The Priceless Impact Niki Lauda Had on Formula 1

Helping Ferrari go from a ‘shit’ to championship-winning car

When he arrived at Ferrari at the end of 1973, Lauda made no qualms about telling Enzo Ferrari himself that “the car is shit,” and that it had issues with understeering which were costing them several tenths of lap time. And with that, he immediately got to work with Ferrari’s technical director Mauro Forghieri and the rest of the team’s engineering staff to fix the problems.

“The fact that I was able to test regularly at Fiorano made genuine progress possible,” Lauda wrote of his early time with the Scuderia. “And meant that Forghieri could be encouraged to experiment and eliminate shortcomings.”

Indeed, as he and Forghieri continued working together, it became clear that Lauda not only had an extremely deep understanding of how an F1 car functioned and needed to be set up, but that he knew how to effectively communicate what needed changing. And while he had a rocky start to his Ferrari career during his first full season with the team in 1974 (with more retirements than completed races), the following year was a completely different story. Lauda clinched his first of three Drivers’ Championships in 1975 and broke Ferrari’s decade-long dry spell, bringing the team their first Constructors’ title since 1964.

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The value of racing with Lauda

Lauda’s impact wasn’t just limited to his side of the garage. As a formidable driver, he was a force that brought out the best in those competing alongside him.

“Having a great rival raises your game,” wrote John Watson for Motorsport Magazine in 2019, “[it] takes you to a higher level, and at the end of ’82 we were both in with a shot at the championship.”

Watson was Lauda’s teammate at first at Parmalat Racing Team in 1978 and again at McLaren in 1982 and 1983. In those years of working alongside and against him, Watson had a front row seat to just how Lauda was able to improve his own performance as well as that of his team to ensure the highest success possible. And indeed, in that 1983 season, Watson achieved his best result in F1 with a third place overall in the Drivers’ Championship, no doubt at least in part due to having Lauda as a teammate to push him forward.

“[W]hat marks out certain people in all aspects of life is that it’s not just about core ability, but also a range of qualities and that’s what Niki brought,” Watson wrote the Guardian shortly following Lauda’s death in 2019. “His ability to communicate, his incisiveness in describing things, in being technically alert and aware of what would make a car work.”

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Signing Lewis Hamilton and steering Mercedes to the front

The impact that Lauda had while he was still competing did not go away when he permanently set aside his F1 race suit in 1985. He stayed within the world of F1, first in a managerial capacity at Ferrari, then for a one year stint between 2001 and 2002 as team principal of Jaguar before finally settling in as non-executive chairman of Mercedes, where he stayed for the remainder of his career.

On the impact that Lauda’s passing had on his team and himself, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said, "Niki's missed all those years because Niki always simplified things to really what mattered.

"I'm having to think what would he have said, and how would he have positioned [things], and the two of us worked well together in that sense that sometimes oversimplification can lead you straight to the results.”

The two would often debrief after a race weekend, debating back and forth on the results and how to keep improving on them for the betterment of the team. 

Lauda was even instrumental in convincing Hamilton to join Mercedes back in 2012. Hamilton had intended to re-sign with McLaren, but a middle-of-the-night phone call with Lauda was what tipped his scale in favor of the Silver Arrows.

“He just fired straight into things because his attitude was not to waste time on formalities,” Wolff said of the negotiations. “Just get it done.” 

And indeed, ‘just get it done’ made up the core of who Niki Lauda was. He had a knack for pinpointing exactly what was in the way of his goal, be it an issue with his car preventing him from achieving race wins, or a driver not yet committed to his team. And once he had zeroed in on what needed addressing, he knew exactly how to get the end result he needed. This innate part of his character helped him achieve three Championships (two with Ferrari and one with McLaren), push his rivals to perform at their peak, and help establish one of the greatest team-driver pairings the sport has ever seen.

Lauda may have given McLaren a price tag of $4,999,999 for who he was, but in hindsight, there is only one word to describe his impact: priceless.

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Images via Mercedes-Benz Media Centre