The last time Lauda drove an F1 car

The last time Niki Lauda raced a Formula 1 car, Jennifer Rush was wailing away at number one with the Power of Love. A pint of beer was a very reasonable 72p and Jenson Button was just five years old.

But last Sunday the 52-year-old boss of Jaguar Racing donned his famous orange and white crash helmet one more time and set off on a lap of the Valencia circuit.

Some observers cynically suggested that it was nothing more than a publicity stunt, after all the whole idea had come about following a dare from Gerhard Berger that was picked up by an Austrian journalist. Yet Lauda maintains that it was an invaluable experience that will allow him to better understand the problems his drivers, Eddie Irvine and Pedro de la Rosa, have to deal with.

"All the time I hear them talking about traction or launch control, and although I understand what these do, I have no experience of it. So the idea of this test was to help me understand better the way these cars work," he says.

"I never expected to learn so much or how good it would be. To feel it changing gear was amazing. The process is so smooth and co-ordinated. I was really impressed."

Lauda's last F1 mount was the turbo-powered McLaren MP4-2B he drove in the 1985 Australian Grand Prix. That car had slick tyres and one of the more extravagant rear wings ever to grace F1, not to mention 1000bhp plus with the boost wick turned up. But in Spain he would try out last year's Jaguar R2, the team keeping its sole new R3 as the preserve of its regular drivers.

The cool, overcast conditions were not ideal for the triple world champion, who was hoping to get some heat into the tyres. But at 10:30am the barriers were removed from the front of the garage and the Cosworth V10 was fired into life.

On the previous day Lauda took advantage of Jaguar's exclusive use of the track to try the car behind closed doors, and on that occasion he stalled on his first attempt to leave the pits. There would be no such repeat this time and with the shrill of the engine echoing down the pitlane he set off on his first tentative lap of the track.

A minute or so later and he was back in the pits while the team carried out mandatory checks, but it would not be long until he was out again, this time with an audibly more confident step in his stride. The green and white car flashed across the start/finish line at full song with only the briefest of let ups as he turned left for the fast fourth gear left-hander that starts the lap.

Then, for a moment, there was concern in the pit. The engine had stopped but there was no word from the car. Lauda had spun on the exit of Turn 2 but forgot to radio in. A recovery truck was quickly dispatched to fetch the undamaged car from the gravel and Lauda, undeterred, prepared to get back in.

"I told myself to go slow on the straight," he said when asked if he was nervous about getting back in an F1 car, "but once you get onto the straight you push full throttle. As soon as you get in the car you're not frightened."

Once the mechanics had cleaned out the sidepods and checked the car over, it was time for Lauda to go back out again. But once more there would be no sector times flashing up on the timing screens as he managed almost a carbon copy of his earlier spin.

"I spun because Pedro told me where to brake! I was brave enough to go into that corner as quick as Pedro did. Both drivers had said to me that if I had gone out and been slow and not even tried that they would not speak to me, so at least by spinning they understand that I tried hard."

It was third time lucky and just before lunch we were finally treated to the sight of Lauda taking the R2 around the track at speed. He did three flying laps before stopping on the grid and performing a practise start.

His best lap was a 1m29s, about 10 seconds off a good time at the track, but not bad for somebody who had not driven an F1 car for almost 17 years and whose only form of preparation was to cut down on smoking a bit...

But for Lauda it wasn't about times as he experienced traction control, launch control, automatic gearboxes, left-foot braking, power-steering and grooved tyres for the first time. Such are the differences between today's cars and those of the turbo era that Lauda used a different driving style.

"With these cars there is understeer and oversteer all the way through the corner." He explains. "It lets you know when you're near the maximum, but I would say that keeping the near the maximum is very hard.

"I think it might be more difficult to be quick in these cars than it was in the cars of my era. Those cars were more physically difficult to drive, in these cars everything is done for you. But I would have preferred to race these cars no question."

So what are the chances of him driving the car again? Perhaps he could go head-to-head with Berger...

"If Gerhard wants to come along then why not, said Niki, "but I think we both have to use the same car."

The latest AUTOSPORT Legends bookazine, available now, focuses on 1970s Formula 1 superstars James Hunt and Niki Lauda and their infamous rivalry

TALKING 'BOUT HIS GENERATION

Niki Lauda's Formula 1 career spanned 14 years, during which time he successfully drove three very different generations of grand prix racing cars.

From the time of his first GP in 1971 and through his double championship-winning years with Ferrari, the cars were-by today's standards-low on both power and downforce. This pre-ground effect generation of machines produced around 5-600kg of downforce around a tenth of early-2000s levels and were powered by engines of around 500bhp.

Lotus introduced ground effects to F1 in the late '70s. Lauda's first ground effect chassis was the Brabham BT48 of 1979, but his first competitive one was the McLaren MP4/1 in which he made his comeback in 1982 after two years in retirement. With the McLaren he won two grands prix and was a contender for the '82 championship.

It was not until the tail end of 1983 that he got his first taste of turbocharged horsepower. By the time of his third world championship victory in '84, his McLaren Porsche was boasting around 900bhp in qualifying trim, and 750bhp in the races. This compares with around 820bhp for the modern Jaguar he tested.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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