The machines Five makes, 19 Grand Prix cars, and the aircraft he flew himself

When Motor Sport photographed Ferrari 312T chassis 023 in 2020, for the first time in some 30 years, its seat was still scuffed and its steering wheel worn, as he had left them.

Nobody else ever raced it. In 1975 and 1976 it won six Grands Prix, twice as many as any other car of the line that ran from the 312T to the 312T5, and it finished every race it started.

He started World Championship Grands Prix in cars of five makes, March, BRM, Ferrari, Brabham and McLaren, and in 19 models as the ChicaneF1 database names them. A twentieth, the Brabham BT49, he drove only in practice, in Montreal in 1979, on the day he stopped. He won in eight of them: the Ferrari 312B3, 312T and 312T2, the Brabham BT46 and BT46B, and the McLaren MP4/1B, MP4/2 and MP4/2B.¹

He drove what the engineers designed, but he was rarely content to leave a car as it came. In his first test for Ferrari he told the team in plain words that the car did not work; 10 years later he pressed McLaren to race its new turbo engine before its designer wanted to.

Lauda ist zwar kein Techniker, doch er zieht logische Schlüsse. Er beherrscht die ganze Tüftelei mit weichen und harten Reifen, das heikle Ausbalancieren eines Fahrgestells mit erstaunlichem Instinkt.

Lauda is not an engineer, but he draws logical conclusions. He has mastered all the fiddling with soft and hard tyres, the delicate balancing of a chassis, with astonishing instinct.

Before Formula One

Mini Cooper S, 1968

His first car in competition was a Mini Cooper S of about 100 bhp that had been Fritz Baumgartner’s. At the Bad Mühllacken hill climb near Linz on 15 April 1968, entered as “A N Lauder”, he kept to the 8,000 rpm Baumgartner had allowed him, of the 9,000 the engine would give, and was 2nd in his class. That August he won his class at the Tauplitz hill climb in a Porsche 911S.

Kaimann Mk4, 1969

In 1969 he raced a Kaimann Mk4 in Formula Vee for Kurt Bergmann’s team, unpaid, and was 2nd to Helmut Marko at the Nürburgring on 3 August. Bergmann also put him in an Opel Rekord known as the “Black Widow”, which he later called the worst car he ever drove.

Porsche 910 and 908/2, 1969–⁠1970

He shared a Porsche 910 in the Österreichring 1000 km of 1969 and finished 21st. For 1970 he bought a second-hand Porsche 908/2, a three-litre spyder, with help from a Swiss businessman, and won with it at Diepholz on 19 July; one account of his early years calls it the car of that time that impressed him most. No race of his in a Porsche 917, a car sometimes named beside the 908, appears in RacingSportsCars’ list of his 248 entries or in Motor Sport’s account of his early years.

McNamara Mk3B, 1970

Formula Three in 1970 meant a McNamara Mk3B, built at Lenggries in Bavaria, and a season of crashes, among them a heavy one at Brands Hatch in July. In 2017 he called it, in passing, a disaster.

March 712M and 722, 1971–⁠1972

For 1971 he paid his way into the works March Formula Two team, as The way up tells, in a March 712M; his best result was 4th at Rouen. On 23 May that year he also won the European two-litre sports-car race at the Salzburgring in a Chevron B19. In 1972, in a March 722, he won the British Formula Two Championship, with his only Formula Two win, at Oulton Park on 31 March.

March, 1971–⁠1972

March 711

Robin Herd designed the 711 for 1971, with detail work by Geoff Ferris and aerodynamics by Frank Costin, whose elliptical front wing was known as the “tea tray”; it had a Cosworth DFV V8. Lauda drove a third works March once, beside Ronnie Peterson and Nanni Galli, at his home race, the Austrian Grand Prix at the Österreichring on 15 August 1971. He qualified 21st and retired on lap 20 with handling problems. The organisers had wanted an Austrian in the race, he said in 2017, and the result did not put him off, because he knew the car was poor.

March 721 and 721X

For his first full season, 1972, March began with the 721, an interim version of the 711. He raced chassis 721/2 in Argentina, where he was 11th on 23 January, and in South Africa; it has not been found since. From Jarama on 1 May he drove a more radical car.

The 721X was Herd’s attempt at a low polar moment of inertia: Alfa Romeo gearbox internals placed ahead of the final drive, to gather the weight towards the middle of the car. On Goodyear tyres it understeered into corners and oversteered out of them. Herd later blamed the gearbox, slow and stiff to change, the single spare set of ratios and a small differential that would not free itself. Lauda raced chassis 721X/1 three times, at Jarama, Monaco and Nivelles; both 721Xs survive and still run.

Herd admitted later that he and Peterson had been blind to the car’s faults and that Lauda, back in the pits after two or three laps, had seen them at once; 1972 tells that season.

March 721G

The 721G was built in nine days for Mike Beuttler, round a Formula Two monocoque with a DFV and a Hewland gearbox: the “G” was for Guinness, as in the book of records. Lauda raced it from Clermont-⁠Ferrand to Watkins Glen, seven races without a point; in qualifying in France he was almost 5 seconds slower than Peterson. His 12 starts of 1972 brought him no points at all.

BRM P160, 1973

Tony Southgate designed the P160 and Mike Pilbeam developed it; BRM’s own three-litre V12 drove it. It came in three versions, the P160C, D and E, and the records disagree about which he drove in Argentina and Brazil. From Montjuïc he had the E, and from Zolder his regular car was chassis 08, in which he scored his first points, 5th on 20 May 1973.

He arrived as the junior beside Clay Regazzoni and Jean-⁠Pierre Beltoise. At Monaco he ran 3rd, ahead of Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari, until his gearbox failed. He started 14 Grands Prix in the P160 from 15 entries: he did not start in Austria, having broken his wrist at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. There were no podiums and 2 points, and a contract with Enzo Ferrari for 1974.

Ferrari 312B3, 1974

Fiat recalled Mauro Forghieri to Ferrari in 1973, and his 312B3, with its three-litre flat-12, was the car Lauda first drove for Scuderia Ferrari, at the Fiorano test track at the end of that year. His accounts of the day differ in the figures, a second a lap within a week in one telling, half a second promised and eight tenths found in another. They agree on what he said first: “I told them the car was shit.” Forghieri revised the front suspension.

On 28 April 1974 he won his first Grand Prix in it, at Jarama, from pole and with the fastest lap, in chassis 015, which also won the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in June. The B3 started from pole 10 times in 1974, 9 of them with Lauda.

He raced the B3 into the first two races of 1975, and its record with him reads 17 starts, two wins, nine pole positions, three fastest laps, five podiums and 41 points.

Ferrari 312T, 1975–⁠1976

Ferrari showed the 312T to the press at Fiorano on 27 September 1974. Its five-speed gearbox lay across the car, ahead of the rear axle, and gave it its letter, T for trasversale; Franco Rocchi’s flat-12 was claimed to give 500 bhp at 12,200 rpm. After the March 721X, Lauda was wary of a gearbox in an unusual place, and at first he found the car harder to drive than the B3. Then he lapped Fiorano in 1:13, against 1:14.2 for Arturo Merzario in the old car. As he remembered it in 1997, “It was clear that it was in a different class.”

Its first race, at Kyalami on 1 March 1975, gave him 5th place in the prototype, chassis 018, with a belt slipping on the fuel-metering unit. Its first win came in the International Trophy at Silverstone on 13 April, a race outside the championship. On 11 May at Monaco chassis 023 won on its first appearance, Ferrari’s first win there since 1955; in the closing laps its oil pressure fell, and he declutched and coasted through the corners while Emerson Fittipaldi closed on him. That season he won five Grands Prix, all in the 312T, took nine pole positions and won the title.

Talk of a 30 bhp advantage over the Cosworth-engined cars used to infuriate him. Had he had that much more power, he said in 1997, he would have won with one hand; the advantage was in the chassis: “The chassis was just perfect; it was totally neutral and progressive.” In 2005 he summed the car up: “It was a true gem, a lasting monument to Forghieri’s abilities.”

With the first three races of 1976, two of them wins, the 312T’s record with him reached 15 starts, seven wins, nine pole positions, three fastest laps, 11 podiums and 85.5 points.

Ferrari 312T2, 1976–⁠1977

The rules of 1976 banned tall air boxes, so the 312T2 breathed through ducts beside the cockpit and ran on narrower tracks. In 2002 he called it a step on from the 312T in precision, engine and brakes, in words that 1976 quotes. Its first championship race, at Jarama on 2 May 1976, gave him 2nd place in chassis 026, which won at Zolder and Monaco, carried him at Monza, where he finished 4th 42 days after the fire, and at Fuji, where he stopped after 2 laps.

Chassis 028 was the car in which he won the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, awarded to him after James Hunt’s disqualification, and the car in which he crashed at the Nürburgring Nordschleife on 1 August 1976, in only its second race; the Nürburgring chapter tells that day.

For 1977, he said, the car lost its speed when Enzo Ferrari changed the winter’s testing and put Carlos Reutemann in charge of development, until Lauda went half a second or more quicker in one session at Paul Ricard. At Kyalami chassis 030 ran over debris from the accident in which Tom Pryce and a marshal were killed, lost most of its water and oil, and still won. Chassis 031 won at Hockenheim, 030 again at Zandvoort, and he was World Champion a second time. One database calls the 1977 car the 312T2B; the others, and the period sources, call it the 312T2.

He raced the T2 more than any other car: 25 starts from 26 entries (at Jarama in 1977 he withdrew after the warm-up with a cracked rib), six wins, five pole positions, six fastest laps, 16 podiums and 116 points.

The helmet

He came back at Monza in a new helmet. Der Spiegel reported in October 1976 that he had one specially made; John Watson remembered that he needed a bigger one to get it on; and the same magazine wrote a year later that it was of a different make, since the old one had come off in the accident. The accounts fit together: a new, larger helmet of another make.

Brabham, 1978–⁠1979

He left Ferrari for Bernie Ecclestone’s Brabham team, whose cars were designed by Gordon Murray and driven by Alfa Romeo engines.

Brabham BT45C

The first two races of 1978 were in the BT45C, with Alfa Romeo’s flat-12: 2nd in Argentina and 3rd in Brazil, at Jacarepaguá, in chassis BT45/7, whose whereabouts are unknown. They brought him two podiums and 10 points.

Brabham BT46

Murray’s BT46 was launched with heat exchangers built into its bodywork, which did not work and gave way to ordinary radiators. The flat-12 was too wide for the ground-effect tunnels that Lotus were using. The BT46 took pole on its first appearance, at Kyalami on 4 March 1978, and won once with Lauda, at Monza on 10 September, when Mario Andretti and Gilles Villeneuve, ahead of him on the road, were penalised for jumping the start: the race in which Ronnie Peterson was fatally injured. No verdict of his own on the car has been found. Its record with him: 13 starts, one win, one pole position, three fastest laps, four podiums and 25 points.

Brabham BT46B, the “fan car”

For the Swedish Grand Prix, Murray laid a radiator flat on top of the engine and fitted a large fan, driven from the gearbox, that drew air through it and, with skirts sealing the engine bay, from beneath the car. Brabham said the fan’s main purpose was cooling. Its grip rose with the engine’s speed, not the car’s, so Murray told Lauda and John Watson to drop a gear in corners and use every revolution.

It raced once, and won, at Anderstorp on 17 June 1978, as 1978 tells. A third fan car, never assembled, was cut up on Murray’s orders. In December 1982, of the late rule that would require flat bottoms in 1983, Lauda pointed to the fan car: “They have plenty of time, Bernie’s team designed and built the infamous ‘fan car’ in less than six weeks.”

Brabham BT48

Alfa Romeo built a V12 for 1979, the 1260, because the flat-12 left no room for the venturi tunnels of a ground-effect car, and Murray designed the BT48 round it. It brought him 13 starts and 4 points. Motor Sport found him the most miserable man in Argentina, and by the summer he had had enough of the V12. In chassis BT48/2 he won the Dino Ferrari Grand Prix at Imola on 16 September 1979, outside the championship.

Brabham BT49

Twelve days later, at Montreal, Brabham had a new car with a Cosworth DFV, the BT49. He drove chassis 3 in practice on Friday 28 September, about 10 laps, and stopped; he said later that he had hated the vibration of the Cosworth engine. Ricardo Zunino took over the car, on the Friday afternoon in Lauda’s helmet and overalls. Montreal is not counted among Lauda’s entries; the retirements tell the weekend.

McLaren, 1982–⁠1985

McLaren MP4/1B

John Barnard’s MP4/1 was the first Formula One car with a carbon-composite monocoque, its parts laid up and cured by Hercules in Salt Lake City. Ron Dennis brought Lauda back in it for 1982. In chassis MP4/1-⁠4 he was 4th at Kyalami on 23 January and won at Long Beach on 4 April, his third race back; in MP4/1-⁠6 he won the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch on 18 July. The MP4/1B gave him 14 starts from 15 entries (he did not start at Hockenheim), two wins, a fastest lap, three podiums and 30 points.

For 1983 the rules required flat bottoms, and the car, he told Der Spiegel, was his servant again. The MP4/1C, still with a Cosworth V8, brought 10 starts from 11 entries (he did not qualify at Monaco), a fastest lap, two podiums and 12 points, but no win.

McLaren MP4/1E

Barnard wanted to wait for 1984 before racing the TAG turbo, a 1.5-⁠litre V6 built by Porsche; Lauda pressed until it raced, and he called that the most important decision. The interim MP4/1E ran from Zandvoort on 28 August 1983, four races without a point. Barnard remembered Lauda comparing its push to the take-off of his Learjet. At Kyalami on 15 October he was 2nd and catching the leader, Riccardo Patrese, when an electrical relay failed, a part that, Barnard heard later, came off a Citroën 2CV “or something like that”. He was classified 11th.

McLaren MP4/2

The MP4/2 of 1984 joined Barnard’s carbon chassis to the TAG Porsche engine, designed and built by Porsche to McLaren’s dimensions and paid for by Techniques d’Avant Garde; McLaren bought the design for about a million marks, by Barnard’s account. The flat-bottom rule of 1983, Barnard said, had cost half the value of the engine. Even so, McLaren won 12 of the 16 races of 1984, seven for Alain Prost and five for Lauda, who used chassis MP4/2-⁠1 all season, by McLaren’s record; his race engineer was Steve Nichols.

Lauda went into corners a little deeper and harder than Prost, Barnard said, and needed a little more grip at the front. By his own account he gave up trying to match Prost in qualifying and set the car up for the race instead.

At Estoril on 21 October he started 11th, with what he later called a turbocharger problem from the start, and finished 2nd, which made him champion by half a point, 72 to 71.5. The MP4/2’s record with him: 16 starts, five wins, no pole positions, five fastest laps, nine podiums and 72 points.

McLaren MP4/2B

For 1985 the car ran on Goodyear tyres instead of Michelin. Lauda started 14 races in it from 15 entries (an injury in practice kept him out at Spa-⁠Francorchamps) and won one, at Zandvoort on 25 August, 0.232 seconds ahead of Prost: the last of his 25 wins. At Adelaide on 3 November, in his last Grand Prix, its brakes failed. At the end of the year Denis Jenkinson of Motor Sport wrote: “No-one is more gentle on a gearbox than Niki Lauda, as any mechanic who services his gearboxes will tell you.”

Saloons, sports cars and the Procar

Alpina BMW and Ford, 1970–⁠1974

He first drove for Alpina in 1970, in a BMW 1602, then in its 2800 CS. In 1973 came the 3.0 CSL, a 3.3-⁠litre straight-six of about 360 hp at first, later 3.6 litres, with a rear wing. With Brian Muir he won the Monza Four Hours on 25 March 1973, and with Hans-⁠Peter Joisten the Nürburgring 24 Hours on 24 June. That car was destroyed in July in the Spa 24 Hours, in the accident in which Joisten was killed. In 1974, already a Ferrari driver, he raced the works Ford Capris, and was 2nd in the Nürburgring Six Hours.

BMW M1 Procar, 1979

The Procar Championship of 1979 was a one-make series for BMW M1s, run at the European Grands Prix; Ron Dennis’s Project Four built most of the racing cars after Lamborghini failed to. Lauda raced mostly in Project Four’s car, won at Monaco, Silverstone and Hockenheim, and became champion, ahead of Hans-⁠Joachim Stuck; he found the cars easy to drive.

Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-⁠16, 1984

The new Nürburgring opened on 12 May 1984 with a race for 21 prepared Mercedes-⁠Benz 190E 2.3-⁠16 saloons. Lauda was 2nd to Ayrton Senna. In October 2016 he was reunited with his car and signed its roof; RM Sotheby’s sold it at St Moritz in 2023.

Where the cars are now

Many of his Grand Prix cars survive, and OldRacingCars’ chassis histories place them. The 312B3 that won at Jarama and Zandvoort, chassis 015, was in Britain in 2019. Five of the seven 312T2s survive: 026, the car of Monza and Fuji, was racing in historic events in the United States in 2021, while 028 and 030 were written off. His BRM, P160/08, was in Britain in 2021.

The fan car, BT46/6, stayed with Ecclestone and went with his collection of 69 cars to Mark Mateschitz in a sale announced on 7 March 2025. Reports of the sale spoke of his title-winning Ferraris, but the collection’s 312B3 and 312T2 were not cars he raced in a Grand Prix: the T2, 029, had been his spare. McLaren keeps one of his 1984 cars in its own collection.

The aircraft

He bought his first aircraft, a Cessna Citation, in 1977, and began to train as a pilot at about that time, to be independent, he said, of the whole travelling circus of Formula One. Lauda Air began in 1979 with two Fokker F27 turboprops; when they went in 1983 the company lived on business jets, a Citation, a Falcon 20 and a Learjet, and by 1983 he owned a Learjet himself, the aircraft he compared to the TAG engine.

He flew his airlines’ aircraft himself, as a rule. He took Lauda Air’s first service to Australia over the Bangkok–Sydney sector in 1988, as the airlines tell, and from 2003 he flew the Airbus jets of Niki, which in 2004 he was still captaining at least twice a week. He had 13,000 hours in his logbooks in 2004 and more than 18,000 by 2015, when he ordered a Bombardier Global 7000. The two lives ran side by side for four decades, and as early as 1982, on his way back to racing, he set one against the other:

totale Präzision, hundertprozentige Gesetzmäßigkeit … Im Rennwagen geht man übers Limit. Man muß ständig Kompromisse schließen, Regeln verletzen, um das Chaos ins Gute zu wenden. Im Flugzeug gilt das Gegenteil.

total precision, one hundred per cent conformity to rules … In a racing car you go over the limit. You constantly have to compromise, break rules, to turn chaos into good. In an aeroplane the opposite holds.