Niki Lauda is as famous for the World Championship he didn’t win as the three he achieved. In the 40th anniversary year of the Austrian’s first title, RACER editor David Malsher argues that Lauda’s literally death-defying comeback in ’76 has overshadowed the Austrian’s remarkable talent.

“I’m quicker than all of you!” declares actor Daniel Bruhl, playing Niki Lauda in the famous Nurburgring ’76 drivers meeting in the movie, “Rush.” It’s doubtful the real Lauda ever said this. Even more doubtful he ever thought it. There was, after all, a good reason why he wouldn’t consider partnering James Hunt. He’d also been blown aside by more experienced teammate Ronnie Peterson during his own underwhelming rookie Formula 1 season of 1972.

But neither a backward March nor a bumbling BRM were going to be hindrances to a driver as driven as Lauda. His arrival at Ferrari for 1974 coincided with Luca di Montezemolo becoming team manager and, along with Clay Regazzoni who’d also made the BRM-to-Ferrari leap, they turned Ferrari back to competitiveness in 1974.

It was desperately necessary. Since Jacky Ickx had come on strong to almost steal the 1970 Formula 1 World Championship, the Prancing Horse had gradually stumbled into irrelevance as Tyrrell and Lotus asserted their authority on the sport. 1973 (RIGHT, Ickx at Montjuich Park) was one of the most pathetic showings in the proud Italian marque’s history, putting just 12 points on the board – beaten into sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship by the aforementioned March!

Those kinds of results weren’t going to sell more Dinos and Berlinetta Boxers, and that was a genuine consideration now. Enzo Ferrari may have only gone into the road car business to fund his race campaigns, but such idealism had led him into financial crisis and he’d willingly accepted a 50 percent buyout by Fiat S.p.A in 1969. Since then, a more corporate, more head-over-heart ethos had defined decisions at the Scuderia: race glory would help sell road cars, and the new broom that swept through the corridors at Ferrari in the winter of ’73 was indicative of that.

However, the designers of the lame ’73 car – Mauro Forghieri, Franco Rocchi and Giancarlo Bussi – stayed put, and Ferrari’s faith in its incumbent tech heads paid off – they absolutely turned it around. In fact, the only criticism you could level at this trio’s off-season work was in retaining the disastrous old car’s nomenclature. Bestowing the “312 B3” designation on both the ’73 and ’74 Ferrari F1 cars is a little like categorizing both Vin Diesel and Robert De Niro as actors. The differences were substantial, with the newer car situating the driver further forward in the monocoque, placing a fuel tank behind him in order to alter the weight distribution, and providing him with heavily revised, compliant and more easily adjustable De Dion rear suspension. Visually, too, the car was instantly distinguishable from its predecessor, its more substantial rear bodywork topped by a vertical airbox. The difference in performance was even more dramatic than the change in aesthetics.

In light of their subsequent standing within the sport, you may be surprised to see Regazzoni ahead of Lauda in the 1974 World Championship at year’s end, but that’s a result of damned lies and statistics. At BRM, as Lauda had gained experience in his sophomore season, he’d begun to reveal a potential beyond that of the affable Swiss who was 10 years his senior, yet who hadn’t made his F1 debut until he was 31. When they both transferred to Ferrari, the gap between them actually widened. Rega could be mega on his day (think Long Beach a couple years later), and yes, he ended up closest to eventual World Champion, McLaren’s Emerson Fittipaldi, in the points standings. But it was Lauda, far more often that not, who was Ferrari’s leading runner.

In fact, even in ’74, Lauda was Formula 1’s leading runner…when running. Niki scored the first two of his eventual 25 grand prix wins, leading Ferrari 1-2s in Spain and Holland, but there was so much more potential there. He scored nine pole positions – at that time a Formula 1 record – and led 339 laps. By comparison, Fittipaldi and Regazzoni were at the front of the field for just 77 and 83 laps respectively. The difference was that Emmo and Clay finished 12 of the 15 races, Niki a mere six.

Oddly, that stat is often explained away by a misconception – that Lauda was too hotheaded at this point in his career, that he was not yet the metronomic masterpiece we came to know and respect in subsequent years. But this is simply not borne out by the facts: only once in ’74 could he be accused of throwing away a grand prix, when he collided with Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell on the opening lap at the Nurburgring.  Aside from that, his disastrously inconsistent scoring rate was almost entirely down to the fragility of the fast Ferrari. Three times his engine blew, once his gearbox disintegrated, once his suspension wilted, twice his ignition failed…

But Super Rat himself already had the spark of greatness. So when Forghieri and Rocchi surpassed themselves by clothing and accessorizing the fabulous 495hp Ferrari flat-12 unit with 1975’s new, improved and reliable 312T – so named for its transverse gearbox – there was no one else truly in the running.

It’s unfortunate that folklore and the film industry will forever tie Lauda’s story to that of Hunt and the epic ’76 season in which Niki returned from the dead, charred, scarred and smarter. Slightly younger F1 fans, on hearing Lauda’s name, may associate him more with the second/McLaren half of his racing career following his 1982 comeback from retirement. They’ll recall the canny, steer-from-the-rear driver left breathless by his teammate Alain Prost’s pace in qualifying, but who eventually edged the championship battle by half a point to score his third World Championship.

But back in ’75, Lauda had it all. In the car – pace, race smarts, and an ability to rid himself of emotion. Outside the car – unwavering focus, technical smarts, and an ability to relate his intel to both chassis and motor engineers. No one could really claim to be the new Jackie Stewart, the  grand prix master who’d retired at the end of ’73, but Lauda was as close as anyone. With the mighty 312T developed very much according to his wishes and then refined very much according to his brutally blunt feedback, Niki was The Man.

Starting the season with the 312B3, Lauda grabbed a couple of points finishes, as he would also on the 312T’s debut in Kyalami. But in the T’s second race, at the mighty and mighty-scary Montjuich Park in Spain, Lauda and Regazzoni gave notice of intent by locking out the front row. The fact that Mario Andretti’s Parnelli tagged Lauda at the start and caused the Ferraris to collide was the last real misstep of Niki’s season. He dominated in Monaco and Zolder, worked his way through from fifth to win again in Anderstorp, and was beaten only by Hunt’s Hesketh in Zandvoort.

Victory at Paul Ricard (LEFT and BELOW), leading from start to finish, left Lauda with a championship lead of more than two wins-worth of points (in those days, the top six earned 9-6-4-3-2-1). Defending champion Fittipaldi closed this down substantially in the hail and fail that was the British Grand Prix that year, as Lauda gently splashed home outside the points, but the Ferrari driver appeared set to put the championship battle beyond doubt at the Nurburgring that followed. Becoming the first man to lap the fearsome Nordschleife in under seven minutes during qualifying, the Austrian looked similarly imperious in the early stages of the race, before suffering a puncture. A slow lap and a slow pit stop dropped him to fifth, before he charged out and grabbed third by the fall of the checkered flag.

More rain in Austria brought an early end and half-points to a race in which Lauda salvaged sixth when none of this championship rivals took home anything. But a cautious third place at Monza, behind race-winning teammate Regazzoni and Fittipaldi, was enough for Niki to clinch the World Championship with one round still to go. His mind now freed of the title quest, Niki reverted to his more typical form in the season finale at Watkins Glen: he led every lap.

Five wins from 14 races may not sound dominant in Formula 1’s modern sense of the expression…but only one other person, Fittipaldi, had scored more than one victory that year. And the fact that for a second straight season, the No. 12 Ferrari started from P1 nine times certainly knocks on the head any theories that Lauda wasn’t super-quick. While he actually led fewer laps in ’75 than in ’74 – 298 – no one else even cracked 100. The difference second time around was that his car actually made the finish 12 times out of 14.

With that kind of solidity the year before, he’d have been a well-deserved champion…and had 1976 not played into the hands of the playboy, that too would have been another comfortable Lauda championship triumph. In an updated 312T and then the T2, Lauda was paralyzing the field all over again. In fact, despite missing two races, he still led more laps and scored only one fewer win and one fewer point than Hunt.

It’s fair to say Niki’s ’77 title was less convincing, earned more through consistency than outright pace, but it’s also fair to trace that back to the hospital bed in Mannheim, Germany. Lauda, despite his computer-like tendencies to deal only with facts and show no emotion, was very human and a human who stared into the abyss as he heard a priest administer the last rites. If he thereafter became less inclined to put it all on the line in qualifying when he felt race pace and competitive spirit would get the job done on Sundays, it’s hard not to respect and understand this shift in viewpoint.

Besides which, by ’77, the T2’s highest card was reliability rather than speed: the Cosworth-powered Lotus 78 of Andretti, Wolf WR5 of Scheckter, and McLaren M26 of Hunt all had the edge in pace. Lauda’s more direct point of comparison, his moody but brilliantly fast teammate Carlos Reutemann, is a more accurate gauge on whether Niki had still got ‘it’ in terms of pace. He had; in their 15 races together, Austria beat Argentina 8-7 in qualifying.

So while it’s easy to call Lauda a legend for taking on and beating the Grim Reaper in ’76, and you have to also respect Lauda v2.0 – the shrewd, smooth, canny driver who claimed two more World Championships – make no mistake, his talent and hard work were going to make him a Grand Prix great on achievement alone. And 40 years ago, he proved why.