I had been discharged from hospital in Mannheim and brought back home to Salzburg, I was shown a film of the shunt taken by a fifteen-year-old boy with his 8-mm movie camera. It showed my Ferrari jerking right, crashing through the safety netting, slamming into the embankment and bouncing back onto the track. The whole incident must have taken place at or around 125mph. As the car rebounded onto the circuit, you could see the petrol tank flying through the air. The Ferrari was straddling the ideal line as Brett Lunger came through, smashing into it and pushing it some hundred yards down the track. It burst into flames.
Other photographic evidence uncovered later shows how powerless the safety marshal was without fire-proof clothing. Also how other drivers – Guy Edwards, Brett Lunger, Harald Ertl – tried to rescue me. But my real saviour was Arturo Merzario, who plunged into the flames with total disregard for his own life and unbuckled my safety harness.
When I saw the first film, I obviously knew that that was me, that something was happening to me. But, somehow, I felt completely detached from it – it was a horrendous shunt that someone was involved in, but I couldn’t relate what I was seeing to myself. I didn’t remember. There was no correlation between the film and my present state; the driver on the screen was a total stranger. There it all was: jack-knife, impact, slide, flames. ‘Look at that. God Almighty, look at that.’
No official statement was ever released as to the cause of the shunt. No comment was forthcoming from Ferrari and I clearly could contribute nothing because my memory had been erased. Today, I would hazard a guess as to the probable cause. It is very close to the theory propounded right from the start by Ferrari’s head mechanic at the time, Ermanno Cuoghi.
The engine unit in a modern racing car is a load-bearing component. It is connected to the suspension via a magnesium tie-rod, part of the car’s steering mechanism. Cuoghi thought that the tie-rod rear left detached from the engine unit. When this happens, the rear wheel mounting goes, and the wheel angles out and blocks. This would account for the sudden jerk to the right. Cuoghi knew that Ferrari had encountered problems with this before.
I seem to remember now, however, that, just before the shunt, I had driven over a kerb with my left front wheel. This was unintentional, of course, but the lapse was an insignificant one to the extent that the kerbs at the Ring are shallow and, as such, comparatively harmless. It is feasible, however, that the shock of the impact went right through the car.
I have always claimed that Nürburgring had no lasting effect on my state of mind, my attitude, my performance. This is true, although I am uncertain as to what extent having gone through that inferno affects me subconsciously.
Basically, my talent for overriding my emotions by staying detached and objective has served me well. There is really no point in having a complex about losing half an ear. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror: that’s you, that’s the way you are. And if people don’t like you that way you might as well forget them. (I even capitalised on my semi-baldness by signing with Parmalat to wear a cap with their name on it; even now I’m retired, that cap still has the same promotional value.)
Waking or sleeping, the shunt doesn’t haunt or obsess me, since I did not consciously experience the flames. Once, and only once, was there any throwback to my fight for survival. That was in 1984, on Ibiza.
A friend of ours had left a joint at our place. Cannabis is quite popular on Ibiza, although Marlene and I don’t normally touch the stuff. Nevertheless, there must have been something that night that persuaded us to light up.
We are sitting upstairs in the living room. Nothing happens for twenty minutes or so, but then it hits me so intensely that I realise afterwards that the stuff we are smoking must be something special.
We are speaking about this and that, and start laughing at the most trivial statements. Eventually, the laughter gets so bad that Marlene can’t stop. I am lying on the couch and my body starts to feel so heavy that I can’t move a muscle. It is beautiful lying there in a stupor, my tongue lolling out of the corner of my mouth.
Marlene clearly feels the effects less than I do. Suddenly, she is completely lucid – and concerned about my condition. Concentrate, she keeps saying, concentrate, do something. But I just lie there, blissfully happy, saying over and over: ‘Got to get out of here.’ Somewhere at the back of my mind I know that something is wrong, but the way I feel is too pleasurable to want to do anything about it.
Marlene won’t let go. Do something! do something! Click your fingers! I hold up two fingers, focus and try to click them. They move in the wrong direction. Marlene is getting more and more alarmed. Panicking. Let’s talk about something, she says. Anything. Say the first thing that comes into your head. Who invented penicillin?
‘Mr Penicillin.’
I am completely out of my mind.
Suddenly, it hits me. Nürburgring. Intensive-care unit. I am falling into a big black hole. I am slipping backwards, somersaulting into a huge void, and that will be the end of it. Please let me die, I say to Marlene. It’s such a beautiful feeling. I am falling. Weightless. Exactly like it was in the intensive-care unit.
Cut it out, says Marlene. Get on your feet. I have great difficulty standing up. Then I start to play the fool. After what seems like a long time Marlene suggests we get some sleep.
I go into the bathroom and become fascinated by the hole in the washbasin. Another hole. I gaze down into it. There it is again. Let me fall into it. But Marlene hasn’t left me on my own, she is right there behind me. She boots my behind. That’s enough, you idiot.
For me, however, the situation is not in the least bit funny – it is deadly serious. There is the hole and I want to fall into it, just the way I felt after Nürburgring.
In the intensive-care unit it was snatches of conversation – the surgeon, Marlene – which forced me to start thinking again, gradually piecing together the situation I was in and beginning to will myself out of it. I had to live. I had to get my brain working. I must not give in to this beautiful feeling of slipping into the hole. Clinging desperately to a tiny scrap of reality – a conversation between two human beings – helped me to survive.
I slept very badly that night in Ibiza and was still in a daze the next morning. I went into a café in Santa Eulalia and grinned vacantly at all the customers. The seriousness had deserted me: I was feeling gregarious, gemütlich.
Once I returned to normal I swore that I would never touch that stuff again. Even though the experience was fascinating to the extent that it had allowed me to recapture exactly my mental state after Nürburgring. That was the only time in the ten years since the shunt that any involuntary associations had caught up with me.
I made a quick recovery as far as damage to the vital organs was concerned, but my superficial injuries turned out to be more complicated.
Both eyelids had been burnt away, and six different surgeons volunteered six different opinions on how best to effect repairs. I finally opted for an eye surgeon in St Gallen, Switzerland. He took skin from behind the ears to graft on new eyelids. They worked perfectly for a few years, but the right eye started playing up towards the end of 1982. The lower lid wouldn’t close completely, not even when I was asleep, and the eye became seriously inflamed.
I went to the most celebrated man in the field, Ivo Pitanguy, the Michelangelo of plastic surgery, or so I once read afterwards. He lives in Rio, but I made contact with him initially by going up to Gstaad, where Michelangelo was skiing.
He took one look at me and his eyes lit up. He spent only a second or two examining the real problem area, the lower lid of the right eye, but everything else had his rapt attention. The missing half of my right ear, the eyebrows, the scar tissue. Beautiful, he said. We’ll take out some rib cartilage and build you a completely new ear; we’ll take hair from the back of your head and fix up some new eyebrows; we’ll fix the bald patch on the right-hand side while we’re at it; we’ll transplant from here, and so on. He was in his element.
It took me a good half-hour to make him understand that I would be racing again when the new season got under way in three months’ time and that the only thing I was concerned about was having my right eye fixed. That would take time enough on its own, and I didn’t want a new right ear made of rib cartilage.
