1974 The first wins, and a title let slip

On lap 74 of the British Grand Prix, on 20 July 1974, the right-rear tyre of Niki Lauda’s car broke up, and he came into the pits at Brands Hatch. He had started from pole and led for 69 laps. The wheel was changed quickly, but the pit exit was blocked by people with no business there and by a course car, and an official waved him to stop, 20 feet from where he would have taken the flag. That was his first season with Scuderia Ferrari: nine pole positions, two wins, and a championship that slipped away from a driver who, by his own later judgement, was not yet quite ready to challenge for it.

Ferrari, Montezemolo and Forghieri

The team he joined had ended 1973 as a one-car team, joint 6th among the constructors with 12 points. Fiat, which had been funding Ferrari since 1969, put the young Luca di Montezemolo in charge of the racing team, and Mauro Forghieri, sidelined in 1973, was back as chief engineer. Clay Regazzoni, Lauda’s team-⁠mate at BRM, came back to Ferrari with him; the story of how Lauda was signed belongs to 1973. As Motor Sport told it in 2005, Montezemolo kept the politics away from Lauda and left Forghieri free to engineer.

Over the winter Lauda and Forghieri reworked the Ferrari 312B3 at Fiorano, the team’s own test track. The cockpit moved forward, more of the fuel went into the middle of the car, and the aerodynamics changed; the flat-12 gave about 485 bhp at 12,200 rpm, and at Jarama it was set to run to 12,500. When the cars arrived in Argentina Motor Sport noted the driving positions moved forward, new rear suspension geometry and tall, slim airboxes. Der Spiegel later described the test track at Fiorano, with computers and television watching every test run.

His first race for Ferrari, at Buenos Aires on 13 January, brought a 2nd place from 8th on the grid. Carlos Reutemann’s Brabham had stopped on the last lap, and Lauda followed Denny Hulme home, 9.27 seconds behind. At Interlagos he started 3rd and was out after 3 laps with a misfiring engine.

In March, outside the championship, came the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. In wet Friday practice he beat Jacky Ickx at the last moment for the fastest-lap prize, 100 bottles of champagne. In the race, in the wet again, he led from lap 7 until lap 35, when Ickx went round the outside of him at Paddock Bend; he finished 2nd, 1.5 seconds behind.

At Kyalami at the end of March he took the first pole position of his career, in 1:16.58. Motor Sport’s report caught the mood in the pit: “The Ferrari team were almost hugging one another with this performance from the young Austrian for, although Lauda cannot be described as a ‘natural’, he is a willing worker who readily gives to the best of his ability.” He led the first 9 laps until Reutemann passed him. The ignition failed near the end; he stopped on the circuit and was classified 16th.

Nine poles

Ferrari used five chassis that year, and Lauda raced four of them. At Nivelles in May he was 2nd, 0.35 seconds behind Fittipaldi, alongside him at the line. At Monaco he crashed his new chassis, 015, in practice, and took pole in an older one, 010. Regazzoni led until he spun at Rascasse; Lauda then led until his ignition failed, and was out after 32 laps. At Anderstorp Ferrari changed the fourth- and fifth-gear ratios between the Saturday sessions to answer Jody Scheckter’s pace, and the work overran into final practice; in the race a rear suspension mounting tore loose, the transmission was overloaded, and the gearbox failed with 10 laps left, costing him 3rd place.

Then came Zandvoort, on 23 June. In practice he was more than a second faster than the best of the cars with Cosworth engines, and Denis Jenkinson put it in his own arithmetic: “If you think of a second as ten parts, and realise that only one or two parts usually separate the top runners, it is staggering to think that Lauda was twelve parts faster than the best of the Cosworth runners.” From pole he made a text-book start and led every lap, while Regazzoni, 2nd, kept the rest at bay. He won by 8.25 seconds, in 1h 43m 00.35s: a Ferrari one-two for the second time that year.

At Dijon-⁠Prenois on 7 July he was on pole again, in 58.79 seconds, and led until Peterson caught him and went by on lap 17. Lauda blamed the car. Jenkinson doubted it: “If Lauda is to be believed Peterson only won because the Ferrari developed a ‘vibration in the front end’ which prevented its driver from doing any heroics and forced him to drive with prudence rather than brio.” He finished 2nd, and with 36 points he led the World Championship.

Zandvoort was the first of six pole positions in a row, to Monza, and nine in the season, equalling the record Peterson had set in 1973. That year Lauda and Regazzoni wore Goodyear caps on the podium, and when the team’s cigarette sponsor complained, Enzo Ferrari told them to carry on: his cars won on Goodyear tyres.

Brands Hatch, 20 July

At Brands Hatch he took pole in only 16 laps of practice and without fuss, and led from the start; after 50 laps he was 8 seconds clear of Scheckter. Then Hans-⁠Joachim Stuck crashed at Dingle Dell, scattering debris, and Lauda’s right-rear tyre began to lose air. With 20 laps left Ferrari signalled him in. He stayed out. Scheckter passed him on lap 70 and Fittipaldi a lap later, and on lap 74 the tyre broke up. His lap of 1:21.1, on lap 25, was the race’s fastest.

Denis Jenkinson thought the decision to stay out had been Lauda’s mistake, and the organisation of the pit lane completely wrong. What he admired was the driver’s reaction: Lauda blamed no one, not even the tyre company, knowing that he had won races on its tyres.

Ferrari protested. The RAC rejected the protest; the FIA’s Court of Appeal reversed the decision and reinstated Lauda 5th, which moved Reutemann to 6th and took Denny Hulme’s point away. On the count as it stands, Lauda left Brands Hatch leading the championship with 38 points to Fittipaldi’s 37; at the time, without the 2 points of the appeal, he had 36.

The Capris

Away from Ferrari he raced touring cars for Ford, named in the works Capri team for the European Touring Car Championship with Toine Hezemans, Jochen Mass and Dieter Glemser. With Mass he retired from the Salzburgring Four Hours in April with a failed engine, and from the Nürburgring 1000 km in May when a wheel that had not been properly tightened came off. At the Nürburgring Six Hours in July his own car, shared with Mass, crashed, and he finished 2nd in another, with Glemser and Hezemans. In September he was 6th in a German championship race at the Norisring.

The last five races

In the championship he scored nothing more. At the Nürburgring Nordschleife on 4 August he took pole in 7:00.8, short of the lap under seven minutes he had reportedly managed in private testing, then made a poor start; Regazzoni led and Scheckter was 2nd. Going into the North Curve on the first lap Lauda tried to outbrake the Tyrrell, got crossed up, spun across the track, clipped Scheckter and hit the barrier. Regazzoni won. Motor Sport’s report closed the story: “…a wistful Lauda explained to the continuous flow of enquirers that he had goofed.”

At his home race at the Österreichring he took pole at the last moment and chased Reutemann until the engine began to misfire, out after 17 laps. At Monza, from pole, he jumped the start blatantly, by Motor Sport’s account, overdid the wheelspin, still led into the Curva Grande and was well clear by the Parabolica, to wild cheering. He led for 29 laps, by up to 7 seconds, until the engine began to smoke and died.

At Mosport on 22 September he led from the start for 67 laps and set the fastest lap. Then, at Turn 3, he met the debris of John Watson’s accident with no warning flags shown, slid into the barrier, and handed Fittipaldi the lead and the race. At Watkins Glen, in the last race, both Ferraris understeered and vibrated, and Lauda was out after 38 laps with his suspension failing. Fittipaldi was champion for McLaren with 55 points, 3 more than Regazzoni; Scheckter had 45, and Lauda was 4th with 38. Regazzoni, steadier, had taken the fight to the last race. Ferrari was 2nd among the constructors, with 65 points to McLaren’s 73.

A month before the finale Jackie Stewart, retired by then, had said, as Der Spiegel reported him in German, that he believed in Lauda, and that if not Lauda, then not Regazzoni either. A week before the final race Der Spiegel noted a pattern: at Ferrari Lauda was regarded as the first driver, but each time he dropped out, eight times by then, the points had mostly gone to Regazzoni. Lauda’s own verdict, in 2017: he had had a couple of spins and incidents, and was not quite ready to challenge for the championship.

The year had made him rich, all the same. Der Spiegel reported in 1975 that he had earned almost a million marks in 1974: enough, it said, to clear his debts and to start building a house on the Fuschlsee. Two years earlier he had taken a bank loan, secured on his life insurance, to drive a March. In 1975, with a new car, he would be champion.