Dodgy Business

Every time I go to Nurburgring it brings back the summer of '76. Jackie Stewart had hung up his lid three years before and although most of Britain was caught up in James Hunt fever, it was Niki Lauda for me.

I don't really know why. Something to do with schoolboys and Ferraris maybe, but I'd also watched the '74 British Grand Prix, which Lauda dominated from the pole but then had a tyre go in the closing stages. The Brands Hatch pitlane was swarming with people in blazers and Niki's Ferrari was trapped. He was eventually credited with fifth place or something. I couldn't believe it.

By '76, of course, he was the reigning champion and it had become hero worship. I hated that the Germans were calling him chicken because he dared to criticise Nurburgring. How could they do that when, a year earlier, he'd taken the Ferrari 312T round in 6:58.6, the first ever sub-seven minute Nurburgring lap? I was incensed.

Stewart had once said that every time he left home for the 'Ring he took a long look at the house and the driveway because he was aware that he might not see them again. There may be situations beyond his control...

Lauda, who had picked up the Stewart safety baton, was making the same points. It was bloody dangerous, he said. There was no run-off and whereas on a normal circuit, if you shunted, you had a 70/30 chance of being okay, at Nurburgring those odds were skewed the other way. Or worse.

Francois Cevert (Tyrrell 002 Ford) 1972 German Grand Prix © LAT

The drivers were split. Many agreed with Lauda but thought that there was a responsibility to the organisers and they had to race there in '76 while trying to get modifications made for the following year. At Monaco the GPDA voted 3-2 in favour of going one more time.

I remember seeing a magazine in the school library, Weekend, I think it was, and there was a feature on the 'Ring. It had a graphic with a cross marking the points of known fatal accidents. And, it pointed out, far more were punters paying their Deutsche Marks to drive or ride around the famous track than were 'proper' racing drivers.

Back then, Jody Scheckter wrote a regular column for Autosport.

"I hate the Nurburgring," he said, "because it is an unforgiving death trap. It has claimed more drivers lives than any other circuit (over 130) and, short of spending millions of dollars on it, there's no way it can be made as safe as the other circuits on which we race.

"But at the same time I love it. I love it because it is the last real driver challenge left in modern motor racing. This is probably the last place in the world where a driver looking for success is called upon to use every last ounce of technique, skill and courage that he possesses."

That was the dilemma. Nobody wanted to die on it but the 'Ring and what it stood for was the very spirit and essence of why these men did what they did.

At the time, the 'Ring was regarded, as Scheckter said, as the last real challenge. The old Monza, Clermont-Ferrand, Little Madonie, Spa-Francorchamps, Reims, Bern-Bremgarten - all had succumbed to the same concerns that now demanded change in the Eifel mountains.

Lauda had given Autosport a full interview outlining his opinions and it was deeply ironic that, on August 1, 1976, it was Niki's Ferrari that speared off the road at a flat-out left kink approaching Bergwerk, went through two layers of catch fencing, thumped into an earth bank, removing a bag tank in the process, caught fire and was then struck by Guy Edwards, Brett Lunger and Harald Ertl before coming to rest.

Of course, we all now know about the burns and the six-week recovery that saw Niki finish fourth for Ferrari at Monza on September 12. But back then we were going on a family holiday the Thursday after Nurburgring. It was the first time I'd flown and I was a bit jittery about it. I remember telling my parents that if it was a DC10, I wasn't getting on.

But, at the airport, I got so immersed in my 25p copy of Autosport, reading Pete Lyons on the events at the 'Ring and the latest on Niki's condition, that I didn't even look out of the departure lounge window until we were due to get on. It was then that that I spotted the three-engined wide-body and started to head in the opposite direction...

"Don't panic, it's a bloomin' Tristar!" I remember my exasperated father explaining. "We're on BA and it's Caledonian that's got all the DC10s."

We were going to Majorca and I recall swimming up and down (in my Mark Spitz stars 'n stripes Speedos - remember them?) and then getting out of the pool on the hour, every hour, to go and listen to the radio news in case there was any news on Lauda. I wouldn't go anywhere.

I was quite happy for Mum and Dad to jump into the Lada hire car and go off to eat fish, drink Sangria, look at ceramics or whatever else you did in Spain, but I was quite happy by the radio, thanks very much. They knew they were fighting a losing battle.

Hans Stuck 2006 European Grand Prix, Nurburgring © XPB/LAT

I've liked Hans Stuck ever since I watched him have a huge and, er, spirited you might call it, battle with Frank Sytner in a BMW 635 at Silverstone. Interviewed at Woodcote afterwards, a laughing Hanschen said he'd have to have words with his uncle. "He bombed Nottingham every night for a year and he missed that bastard!"

Stuck is also a 'Ring specialist and one of the first drivers on the scene in the aftermath of Lauda's accident. Last weekend, 30 years on, I talked to him about his recollections of both.

"I did my first lap at the 'Ring when I was nine years old, in 1960!" he told me. My Dad ran a race driving school and he had this little 700cc BMW, a two-door car with a motorcycle engine. He let me drive round with two cushions under my bum. My first lap was 17 minutes something.

"After another two laps he said okay, that's it, I get out and you do it on your own! So I've got a very long relationship with this unique track."

Imagine that! These days you're on the way to the nick if you let your child cross the road on its own.

"I still do the long distance touring car races there," Stuck went on. "To me, it's still... I can't think of anywhere better or more interesting. With a certain amount of horsepower, that is. Nowadays a Formula One car wouldn't last one lap, it would break apart with all the compressions and jumps. But a high-powered touring car with 600bhp, that's fine."

But, I asked, what about back then. Were you all aware, like Stewart, that you might not see home again?

"Absolutely. All of us. But in those days we didn't know anything better, which was good! You could make a mistake, which we all accepted, but there was also more concern about the cars. At March, for example, we'd have a new wing mounting developed and when they were machining the post the guy would say well, we'll take an 8-9mm bolt. It should be strong enough. They'd put it on and if it held together, fine, if it fell off, okay, let's take a bigger one...

"We took the Nurburgring as a risk because to us, it was the best. Looking back we were all totally stupid. But 20 years on we'll probably think the same about the current circuit. Times change.

"I think perhaps I'm pretty well qualified on this," he grins, "because my Dad was a famous racer. He used to get me to imagine driving around there in an Auto Union with 700bhp going 380kph down the straight with trees left and right. They were having a good time. Nobody was even talking about helmets or safety harnesses. That made it kind of interesting..."

I told him about the article I'd seen in Weekend all those years back.

"It's still the same now," he said. "The track is open at the weekends and I regularly drive the BMW M5 'Ring taxi. I do it six or seven times a year and on the Sundays there are regular fatalities with other people there. For a long time they have been discussing stopping it but on the other hand it is better that they do something here on a closed track than taking someone out on a normal road.

"It will always be like this because we should never lose respect for the Nordschleife. Even when I'm driving there today I think about it. The moment you lose respect it's going to hurt. That's for sure. Absolutely."

What, I wondered were his recollections of '76 and Niki's accident?

Niki Lauda (Ferrari 312T2) 1976 German Grand Prix © LAT

"It was a shit weekend. We knew this was the end of the Nurburgring because there had already been all the discussions. Actually, I was talking to Niki about it last night and Arturo Merzario was here as well. The amazing thing is that the first five drivers on the scene knew exactly what to do.

"I was the fifth one and I saw Brett Lunger and Arturo working on the car. It was right after the fast left-hand corner and I ran back to stop the other cars because there were no marshals there - they were all at Niki's car.

"I remember persuading the ambulance drivers to turn back rather than doing the long loop. I told them, 'hey, turn round, it's only half a mile to the Breidscheid exit, all the cars are parked here so don't worry and save Niki an hour in a shaky ambulance'.

"I remember Niki was looking mostly at his hands. He asked Arturo 'how's my face looking' and Arturo said fine. But you know how it is with burns, it comes with minutes and minutes and minutes and it gets worse and worse. When they put him in the ambulance - sure it was a big shock to him but he seemed to be in much better condition than was the case."

Stuck says that no matter what a driver says, they all drove with a bit or a margin on the old 'Ring. At perhaps 98%.

"For sure. Even now. When we do these long distance races we have starting grids of 170 cars in 10 different classes and it's a constant anti-collision derby, I tell you. Imagine, you have three or four drivers in the cars and the mirrors are only properly set for one or two. Before you overtake you make 100% sure the guy has seen you."

Stuck agrees that the modern day F1 driver does not have, or need, quite the same respect for the circuit he's racing on.

"Tracks like Spa, sure, safety is still a number one concern," he says, "but even there drivers lose respect a little bit. If you did Eau Rouge too quick it used to be a fatal accident, but nowadays you go over the kerbs and it's no problem.

"I'm always discussing that with Hermann Tilke, the architect of many new tracks, which are nice, but from a driver's perspective very boring. We're always talking about how we can invent something that stops drivers going over the kerbs constantly and using all the run-off areas.

"Maybe we could have an electronic penalty or something like this, so that if they go over the kerbs there's an electronic contact or something that cuts the revs down for five seconds or so. It's something to think about."

Who, I wanted to know, does he recall being special around the old 'Ring?

"James Hunt was very good here. And Clay Regazzoni was a maniac. He was so fucking fast. He did the biggest and longest jumps on the Flugplatz and Pflantzgarten. People went there specially to see Regga jumping. Kind of cool, you know!"

Jacky Ickx (Brabham BT26-Ford) 1969 German Grand Prix © LAT

So, I said, the people who took their brains out were quick?

"I wouldn't say took their brains out but the ones who were prepared to take a higher risk, yes."

Jacky Ickx?

"Yes, he was good, but always concerned about doing the maximum with the minimum risk. And Jackie (Stewart) was good at that too. Niki the same. Niki, in those days, was bringing up a new generation of drivers. He brought something new in, Senna brought something new and then Michael Schumacher. Those three in my opinion were jumps in generation."

And what about those Lauda chicken accusations?

"No way. Niki was fast. And for a long time he was the smartest driver in F1, for sure."

So there you go. Case defended. By a genuine Ringmeister.

If you do one thing, go to Germany, pay your money and drive the old 'ring. Before it's too late. You must. But take care. Have respect.