> After the chaos of a Grand Prix, I need the order of flying. <
Niki Lauda

"Aha, Daddy Graham is also here" - Niki Lauda has already seen the white Piper Aztec in the colours of cigarette brand Embassy. Airport Milan-Linate, somewhere in the middle of the seventies and already at that time a great part of the Grand Prix field had used to travel by private airoplanes. Not by jets at all, but by propeller-driven planes. Graham Hill, driver and team boss in personal union, had bought his two engine aircraft after his triumph in the 1966 Indianapolis 500 (in a Lola Ford), first used only privately, then for the transportation of the whole team of Embassy Hill. The 29th November 1975 was a foggy Saturday. After testing the new Hill Ford GH2 in French Paul Ricard the team was back on their way home to England; on board of the Piper were Hill himself, the Grand Prix driver Tony Brise, the team manager Ray Brimble, the designer Andy Smallman and the mechanics Terry Richards and Tony Alcock. Shortly before the landing in Elstree - all other London were closed because of the fog - the Piper crashed into a golf course. The team of Embassy Hill stopped existing. A later examination came to the result: Both the altitude meters had been adjusted the wrong way, the fog in the night had not been the real reason for the accident. Caused by a bureaucratic mistake no liability insurance, that is demanded by the laws, had ever existed for the Piper. The members of the families of the very young crew being killed sued Hill´s widow Bette , mother of three rising children, personally for compensation, and they succeeded. The Queen of Motor Racing lost all the familiy´s fortune and had to work as a seceretary again. In 1996 Hill´s only son Damon became world champion in a Williams Renault.

"Without an aircraft I would have already stopped competing," says Michael Schumacher, but in contrast to his brother Ralf he does not fly his plane himself. Their aeroplanes cost the Schumachers millions of Euros, but the luxury of being at the family´s home each evening after having raced or tested in Europe, the money spent on it it is worth. Also the triple world champions Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna, in spite of their common Brazilian nationality nearly real enemies, had been brought to their destinations by employed pilots. But Senna was an enthusiastic pilot of radio-driven model planes.

Owners of complete airlines were the team principals Niki Lauda (Jaguar) and Paul Stoddart (Minardi). Lauda, who had gone to Milan by a scheduled plane from Vienna several times a week as a Ferrari Grand Prix driver during the mid-seventies, later had had a share in the small Austrian charter flight company Dr Polsterer, before he became independent with two Fokker Friendship at the end of the decade. Some time later Lauda also bought an option for a DC-10, but during the Second Energy Crises with rising fuel costs, more and more growing interest and a worldwide recession as the consequence, this step had been one too large. Lauda decided to freeze his ambitions as an enterpreneur for a while, came back to Grand Prix Racing and became world champion for the third time in 1984. Then things went well very quickly. Niki Lauda successfully struggled at court for traffic rights and a scheduled flying concession from 1987 on against state runned Austrian Airlines (AUA). With the growing number of passengers the size of the planes had become larger, in their best times the fleet of Lauda Air consisted of 20 aircrafts, beginning with the Falcon 20 and ending with the Boeing 777. Service is our success is the simple and true slogan of Lauda Air, the company´s symbol is the rat with the red cap - clever, fast and cunning: The similarity with the boss is purely by chance. Niki Lauda sold shares of his company to German Lufthansa and later also to AUA, having got the future clearly in his vizor. Lean management, simple, effective structures: Nearly ten years Lauda Air had made profits, also in the year of catastrophe of 1991, and the boss always sat himself in the planes´s cockpit. But in 1999 the air became thinner and thinner for Niki Lauda. For the first time Lauda Air had made losses, caused by the weak Euro and rising interest in the USA. At the same time the trade unions, Lauda always had been able to keep away from his company, but now coming in by the AUA holding shares, started a total attack. They wanted the same wages as being paid by Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines, too much for the pretty small Lauda Air. Lauda considered himself not being the boss of his own company anymore, and so he decided to retire as their president. A little later he sold, not absolutely voluntarily, his shares to AUA as Lufthansa had done theirselves shortly before. Niki Lauda kept the majority of Lauda Air Italia, while his life´s work completely was integrated into the AUA group, but to stay as a separate brand.

Australia´s Paul Stoddart, also a plane´s pilot, also a real racer (who also is able to drive his Grand Prix cars) was the owner of European Aviation. This company mainly does the shuttle service for the great airlines, but the terror attacks against the USA on 11th September 2001 had brought great difficulties to the whole aviation business. In America also big companies had been threatened by bankruptcy, the smaller ones had been in deep, deep troubles. At the end of 2002 Paul Stoddart decided to sell European Aviation, but he kept his profit bringing trade with aeroplane spare parts.

Intercontinental Testing, test session in overseas regions, are forbidden for some years for cost reasons. Even in the eighties the complete Grand Prix circus had flown to Brazil in winter to test in the old crocodile swamps of Jacarepagua. At that time a single 747 Cargo had been enough to bring the whole equipment onto the continents outside of Europe. Since the beginning of the nineties the number of big cargo planes had increased dramatically, inspite the teams´trucks and motorhomes had to stay at home. Big Lift is a giant operation reaching military dimensions, not at last, since Bakersville, the mobile digital broadcasting centre had to be brought to all the tracks since 1996.

Of course, all teams have got aeroplanes of their own, but, like it is at the motorhomes, prestige often beats the real necessity. The grandfather of all Grand Prix aviators once had been Sir Jack Brabham, the only world champion driving a car of his own (in 1966 a Brabham Repco). Brabham had started his career in his home country´s Royal Australian Air Force as an aircraft mechanic after World War II, later he had become an engineeer by attending a night school. Brabham had taken part in his maiden Grand Prix at Aintree in 1955 driving a Cooper Alta; for Cooper Cars Co. he became the leading person as the 1959 & 1960 world champion. At that time he already flew a Cessna 180, with his own companies (Motor Racing Developments, Brabham Racing Organisation etc.) growing and his three sons rising, he switched to a Queen Air 65 offering him a lot more space. Aviation made him create the idea to supply a Grand Prix car with wings for increasing grip for the first time in spring 1968. A testing session at Zolder was used to verify this hypothesis, but Ferrari had enough information about Brabham´s invention, wherefrom it is not known. Therefore Jacky Ickx and Chris Amon were the first drivers in Grand Prix history ever to have got real downforce available. The first wings already made the cars two seconds quicker per lap, but they also caused some heavy accidents by broken materials. In Monaco 1969 the F.I.A. finally took action to give exact maximum measures for the until two metres high rear wings.

Colin Chapman followed Brabham as the next Grand Prix airman, with Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Chris Amon and Francois Cevert, who loved flights at night more than anything else, the air fleet of Grand Prix Racing had become pretty complete. Jackie Stewart actually had aquired a private pilot´s license in Australia back in 1966, but he never flew himself. The pop star among the Grand Prix drivers, meanwhile also knighted, flies scheduled or charter, as the ambassador of the Ford group also with the company owned business jet. Chapman had been the first ever team boss to sign a contract with a commercial sponsor, the cigarette brand Gold Leaf. From 1972 on Team Lotus became much more famous wearing the colours of John Player Special from the same tobacco manufacturer and Chapman also let his two engine Navajo Chieftain paint in black and gold. Once Mister Lotus had to stop at the Spanish hippie island of Ibiza for an emergency landing caused by a lack of fuel. The landscape around the landing place he had fallen so much in love with, that he bought a big plot of land there to construct a holiday home on it. There he wrote a theoretic essay consisting of 27 pages in the middle of the seventies to give it to his chief aerodynamicist Peter Wright for compulsory reading. The practical transformation of Chapman´s theories was the invention of the wing car with aerodynamic profiles within the side pods, making airtight by lateral skirts made out of a special synthetic sunstance: One of so many brilliant ideas coming from Team Lotus. With the Lotus Ford 78s and 79s Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson superior scored the first two places in the 1978 worldchampionship and, of course, Lotus also won the constructor´s competition.

During the sixties and seventies Jackie Stewart and Denny Hulme had regularly competed in the CanAm series with two-seater racing cars in Canada and the USA additionally to their involvement in Grand Prix Racing. At that time they spent more time in aircrafts than in the cockpits of their racing cars and Stewart called the races in the New World simply My Atlantic Business without any emotions. But the Scot suffered under an ulcer in 1972 and so the doctors stopped Stewart´s races between the continents. Hulme, The Bear, was not effected by the jet lag as it was said, but McLaren´s dollar hunter became rich, but not old: In 1992 he died of a cardiac infarction at the age of only 56 - the death of his only, twenty years old son Martin caused by a swimming accident he had not been able to cope with.

Once the dream aeroplane of the Grand Prix family had been the Lear Jet of American manufacturer Gates. That mashine had not been one of the first executive jets ever and therefore a real object of prestige. Originally it had been designed as a fighter plane and for this reason it had got "an handling like a racing car" (Francois Cevert). One of the first team principals being the owner of a Lear Jet was American motor magnate Roger Penske, like the boss himself in the outfit of the team´s traditional sponsor SUNOCO (for Sun Oil Company).

Airlines very rarely appear as sponsors of Grand Prix teams. The unconscious association of in most cases harmless racing accidents with fatal air-crashes is a psychological disadvatage of great relevance for the masses. Brazil´s VARIG had supported the still young Arrows team at their first outing in 1978, the money of European Aviation saved Minardi from going bankrupt in 2001. Australia´s biggest airline Quantas had been the event sponsor of their home Grand Prix for a while some years ago. British Air Ferries (BAF) from the family of British Grand Prix driver Rupert Keegan had been co-sponsors at Team Surtees at the end of the seventies. At that time a BAF plane made a crash-landing on a Dutch beach, because they also had run out of fuel. Keegan and his companions escaped the accident only slightly hurt. Also with minor injuries Scotland´s David Coulthard survived the crash of a chartered Lear Jet in Central-French Lyon in 2000. Coulthard, his former girl-friend Heidi and a companion were on the way from English Brooklands to a date in Nice in the South of France, when problems with one of the engines appeared at about two thirds of the way to go. The sanctioned emergy landing at Lyon absolutely went wrong, the cockpit of the Lear Jet was completely damaged and the plane also caught fire. With broken ribs David Coulthard scored a fine second place in the following Spanish Grand Prix, while both the airmen had not survived the crash.
Sponsoring in a pretty big style is done by logistics groups FedEx and DHL, a subsidiary company of the Deutsche Post World Net, both running cargo fleets of their own. FedEx (for Federal Express) is co-sponsor at Benetton, Ferrari and Williams for several years. DHL presented theirselves as title sponsors of Irish Jordan team at their home airport of Bruxelles very early in 2002.

That motor racing can become dangerous, is generally known. The plane is statistically the safest transportation system and also old aircrafts are no greater risk, if the service is done properly. One of Niki Lauda´s Boeing 767-300-ERs was called Mozart (the identical sister plane has got the name Johann Strauss by the way). On 26th May, 1991 it just had been 14 months of age, practically brandnew. After the start in Bangkok it already had reached it´s travelling height. At that time it´s speed was about 950 km/h. Back home to Vienna it would take about the period of an average work day. On board were 213 passengers, among them many students of economics having been on an excursion to Asia together with their professors. Captain of flight no. NG 4 was American Tom Welch, 48, beside him sat o-pilot Josef Thurner, 41, from Austria immensly experienced men and two of overall 70 pilots of Lauda Air. Behind them in the cabin there worked furthereight crew members. The Boeing 767 has been produced since 1982, until 1991 about 350 models had been sold worlswide and no one had ever crashed. About 22:30, some fifteen minutes after the start in Thailand, suddenly the Mozart´s reverser of the left engine opened at a height of 25,800 feet. The pilots saw the mistake, but they had no chance to do anything against it. Within seconds the aircraft turned upside down, reached supersonic speed and broke into pieces already in the air. At the boundary to Burma there had been no survivors.
Who wants to run an aeroplane in the USA has to obey the strictest regulations. But the authorities FAA (for Federal Aviation Authority) and NTSB (for National Transportation Safety Board) are, like the NASA by the way, influenced by bureaucratic structures of giant size. To struggle against them is very similar to the fight of the Don Quichotte. Niki Lauda had to begin this fight. The reverser of the Mozart belonged to the standard equipment of nearly all Boeings, but also to that ones of a lot of Airbus types. The catastrophe over the Thailand jungle could have repeated everywhere everytime. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were in danger. Lauda had won this fight, also done very hard against himself. Also against Boeing, also against the press. But for the truth. As the consequence all aircrafts concerning that problem were grounded to be modified. Niki Lauda´s courage had saved the lives of thousands of passengers.

Lauda had survived motor racing and also the early days of aviation. For others that had not been self-evident. Ron Flockhard had crashed in Australia in 1962, Carlos Pace in Brazil in 1977 and Harald Ertl in Germany in 1982. David Purley, Grand Prix driver and paratrooper, enterpreneur and constructor (Lec Ford), but also bomber pilot, crashed at the Southern coast of England in 1985 during a demonsration with a historic fighter plane. The airport of Milan-Linate cannot get out of the headlines. On 8th October 2001 a Cessna of four German businessmen had collided with a commercial aircraft of the SAS on the ground and in the fog, 118 people had died. The ground radar had been defect for a year, the marking on the runways had been not sufficient enough. Some months later the sporting aircraft of another business man crashed into the Pirelli Tower of Milan instead of landing in Linate: The smaller carbon copy of the tragedy of September, 11th. History sometimes repeats itself and it is up to us to learn from it.

Klaus Ewald

Graphics by project * 2000

© 2002 by researchracing

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