About this tribute An independent book about Niki Lauda, and its rules

This is an independent tribute to Niki Lauda: Vienna, 22 February 1949; Zürich, 20 May 2019. It is laid out as a book: a cover and an introduction on the home page, three parts of chapters on his life, the man and his legacy, a page for every one of his 12 seasons, 1972 to 1985, and these reference pages at the back. It can be read in order, from the first chapter to the last, or opened anywhere from the contents.

It is not affiliated with his family, with any team or company he raced or worked for, or with any other rights holder. It sells nothing and carries no advertising. It stands beside tributes made in the same way to Ayrton Senna, Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss.

How the facts are treated

Every fact on these pages comes from a published source, and every page ends with a list of the sources it relies on. Race results, grids, points and totals follow the F1DB database, checked against grandprix.com, the results archive of formula1.com, ChicaneF1 and the Jolpica database. His World Championship record is given as 25 wins and 24 pole positions from 171 starts (176 entries), and 420.5 points; why each figure is counted as it is, and where the databases differ, is set out on the records page.

Lauda told his own story for 40 years, in books, in interviews and on television, and the film Rush told it again in 2013. Where the reports of the time and his later accounts agree, the text says so plainly. Where they differ, it says which is which. Where the sources leave a question open, the question is left open. Nothing is taken from the film, and nothing is invented: no scene, no detail and no feeling that a source does not record.

Some of this story is grave. The fire at the Nürburgring in 1976, the loss of Lauda Air Flight 004 in 1991 and the deaths of other drivers in races he drove are told with the facts, and without graphic detail. His family appears only as far as the public record goes. Photographs of the period show the sponsors of the day, tobacco brands among them; the text names a sponsor only where the history needs it.

Quotations, and their originals

A quotation appears here only when a published source records it, and each one is given with its speaker, its occasion and its date, in the words of that source, old spellings included. Words known only at second hand, reported by someone else or taken from a book that could not be checked page by page, are marked “attributed”. Lines that circulate as his but cannot be traced to him, several of them from the screenplay of Rush, are never presented as his words; they are gathered, with what is known of each, among the misattributed quotations.

Lauda gave many of his interviews in German, and others he worked with spoke Italian. On these English pages a quotation said in German or Italian is shown in its original language, with an English translation beneath it; the translations are this book’s own unless another translator is named. A German version, printed in the press, of words said in English or Italian is not an original, and is never shown as one.

The photographs

The photographs come from open archives, most of them from Wikimedia Commons and from the Nationaal Archief in The Hague, each used under the licence given with it. Every one carries its photographer and licence beneath it, and the picture credits name the source of each.

They are shown in black and white, as the press saw his racing, except where colour is the point: the red of a Ferrari, the red cap of his later years, the livery of an airline. Nothing is retouched. A mark on a photograph is cropped away where it can be; otherwise the picture is shown smaller, or not at all. Where a picture shows a car of his type rather than a car he drove, or a place as it is today, the caption says so.

The German edition

Every page is published again in German, under /de/: the whole book, translated in full, with the same pictures and the same tables. Each page leads to its German counterpart from the contents menu and from the foot of the page.

On the German pages his German words stand on their own, as he said or wrote them, and words said in English or Italian are shown in the original with a German translation. Lauda was an Austrian who won his titles with an Italian team and a British one, and spoke to the world in two languages; the book is written in both.