THE NIKI LAUDA STORY
About one thousand people are sitting there, nearly like in a prayer, to wait for the opening ceremony of the Essen Motorshow 1984 with their tradtional, but often very anachronistic speeches, and the the funny presentation of an award on modern art in motorsport. They all came to see Nina Rindt of course, a few to be seen by others: The first December weekend of each year is a vanity fair and when I entered the conference centre passing Ron Dennis dressed in a pinstriped suit, Erich Zakowski in a bright grey trench-coat hurrying in together with his whole clan, I can feel it when comung to the entrance door: He is already there. So much charisma only shows its real quality in a huge crowd. For the French he is le magnifique, for the Britons the super rat, in Italy Niki nationale and in the United States The Phoenix - Niki Lauda, that is the Leonardo da Vinci and the Wernher von Braun of the post-industrial age and somewhere, when everything is done, said and written, it will became fact, no matter what will happen so far: This man is the number one in the history of modern technology.
He drove the most famous Grand Prix cars (Ferrari, McLaren), had comebacks twotimes ( Monza 1976 and Kyalami 1982) no other top-sportsman had achieved once, but above all he founded the smallest but most famous air-line of the world - against the the fierce opposition of the former state-owned companies AUA and Lufthansa (today his partners in the business) and at a time of rapidly rising fuel prices and credit costs, that made even the legendary Freddy Laker driven into bankruptcy. The three-dimensional Lauda (Men`s Vogue), the living legend (Stefan Heinrich at Screensport), having received the highest international award of the entire world of sport (the International Award of Valour in Sport 1976) and the red-white-red airo-planes with the prominent L at their sides, with the exception of Enzo Ferrari and Ayrton Senna named after famous musicians (from John Lennon to Johann Strauß), that is not only the greatest pioneer performance ever, but also the story of success the 20th century has ever seen. And the catastrophe of Bangkok 1991 has not chanced a single thing about that. He was offered 8 millions US-$ for entering the cockpit of the controversial Brabham BMW BT55, but this on priniciple unbending personality, multi-talented as author of books, TV commentator, actor, and consultant in the industry, a technocrat through and through, but with a lot of fantasy, sometimes stolid, sensitive, but always charming, aquired the the pilot`s license for scheduled flights, succeeded in the fights for a long distance-concession and international traffic rights in long and hard trials and flew half a million passengers wordwide to Hongkong and Sidney earning a salary of only 3500 US-$ per month. The absolutely clean, brandnew aero-planes, financed at the stock exchange by small shareholders, the most perfect international service with the most beautiful stewardesses - the fireball over the evening sky of the Thailand jungle at the last sunday of May 1991 could not wipe that out, when flight no. 004, Boeing 737-300 ER Mozart with the pilots Tom Welch and Josef Thurner and 223 passengers on board suddenly disappeared from the radar screens at a height of 26.000 feet. The "accident of the century, worse than Lockerbie" (Lauda), only comparable to the Challenger crash, for the most famous captain of the world ( who does not wear a uniform but is dressed in a normal suit) a reason to modify his technological philosophy in details without denying it fundamentally. Laudas aim was to enlighten the secret of the air-crash completely making the world breathless for such a long time regardless his own position. But it took a long while to bring out the truth at the wind tunnel of Boeing using a model of the 777 that entered the market in 1995 (its aerodynamics being comparable to the 767): Caused by a fault within the system one engine suddenly activated the reverse at a speed of 950 km/h the jet-plane turned onto its back within a second, the lift stopped immidiately to make the aircraft sink at supersonic speed with the consequence of cracking into pieces. There had been a big mistake made by the United States aviation authorities when the 767 had to pass the final exam before getting the permission for international transportation. The test simulating a wrong reverse system were only flown at a speed of 500 km/h, because they thought this defect only can happen shortly before the landing. The reverse system normally works on the ground to support the mechanical brakes and they never thought of bringing it into action at the normal travel speed of 950 km/h theoretically. That was the reason why Lauda himself was not able to detect the problem in the flight-simulator. The Mozart was the first 767 ever to crash since this model entered the markets and all the reverse systems of Boeing planes (with the exception of the 737) had to be modified by Laudas initiative. In the case his employees being responsible for the accident Lauda had dissolved his company.
Three worldchampion`s titles, 25 Grand Prix victories, the second, bourgeois career his family always wanted him to do and there the surmounting of the catastrophe: The legend of Lauda, giant, nearly superhuman, proves like nothing in the world how far men can go driven by the power of the will partnered by creativity and logic - against all critics of modern technology hating ideologies. Finally it is the merit of Lauda to give Formula 1 it´s methodical basis and to make the whole business enter a system of permanent research and development.
Klaus Ewald
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