1982 The return

On the morning of Thursday 21 January 1982, the first day of practice for the South African Grand Prix, a coach stood outside the paddock at Kyalami. The drivers arriving met a picket line, parked their cars and climbed aboard. Among them was Niki Lauda, aged 32, back in Formula One after two seasons away. Before he raced again he would spend a night locked in a hotel room in Johannesburg with almost every other driver of the World Championship.

The return, with McLaren

He had walked out of Brabham in practice at Montreal in September 1979. In the two years away he ran his airline, Lauda Air, which by early 1982 had two Fokker F27s and was short of traffic rights, and he commentated for Austrian television. Watching the Austrian Grand Prix of 1981 from the commentary box, by his own later account, he felt the urge to race again. Ron Dennis, whose Project Four had run his BMW M1 in the Procar series of 1979, tested him in secret in a McLaren at Donington Park on 16 September 1981, and on 12 November McLaren announced him for 1982, alongside John Watson. On the same day the team announced its turbo engine deal with Porsche. The retirements tells the story of the return.

His trainer, Willi Dungl, had found him overweight and unfit. Der Spiegel listed his winter: a 13 km cross-country ski loop in 1 hour 10 minutes, 30 km uphill on a racing bicycle, and work with an expander and a Bullworker on his narrow shoulders and neck.

The car was John Barnard’s McLaren MP4/1B, developed from Barnard’s MP4/1 of 1981, whose monocoque was made of carbon composite, with a Cosworth DFV engine and Michelin tyres. He began the season in the last of the 1981 chassis, and carried No. 8 all year.

Kyalami: the strike

The quarrel was over a new super-licence from FISA, the sport’s governing body, issued jointly to a driver and his team. Its terms are reported differently. Denis Jenkinson, who read it for Motor Sport, wrote that it asked a driver to state whom he drove for and for how long, and to respect the rules of the FIA, and that it said nothing about money; Der Spiegel reported undertakings never to sue an organiser and never to speak ill of the organisers in public. The clause that tied a driver to one team was, by a later account, Lauda’s chief objection. By the deadline, 24 drivers had signed and seven had not: Lauda, Gilles Villeneuve, Didier Pironi, Jacques Laffite, Bruno Giacomelli, Andrea de Cesaris and René Arnoux. FISA told them to sign and talk at Kyalami.

It was a con, basically. When I arrived at the paddock gate, there was a bus waiting and I was told to get in because we were all going for a meeting. But there was never any intention of a meeting; it was the beginning of the strike.

When everyone but Jochen Mass was aboard, the coach drove to Johannesburg, to a hotel conference room. No car ran that Thursday, and the organisers refunded the day’s spectators. Pironi, the chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, negotiated with FISA, the constructors and the organisers, and telephoned Lauda, who held the line in the locked room and passed each message on. Jenkinson was amused by the picture of a Frenchman talking politics to an Austrian in English.

The drivers slept on mattresses and camp beds; wives and girlfriends were kept out. Elio de Angelis played classical piano and Villeneuve played ragtime. Teo Fabi slipped out and went to the circuit. At about 10 o’clock on the Friday morning Pironi telephoned Lauda that all was well. The drivers believed the form would be changed; FISA, the constructors and the organisers, Jenkinson wrote, saw only a truce.

Practice began an hour late, and the only qualifying hour turned wet from half-way. Lauda ran off into the catch-fencing and started 13th. That evening he apologised to the South African public on television. In the race on Saturday 23 January he made a slow start, then worked his way past Watson and Keke Rosberg, pacing himself exactly in his first race for two years, as Jenkinson saw it, and finished 4th, for 3 points.

After the race the stewards suspended 29 licences pending an inquiry. A tribunal the following week fined every striker US$5,000, and US$10,000 those who had also joined a drivers’ protest at Zolder in 1981, with race bans suspended for two years. Jenkinson thought strikes anti-social and the whole episode naive. Twenty years later, in Motor Sport, Paul Fearnley called Lauda the strikers’ shop steward.

Long Beach

In Brazil, at Jacarepaguá on 21 March, he started 5th. Carlos Reutemann dived inside him under braking, slid into the McLaren and bent its right-rear suspension, and Lauda was out after 22 laps. In August he described what the cornering forces had done to him there.

In Rio zum Beispiel war es so arg, daß ich nach fünf, sechs Runden in manchen Kurven wegen der Fliehkraft den Kopf nicht mehr gerade halten konnte.

In Rio, for example, it was so bad that after five or six laps I could no longer hold my head straight in some corners because of the centrifugal force.

The street circuit at Long Beach had been revised for 1982, and the McLaren worked well there on its Michelins. Jenkinson watched Lauda driving smoothly and accurately and keeping deliberately away from the concrete walls while others bounced off them. Watson had said that Lauda would not be the team’s number one until he had proved it; Lauda out-qualified him by far. In the last moments Andrea de Cesaris took pole with 1:27.316; Lauda was 2nd with 1:27.436.

On race morning the team put Lauda on hard Michelins and Watson on soft. De Cesaris led and Arnoux ran 2nd. On lap 6 Lauda fumbled a gear at the hairpin and moved right to avoid being hit, and Giacomelli charged through and took out Arnoux and himself. Jenkinson saw Lauda smile to himself. On lap 15 de Cesaris hesitated as he lapped Raul Boesel at the chicane, and Lauda went past them both.

He drew away to lead by as much as 50 seconds, then eased off. His 1:30.831 on lap 12 was the race’s fastest lap. On 4 April 1982, in only his third race back, he won the United States Grand Prix West by 14.66 seconds from Rosberg. Villeneuve was 3rd on the road and was later disqualified for the arrangement of his rear wing. Afterwards Lauda said that the margin between staying on the track and hitting the walls had been about three inches. Years later he remembered the last laps: “I was shouting and whistling for joy” (attributed). Jenkinson’s verdict was that the two years away had cost him none of his precision or his racecraft.

He did not race at Imola three weeks later: the British-based teams, McLaren among them, boycotted the San Marino Grand Prix, and Lauda was the only one of their drivers seen in the paddock.

Zolder

On Saturday 8 May, in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, Villeneuve was killed. Ferrari withdrew, and the race went on. A month later, at Detroit, Lauda told Maurice Hamilton that he had been touched by the accident as never before, and that the question was “how the best guy in the business comes to get killed in a stupid accident”.

He had qualified 4th. In the race he ran 2nd behind Rosberg’s new Williams once Arnoux and Alain Prost had faded, until on lap 30 a spinning backmarker made him brake almost to a stop and de Cesaris took his place. His tyres were wearing. Watson, on harder Michelins, passed him on lap 47 and won on the last lap but one, when Rosberg’s tyres went. Lauda, as Jenkinson saw it, had decided to settle for 3rd place at worst rather than stop for new tyres.

Lauda’s smoothness and finesse really does make a lot of drivers look like rank amateurs. … Very shrewd is Niki Lauda, a true professional racing driver.

He finished 3rd on the road. Then the first seven cars were drained and weighed. Watson’s McLaren weighed 581 kg and Rosberg’s Williams 591 kg; Lauda’s weighed 578 kg, under the minimum of 580 kg, and he was disqualified without discussion. It cost him 4 points and a podium.

At Monaco on 23 May the McLaren was down on power; he started 12th and gave up after 56 laps, when the engine felt as if it was seizing. In the streets of Detroit on 6 June he started 10th and was 3rd and catching Rosberg when he tried to outbrake him and went into the guard rail, a mistake Jenkinson thought quite unlike him. A week later, at Montreal, Riccardo Paletti was killed at the start; in the restarted race Lauda stopped after 17 laps, with what was given as clutch failure, after Mauro Baldi’s Arrows had passed him.

At Zandvoort on 3 July he was the first car without a turbo on the grid, 5th. Nelson Piquet and Rosberg passed him early, and he finished 4th.

Brands Hatch

Rosberg, on pole at Brands Hatch on 18 July, failed to start the parade lap. Riccardo Patrese stalled his Brabham at the green, Arnoux hit it, and Watson went onto the grass. Lauda, from 5th on the grid, came through 2nd behind Piquet’s Brabham, which was planned to stop for fuel and tyres. On lap 10 Piquet’s fuel-injection pump failed, and Lauda led the British Grand Prix to the flag, 25.7 seconds ahead of Pironi.

It was his second British Grand Prix win, after the one awarded to him in 1976 on James Hunt’s disqualification, and his 19th World Championship win.

To Las Vegas

At Paul Ricard on 25 July he came in for tyres, saw the crew busy with Watson’s car, drove straight down the pit lane and out again, and came back the next lap. He finished 8th, a lap down. In qualifying at Hockenheim on Friday 6 August he slid off at the end of the pit straight and hurt a wrist; reports differ on which. On the Saturday Pironi was badly injured in practice, and his career ended there. Lauda decided to miss the German Grand Prix so as to be fit for his home race, and McLaren withdrew him.

At the Österreichring on 15 August the McLaren was poor, and he finished 5th, a lap down. In Der Spiegel that week, asked how long he meant to go on driving round in circles, he answered that he would race until it no longer suited him; he was leaving the date open.

At Dijon-⁠Prenois, for the Swiss Grand Prix on 29 August, he was so happy with his 4th place in Friday’s qualifying that he did not run on Saturday. He fought Rosberg in the race and finished 3rd, while Rosberg won his first Grand Prix. At Monza on 12 September he gave up with poor handling and snatching front brakes, and at Caesars Palace, in Las Vegas, on 25 September his engine failed after 53 laps.

He finished the year 5th, with 30 points, behind Rosberg’s 44, Pironi’s and Watson’s 39 and Prost’s 34. Rosberg, the champion, had won one race; Lauda had won two. Long afterwards he said he had realised too late that the deaths and injuries of the season had opened the championship, and that he had started the year unhappy with the McLaren’s lack of power and sure that it could not win: “I think I screwed that season up” (attributed).