The seasons Twelve seasons with five teams

At Monza on 7 September 1975, 3rd place was enough. Niki Lauda was World Champion, the first Ferrari driver to take the title since John Surtees in 1964, in the fourth of his 12 full seasons. Between his debut in August 1971 and his last race in November 1985 he entered 176 World Championship Grands Prix, won three titles and scored 420.5 points, every one of which counted.

The single race of 1971, his debut at the Österreichring in a third works March, belongs to the way up. The 12 pages listed above take the rest, one season to a page: the championship, race by race, and the other racing of the year, from Formula Two and touring cars in the early seasons to the BMW M1 Procar series of 1979. What follows is a short map of the whole.¹

March and BRM, 1972–⁠1973

In 1972 he drove for March in Formula One and Formula Two, on money borrowed against his life insurance. In the World Championship it was a lost year. The March 721, the 721X and the 721G brought him no points, and his team-⁠mate, Ronnie Peterson, finished ahead of him in 10 of their 12 races together. In Formula Two he did better: he won at Oulton Park on 31 March, his only Formula Two win, and took the British Formula Two Championship.

For 1973 he moved to BRM and drove the BRM P160 beside Clay Regazzoni and Jean-⁠Pierre Beltoise. His first points came in May, with 5th place at Zolder, and at Monaco he ran 3rd until his gearbox failed. In June he won the Nürburgring 24 Hours in an Alpina BMW 3.0 CSL. In August he broke his wrist in a crash on the opening laps of the German Grand Prix, and he missed his home race. He finished the year 17th, with 2 points, and with a contract for 1974 from Enzo Ferrari.

Ferrari, 1974–⁠1977

The four seasons at Scuderia Ferrari made his name. In 1974, in the Ferrari 312B3, he was 2nd in his first race for the team and won the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama on 28 April, the first of his 25 wins. He took nine pole positions and won again at Zandvoort, but a run of retirements and a crash from the lead in Canada left him 4th.

In 1975 came the Ferrari 312T. He won at Monaco, Zolder, Anderstorp and Paul Ricard in the space of eight weeks, clinched the title at Monza with a race to spare, and won once more at Watkins Glen. He finished 19.5 points clear of Emerson Fittipaldi, with 64.5.

1976 is the year most people know. He won in Brazil and at Kyalami in the 312T, then at Zolder and Monaco in the new Ferrari 312T2, and Brands Hatch would later be given to him as a fifth win. On 1 August, at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, he crashed in the German Grand Prix, on lap 2, and was given the last rites; the chapter The Nürburgring tells that day. Forty-two days later he finished 4th at Monza. At Fuji, in torrential rain, he stopped after 2 laps, and James Hunt took the title by a single point, 69 to 68. The chapter Monza and Fuji follows those two races.

In 1977 he won three races, at Kyalami, Hockenheim and Zandvoort, finished 2nd six times, and was World Champion again on 2 October, when 4th at Watkins Glen was enough, 17 points ahead of Jody Scheckter. It was already known that he was leaving for Brabham. He did not drive in the last two races of the year; Gilles Villeneuve took his place.

Brabham, 1978–⁠1979

At Brabham, in 1978, he won twice. The first came in Sweden, in the only race of the “fan car”, the Brabham BT46B; the second at Monza, where Ronnie Peterson suffered fatal injuries in the same race. He finished 4th in the championship that Mario Andretti won. In 1979 the Brabham BT48 and its new Alfa Romeo V12 brought him 4 points. He won the first BMW M1 Procar Championship and the non-⁠championship Dino Ferrari Grand Prix at Imola, and in Montreal, on 28 September, during Friday practice for the Canadian Grand Prix, he stopped and retired from racing.

Two years away

There are no pages for 1980 and 1981. He had founded Lauda Air in 1979, and those two years belong to the airlines. Why he stopped, and why he came back, is told in the retirements.

McLaren, 1982–⁠1985

He returned in 1982 with McLaren, beside John Watson. His first race back, at Kyalami, followed the drivers’ strike over the new super-licence; he finished 4th. In his third race, at Long Beach, he won, and he won again at Brands Hatch in July, to finish 5th in the championship. In 1983 he failed to qualify at Monaco, which never happened to him in any other World Championship race, and from the Dutch Grand Prix in August he drove the McLaren MP4/1E with the TAG Porsche engine. He was 10th, with no wins.

1984 was the closest championship of all. In the McLaren MP4/2–⁠TAG he won five races, among them his home Grand Prix at the Österreichring, and his team-⁠mate Alain Prost won seven. At Estoril, on 21 October, Lauda finished 2nd to Prost and took the title by 72 points to 71.5, a margin of half a point. Prost’s win at Monaco, in a race stopped early and paid at half points, had given him 4.5 points instead of 9.²

1985 was the last season. He announced his retirement at the Österreichring in August and, eight days later, won the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, his 25th and last win. A wrist injured in practice at Spa kept him out of two races. In the last, at Adelaide on 3 November, the Australian Grand Prix, he led for a time, until his brakes failed and he crashed.

The team-⁠mates

The first measure of any driver is the man in the other car. Counting the races both men started, Peterson was ahead of him 11 times in 13 at March. At BRM in 1973 both Regazzoni and Beltoise beat him more often than he beat them.

At Ferrari the balance turned. Over 1974, 1975 and 1976 he finished ahead of Regazzoni 25 times to 18, and in 1975 he out-qualified him in every one of their 14 races together. Against Carlos Reutemann, in 1977, he was ahead 11 times to 3. At Brabham he led Watson nine to seven in 1978 and was level with Nelson Piquet, six each. At McLaren he led Watson again, 15 to 13 over 1982 and 1983.

Then came Prost. Across 1984 and 1985 Prost finished ahead of him 18 times to 12, and out-qualified him in all but two of their races together. In 1984 Lauda won the title all the same.

How the season pages are set

Each season opens with its numbers: his starts, wins, pole positions, fastest laps and podiums that year, then his team, car, tyres and race numbers, his team-⁠mates, his points and where he finished, with that year’s champion. A table gives every race he entered, round by round, with the grid, the result and the points, and a line on what happened. A red rule at the start of a row marks a win, and a bold grid figure a pole position.

A second table gives the races he drove outside the World Championship that year. In the early 1970s these were much of his racing: Formula Two with March, touring cars with Alpina BMW and, in 1974, with Ford. Later there were fewer, chiefly non-⁠championship Formula One races, until the Procar series of 1979.

The tables are made from the same record, checked race by race, as every total on this site. From his first hill climb in 1968 to his last Grand Prix he took part in 316 races, by the count of his most detailed chronicler.