Thursday, May 20, 2021
Died two years ago today
Lauda’s death tore a gap in Formula 1
He barely survived the fire accident at the Nürburgring, was marked all his life – and never let himself get down. The Austrian Niki Lauda shaped the Formula 1 like no other and fought against his death for months. The motorsport legend dies on May 20, 2019.
An invisible veil lay over the famous harbor promenade of Monte Carlo, the Glamor Grand Prix in the Principality of Monaco had lost all lightness in 2019 before the engines roared for the first time. While the construction work was going on in the paddock and the protagonists were traveling to the Côte d’Azur, one of them lost his last fight.
Niki Lauda, three-time Formula 1 world champion and team chairman of Mercedes, died on the evening of May 20, 2019 at the age of 70 in a Zurich hospital. “There is no cause of death. It was a long process, at the end of which the patient went,” said Lauda’s doctor, Walter Klepetko. The Austrian idol had fought against death for nine months, but the news hit the PS-Circus like lightning and two years later the icon will be remembered.
“Was our steam maker”
“We have lost the heart and soul of Formula 1,” said Mercedes Motorsport Director and Lauda friend Toto Wolff at the time: “Niki was our protective shield, our steam maker. And my friend.” World champion Lewis Hamilton, brought into the team by the charismatic Austrian for the 2013 season as the final piece of the mosaic, mourned “a light in my life”.
Accordingly, the race weekend was all about the icon that was last on the track in July 2018 in Silverstone. After an inflammation of his previously damaged lungs, Lauda had to undergo a transplant of both wings in August. For a short time, it looked as if the stand-up man was going to pick himself up again, but then his condition became extremely critical in the spring of 2019.
It all started a year earlier, at the Monaco race in 2018, Lauda struggled with an infection. Former Formula 1 star Gerhard Berger recalls in the new Lauda biography “It’s not easy to be perfect” by Maurice Hamilton: “Niki was taken to the hospital, given antibiotics and injections and looked after. Am The next morning I went through the paddock and saw Niki standing in the shade in a corner. ‘Niki! You are crazy! What are you doing here?’ ‘No, no’, he replied, ‘that way it’s better, I have to work.’ What should you say to such a person? That was typical Niki. “
Lauda design helmets
A year later, Lauda was no longer there and at the same time more present than ever. At the Monaco race, each team paid homage to the great fighter who almost lost his life in a fire accident at the Nürburgring on August 1, 1976 and made his racing comeback just 42 days later.
Hamilton and Ferrari star Sebastian Vettel drove with helmets in the classic Lauda design, the engine cover of the Mercedes Silver Arrows has been adorned with a red star since Lauda’s death – based on his trademark, the bright red “Kapperl”. The funeral service in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna was tantamount to a state funeral.
This text first appeared on May 20, 2020
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