The people around him Patrons and engineers, a trainer, a writer, and his family

At Fiorano, the test track of Scuderia Ferrari, late in 1973, Niki Lauda drove the Ferrari 312B3 for the first time and came in to say what he thought of it. Enzo Ferrari was there, with his son Piero to translate, and so was the engineer Mauro Forghieri. Lauda’s verdict was blunt, and Piero, as Lauda told it, nervously asked him to pull his punches; so he said the car had too much understeer, which it did.

What Enzo Ferrari demanded next has more than one telling, and the figures change from one to the next; the versions are set side by side in 1973.¹ Every version has the same three people in the scene, the patron, his son and his engineer, and the same young driver telling them the truth about their car.

This chapter is about them: his family, as far as the public record goes; the men who ran his teams and designed his cars; the trainer who rebuilt him; the writer who put his words into books; and, at the end, the partners of his last years in Formula One. The drivers he raced are in Rivals and friends.

His family

Andreas Nikolaus Lauda was born in Vienna, into an industrial family that wanted him in business. His mother was Elisabeth, née von Linhart, and his father Ernst-Peter Lauda. His parents, he said, were fairly neutral and let him race; his grandfather, Hans Lauda, was utterly against it, and, by Lauda’s account, warned sponsors off him through his connections in business. That story, and the money that paid for his first seasons, is told in Vienna and The way up.

In the early 1970s he lived in Salzburg and was engaged, for years, to Mariella Reininghaus, of a Salzburg brewing family; Motor Sport called her his girlfriend of five years by 1975. She planned the house at Hof, near Salzburg, that he later lived in with his wife. At Montjuïc in 1975, after spectators were killed, she turned on him and the other drivers: “You should be ashamed of yourself” (attributed).

That year, through his friend Herbert von Karajan, with whom he shared a love of flying, he met Marlene Knaus. They married in 1976, within months of meeting, and lived at Hof; their sons were born in Salzburg, Lukas in 1979 and Mathias in 1981. He also had a third son, from another relationship. Lauda and Marlene divorced in 1991. Mathias became a racing driver in 2002, with Lukas as his manager.

Denis Jenkinson, reviewing For the Record in 1978, pictured him living almost as a hermit in his Austrian mountain home, with his wife, his dog and very few friends. His brother, Florian Lauda, gave him a kidney in 1997. In 2005 Birgit Wetzinger, then his partner, gave him another; they married in 2008, and their twins were born in 2009.

At Ferrari

Enzo Ferrari

Enzo Ferrari, the founder and head of the Scuderia, signed him for 1974. Ferrari, writing later, gave the credit to Clay Regazzoni, and dated his own interest to the British Grand Prix. Lauda remembered it differently: an offer made at Maranello in 1973 by a man who had watched him at Monaco run ahead of a Ferrari. When Ferrari first noticed him, at Monaco or at Silverstone, is not settled, and the two accounts need not conflict.

Lauda summed him up in 2017: “Dealing with Enzo Ferrari was both easy and difficult. If he liked you it was fine, but you had to earn that.” He thought the old man treated him differently from the rest: “He liked my straightforward manner. He was more emotional with other drivers – celebrated them when they won, destroyed them when they didn’t” (attributed). Ferrari, for his part, wrote of him: “He worked like a professional … meticulous in his preparation of both himself and his car, something for which he showed a natural, instinctive gift” (attributed).

Their great argument was about money. In 1976, as Lauda told it, in a story retold in Motor Sport in 2026, he named his fee for 1977 in Austrian schillings; Ferrari had his accountant convert it, and exploded, with his son Piero translating: Lauda was an insolent pig, Ferrari told him, and they had nothing more to say to each other. Ferrari’s counter-offer was about a quarter below Lauda’s figure. Lauda then mentioned that Daniele Audetto, the team manager, had offered him more; Ferrari rang Audetto to check, asked whether Lauda was trying to kill him, and after an hour of haggling, in which Lauda gave a little ground, they agreed. Then, Lauda wrote, the mood changed completely: “suddenly he is pleasant and friendly again. A charming old man, the most delightful company anyone could imagine” (attributed).

The contract did not see out the year it was signed for. He had told Ferrari he was going, to Brabham, before Monza that September; after taking his second title at Watkins Glen in October he missed the last two races. Motor Sport’s Denis Jenkinson thought it ungrateful at the time, and said so. In 2017, 40 years later, Lauda said that leaving had been a mistake: “It was definitely the wrong thing to do.” The departure is told in 1977.

Luca di Montezemolo

Luca di Montezemolo became Ferrari’s team manager in 1974, Lauda’s first season there, placed in charge by Fiat, which had owned part of the company since 1969, to look after its interest. He handled Enzo Ferrari with respect and honesty, by Motor Sport’s account, and kept the politics of Maranello away from his driver; the magazine called the pair a first version of Michael Schumacher and Jean Todt. Lauda’s verdict, in 2015: “Luca was inexperienced at first, but strategically strong – though he made mistakes” (attributed). Montezemolo left the team after 1975, and became Ferrari’s president in 1991; by The Guardian’s account Lauda worked for the company as a consultant from 1993.

Mauro Forghieri

Mauro Forghieri, born in Modena in 1935, was Ferrari’s engineer from 1959 to 1987. He had been sidelined in 1972 and 1973, and Fiat recalled him before the Austrian Grand Prix of 1973; that winter he reworked the 312B3 with Lauda. For 1975 he designed the Ferrari 312T, with its gearbox set across the car, and Lauda, who had seen a similar idea fail at March, needed persuading, and was won over. Forghieri designed the 312T2 after it.

Forghieri was a genius but you needed to control him… I remember at Barcelona in practice, I came in and told him I had understeer. He said, ‘You’re taking the wrong lines’. I asked where, and he said, ‘Round the back of the circuit’ ‘How do you know?’ Because I have a friend out there who tells me.’ ‘Who’s your friend?’ Ah, it’s the lady friend of my doctor.’ I said, ‘Fix my f***ing understeer.’ He did and I put it on pole.

The two of them won both of Lauda’s Ferrari titles, and they did not always agree. At Fuji in 1976, when Lauda stopped in the rain, Forghieri, by Nigel Roebuck’s account, suggested an engine problem to spare his blushes, and Lauda would have none of it; by Goodwood’s account Forghieri always held that the comeback at Monza that year had been a folly. He died in 2022, at 87.

Daniele Audetto

Daniele Audetto was Ferrari’s team manager in 1976, the year of the fire and of the title lost by 1 point. At Fuji, Alan Henry of Motor Sport watched him grow almost apoplectic about Hunt’s laps before the race, while Lauda sat and looked the other way, hoping his team manager would stop. Audetto’s higher offer was the card Lauda played against Enzo Ferrari in the contract talks for 1977.

Ermanno Cuoghi

Ermanno Cuoghi was Ferrari’s chief mechanic, the man Jenkinson credited with modernising the team’s pit stops and holding it together. When Lauda left in 1977 Cuoghi was asked to leave as well, and went with him to Brabham. Jenkinson, who had no sympathy for the driver’s departure, wrote that Cuoghi’s faith had always been in Lauda, and thought that rather nice.

At Brabham

Bernie Ecclestone

Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham, and signed Lauda for 1978. Lauda brought his personal sponsor, Parmalat, which became the team’s sponsor; John Watson, already in the team, found that it made Lauda its leader, and saw why Ecclestone wanted him: “What I had not appreciated was what a very good operator Niki was – a clever man aside from all his qualities as a driver, and Bernie liked a good operator.” At Anderstorp that June Lauda won in Gordon Murray’s Brabham BT46B, the “fan car”, which never raced again; how it was banned is told in 1978.

When Lauda stopped in practice at Montreal in September 1979 and left racing, Jenkinson reported that Ecclestone was left to put it about that Lauda was unwell, a story Jenkinson called a lie. In 2019, after Lauda’s death, Ecclestone spoke of him to ORF as a real friend, someone he could rely on, and said that for him Lauda had not died; the interview was printed in German.

Gordon Murray

Gordon Murray designed the Brabhams Lauda drove in 1978 and 1979, among them the BT46, the BT46B and the BT48. He wanted to keep racing the fan car; in later accounts Ecclestone overruled him. In 2021 he named a car from his own company after Lauda, the T.50s Niki Lauda, limited to 25 cars, each named after one of Lauda’s Grand Prix wins, and launched it on 22 February 2021, the day Lauda would have turned 72:

Niki was a great racing driver and he was also a good friend and it is absolutely fitting that we are launching the T.50s Niki Lauda on his birthday. Niki would have appreciated the innovation and engineering detail in our car.

At McLaren

Ron Dennis

Ron Dennis brought him back. In 1979 Dennis’s team, Project Four, ran the BMW M1 in which Lauda won the Procar Championship, and Dennis invited him to try the McLaren MP4 at Donington Park on 16 September 1981. Lauda was out of condition. By Maurice Hamilton’s account he pretended to talk about the car’s set-up in the pits while he got his breath back; by McLaren’s, he ended the day a tenth of a second off John Watson’s time. He came back for 1982, on a contract that Adam Cooper of Motor Sport calls record-breaking.

Watson, who drove for Dennis through those years, saw the ambition behind it: “Ron was never satisfied. He was always pursuing more and more, like bringing Niki [Lauda] into the team and getting the turbo engine from Porsche.” By the end of 1984, after Lauda had talked to Renault and stayed at McLaren for a third less money, their relationship was badly strained, and by Motor Sport’s account he spent 1985 winding Dennis up whenever he could. The years together are told in Lauda and Prost.

John Barnard

John Barnard designed the carbon-composite McLaren chassis and specified the TAG Porsche engine, a turbo V6 that Porsche built to McLaren’s dimensions. He would have kept the turbo back for a year; the pressure to race it from the Dutch Grand Prix of 1983 came, he said, from Lauda and the team’s sponsor. The next year his chassis and the TAG engine, as the McLaren MP4/2–⁠TAG, took 12 of the 16 Grands Prix of 1984.

Steve Nichols

Steve Nichols was Lauda’s race engineer in 1984, and saw his temper break over a water leak on the morning of the race that decided the title at Estoril. In 2014, 30 years later, what he remembered was something else: “The thing that stood out about Lauda more than anything else was his absolutely iron-willed determination to get the job done. No matter what it took, no matter how hard it was.”

Willi Dungl, the trainer

Willi Dungl was born in Vienna on 17 July 1937, trained as a chiropodist and masseur, and turned to natural healing after catching a virus as an army medic in Africa; he worked with the physiotherapy team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. His work with Lauda began in the spring of 1976, before the fire. A tractor had rolled on Lauda at his home and broken his ribs, and the ORF commentator Heinz Prüller rang Dungl; Dungl’s first advice, his daughters remember, was to see a trauma surgeon.

After the Nürburgring that August he guided the recovery that put Lauda back in a car at Monza 42 days later. His daughters, Claudia Dungl and Andrea Zauner-Dungl, described what he brought to it:

Aus schulmedizinischer Sicht waren die Möglichkeiten sehr begrenzt, wichtiger waren da eher das naturheilkundliche Wissen, die Motivation, die Kenntnis um den Stellenwert der Ernährung und die konditionelle Komponente.

From the point of view of conventional medicine the options were very limited; what mattered more was the knowledge of natural healing, motivation, an understanding of the importance of nutrition and the fitness component.

Lauda credited him, in one late telling, with the first cap over his bandages; how the cap came to stay is told in The Austrian.

Dungl was with him again for the comeback of 1982, and Lauda’s plans to retire gave him the idea, his daughter Andrea says, for a centre of his own: he opened it at Gars am Kamp in 1986. He also looked after Gerhard Berger and Ayrton Senna. Dungl died in May 2002, at 64. Motor Sport’s obituary credited him with bringing new levels of fitness to Formula One.

Herbert Völker, the writer

Herbert Völker, born in 1943, was a friend of Lauda’s before Formula One, and for more than three decades the editor-in-chief of the Austrian motoring magazine Autorevue, later its publisher. He wrote all five of Lauda’s books with him, from Protokoll: Meine Jahre mit Ferrari (1977), published in English a year later as For the Record, to Das dritte Leben (The third life) in 1996.

His last book about Lauda, Niki – Stories vom Champion, written after Lauda’s death, collected decades of their conversations. One chapter takes its title from one of Lauda’s darker jokes, about his ear, Ohrwaschel in Austrian dialect. Völker died in 2025, at 81. The books are listed in Books and films.

At Mercedes

Toto Wolff

In September 2012 Lauda became non-executive chairman of the Mercedes Formula One team, and on 21 January 2013 he and another Austrian, Toto Wolff, became its shareholders, Wolff with 30 per cent and Lauda with 10, Daimler keeping 60. Wolff ran the team; Lauda, he said in the team’s statement the day after his death, was a presence in its factories: “Whenever he walked the floor in Brackley and Brixworth, or delivered one of his famous motivational speeches, he brought an energy that nobody else could replicate.”

Lewis Hamilton

Lauda brought Lewis Hamilton, born on 7 January 1985, to the team from McLaren in 2012, as After racing tells. Hamilton remembered a conversation in his hotel room in Singapore, and what he thought Lauda made of him there: “Oh my god, you are just like me in so many ways”. Hamilton always said that Ross Brawn, then the team principal, was what convinced him, but that it was Lauda who brought the move to him and got it across the line.

They won together from 2013 until Lauda’s death, and became close; Hamilton wrote then that he would not have been in the team without him.