The heroism, horror and hurt of Lauda at Ferrari
In the mid-1970s Ferrari became F1's most fiercely competitive team, winning four from five constructors' titles. But it almost cost the life of their star driver. Words: DAMIEN SMITH
History tends to paint him as the wily pragmatist who calculated his way to a pair of Ferrari world titles in the mid 1970s - a kind of prototype Michael Schumacher.
Those labels alone do Niki Lauda a monumental disservice, however. Clinical? Oh yes, certainly. But also searingly fast - a match for anyone at his mid-decade zenith, and almost certainly on a curve that was still rising... until the Nurburgring 1976.
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