Niki Lauda’s Near-Death Crash—What Happened Next Left the World Speechless

Niki Lauda’s Crash And The Shocking Aftermath

In 1976, Niki Lauda was infamously trapped in his flaming car during a Grand Prix and read his last rites. He returned to the track only weeks after, and everyone thought it was a miracle, but years later, the dark truth finally came out. Born in Austria in the late 1940s, Lauda grew up with all the luxuries a young boy could want. His family were wealthy, and their name carried huge weight in the society he grew up in. So when he dropped out of university to pursue a career in racing, they weren’t pleased. The whole racing field had only become a recognized sport a few decades earlier and still bore a reputation for being extremely dangerous. In response, Lauda’s family refused him access to their money. He went the extra step and cut off communication with them entirely, putting distance between their disapproval and his dreams. But he needed money, which led him to an extreme move of his own. In the early 1970s, he bought himself a spot on the March Engineering Formula 2 and Formula 1 racing teams. He took out a loan on his own insurance policy, paying the team a whopping thirty thousand dollars to add him to their roster. And unfortunately for him, things got worse before they got better. Niki Lauda did fairly well on the new team, even winning races, but the team took a huge loss on the season overall, seeming to stunt his ability to continue to grow there. So he made a drastic decision. He turned his sights elsewhere and ultimately set them on British Racing Motors. Lauda somehow managed to take out another huge loan to get onto BRM. His year with them turned out better than his year with March, but still not nearly good enough. Their cars didn’t stack up well against other teams. Despite the subpar cars, Lauda started to make quite the impression on fans and other teams alike. He boasted a fearlessness that made him a hard competitor in nearly every race. So when he lost the Monaco Grand Prix due to a transmission issue, he likely felt more than ready to move on, except he still owed the team money for his travels and equipment.

While racing with BRM, Niki Lauda caught the eye of another owner and his team, Enzo Ferrari. Considering their own waning success with race cars, Ferrari saw a unique opportunity with Lauda. So they made a cutthroat move of their own: they paid off his debts to BRM to get him on their team. But, of course, things didn’t quite go to plan. Niki Lauda did a test drive as soon as he signed with Ferrari. His assessment of their 1974 312 didn’t go well, and that’s putting it much more kindly than he did. Though the team’s owner probably had some thoughts on Lauda’s flippant attitude and blunt demeanor, the young driver soon proved himself worth putting up with. He placed second in his first race with Ferrari and went on to win the team’s first Grand Prix in several years. He only took home one other big win that year at the Spanish Grand Prix, but he’d effectively set the tone as the new face of Ferrari racing. His next year proved even more successful. On top of several wins, he set a new world record: he completed the Nürburgring racetrack in Germany in record time, less than seven minutes. But even with his skyrocketing success, the very act of getting into the race car regularly put Lauda at serious risk. Though safety in the sport continued to steadily improve, driving at such high speeds still posed serious danger. Like many drivers, Lauda regularly experienced car issues like tire problems or even fuel leaks while racing, but nothing seemed to derail him. In fact, he doubled down on his nonchalant attitude, even when it came to his big wins. Going into his third year with Ferrari, he seemed destined for more greatness, but a shocking tragedy loomed on the horizon.

After several big wins at the start of the 1976 season, Niki Lauda set his sights on winning the German Grand Prix. But this time, it wasn’t the cars that were the problem; the circuit there needed serious work. Reportedly, the track didn’t have anywhere near the necessary safety requirements, specifically the tools needed in the event of a fire. Lauda attempted to start a protest, encouraging other drivers to boycott the event altogether. As a champion driver, he probably thought he’d have an influence on them. However, none of the drivers joined him, and the race continued as planned. During the second lap, Lauda’s car skidded off the track, colliding with a barrier and another car before immediately catching fire. The driver in the other car managed to get out right away, but Lauda couldn’t move. Stuck in his car as the fire blazed larger and hotter, he suffered serious third-degree burns. Several drivers, along with one fire marshal, rushed into the flames and managed to free him from the car. As if the accident and fire itself didn’t present enough danger, Lauda’s helmet also didn’t fit him snugly enough. Reportedly, it dislodged during the accident, resulting in very serious burns to his head, face, and left ear. Once at the hospital, doctors furiously attempted to treat Lauda’s wounds. In addition to his burns, he suffered broken bones and respiratory issues from the smoke. As he lay unconscious, they concluded he wouldn’t make it and called in a priest to administer his last rites. But what happened next was astounding: somehow, Niki Lauda managed to regain consciousness and quickly started to recover.

The accident left his face scarred from the burns, but he didn’t take the time to let the doctors do any serious surgery to fix the aesthetics. In keeping with the kind of man everyone knew him to be, he wanted to get back on the track ASAP. Just six weeks after his accident, Lauda showed up to a press conference in preparation for an upcoming race. He appeared with his head still covered in bandages, and some even report that he sometimes bled through them in public. By his own admission, the prospect of getting back on the racetrack after surviving a nearly fatal accident only a little over a month before truly scared him. It didn’t scare him enough, though. With bandages secured firmly under a new helmet, he raced to a fourth-place finish at the Italian Grand Prix. People across the world of racing celebrated Lauda’s bravery and courage. Then he pushed the boundaries of his devil-may-care attitude; it seemed nothing could stop him. But not everyone fawned over his miraculous return. A British racer named James Hunt likely began crossing paths with Lauda in the early 1970s as he himself rose to fame in the sport. But by seventy-six, Lauda posed the biggest threat to him winning the world championship. By the time the Japanese Grand Prix arrived, the last battle of the season, all eyes were on Lauda and Hunt. Lauda ranked just a few spots behind Hunt, who ranked first and could still win the championship in this race. When the day of the race arrived, both drivers faced something they didn’t see coming. The race took place during serious rainfall, and though Lauda did start the race, what he did next seemed to go against everything he stood for: he gave up after two laps, effectively giving Hunt the win. Driving in serious rain already puts all the drivers at more risk than driving in normal weather, but to make it even more difficult for Lauda, he struggled with watery eyes from the way his accident affected his tear ducts. In the end, he chose his life over the win.

Lauda’s last-minute withdrawal from the championship-winning race in Japan didn’t sit well with Enzo Ferrari at all. Reportedly, he went on the lookout for a replacement driver, possibly to avoid another championship-losing withdrawal, and landed on Carlos Reutemann, a driver from Argentina. Lauda didn’t take it well. The whole situation rubbed Lauda the wrong way, making him feel like he had no support from his own team. Reportedly, he’d associated with Reutemann before and didn’t like him, so working with him really got under his skin. Lauda ended up announcing his plans to leave Ferrari that same year, but in the end, he managed to do it with a little extra bit of pettiness. Niki Lauda took on the 1977 racing season with finesse and skill. He raced so consistently and ranked so well that he clinched the world championship before the final two races of the season. His next move was downright shocking: he immediately quit Ferrari and refused to drive in the last races. Then, for an astounding one million dollar salary, he joined Ferrari’s highest competition at the time, Brabham Alfa Romeo. It was the final blow in his contentious relationship with his ex-team. He’d come a long way from the young man who took out a loan on his own insurance to get on a team. Still, his new celebrity status didn’t guarantee a smooth course ahead. Lauda’s years on the new team didn’t go nearly as well as his time with Ferrari. Their cars suffered from multiple design issues, causing him to have to withdraw from several races. Even so, he managed to place fourth in the 1978 championships. But by the next year, Lauda decided to change his entire life in a very Lauda way: he quit with some flair. Still with Brabham, he went to Canada for his second-to-last race of the 1979 season. After his practice run, he got out of the car and declared he didn’t want to continue the silliness of driving around in circles. With that, he walked away from racing and turned his attention to an entirely different type of vehicle.

Lauda launched his own airline, Lauda Air, that very same year. He even learned to fly, getting his pilot’s license and occasionally piloting flights for his passengers. But it takes money to run an airline, and though he made plenty in his years racing, he still needed more to push his new business ahead. He found himself doubling back, probably sooner than he anticipated. In eighty-two, Niki Lauda returned to racing. This time, he signed with McLaren for a reported three million dollars, the highest salary awarded to anyone in the sport up to that time. He got cheeky with his negotiations, declaring he charged a dollar for his racing and the rest for his personality. Before he officially hit the track again, Lauda rallied for the support of other drivers to protest agreements around their sport. New contracts tried to make drivers fully commit to their respective teams, which ultimately affected their ability to negotiate their salaries. As you can imagine for such a mercenary driver, this rubbed Lauda the wrong way. He inspired the other drivers to sit out a race until the sporting authority agreed to the new terms, and this time, he won. With the new agreements in place, Lauda returned to the work of proving he still had it, and that first year back, he won the Long Beach Grand Prix. But other than that, he didn’t climb back to the heights of almost a decade prior. The next year brought even less success; he didn’t win a single race. The following year, Alain Prost, a French racer, joined his team. And just as before, he struggled with having a new teammate. This time, he reportedly felt threatened by Prost, who brought his own history of wins to the team. Perhaps Lauda expected to be the main attraction considering his history, but in the end, things turned out much better than he expected. Niki Lauda ended the season grateful for having Prost to push him to be his most competitive. He ended the year with a record-making world championship win, his third to that point. The 1985 season turned out to be mostly a flop. He withdrew from several races, partly due to breaking his wrist during a practice race. He won one more big Grand Prix that year, then finally decided to walk away from the sport for good—kind of.

Despite his own comments on its silliness, he never could truly get away. Over the next couple of decades, Lauda stuck around the world of racing in multiple different roles. This included work as a TV commentator and in varying capacities for teams like Ferrari and Jaguar. Though Lauda survived the serious accident he was in at the 1976 German Grand Prix and lived to race another day, in his final years it became clear that he had walked away with far more than just burns. He suffered with several health issues as he grew older, likely long-term damage from those moments he spent trapped in the blazing car inhaling smoke and other toxic chemicals. He ended up needing a double lung transplant, but the issues with his kidneys turned out to be more dangerous. When the kidney donated to him by his brother failed, he turned to his next best option. In 2005, after just a short time dating, his girlfriend Birgit Wetzinger donated a kidney, granting him several more years of life. He died in 2019, his life ending peacefully as he slept.