MONACO MASTERS

Niki Lauda

Winner in 1975 & 1976

SEVEN DRIVERS SHARE LAUDA’S RECORD of two Monaco GP victories – and eight have conquered the principality’s streets more frequently still. In the Austrian’s case, however, the greatest significance is not so much the races he did win as one he didn’t.

Lauda scored back-to-back successes in the mid-1970s, the first en route to the world title and the second ahead of the dramatic summer in which he recovered from being read the last rites to sitting on the grid at Monza weeks later.

In the first of those, he set a scorching pole position time, described by Denis Jenkinson (Motor Sport, June 1975): “Lauda went out and did a shattering 1min 26.40sec, which rocked everyone on their heels. It was as if he had said to himself, ‘There are too many aces up here with me in the 1min 27sec bracket, I’d better reset the standard.’” His subsequent victory would be Ferrari’s first in Monaco since 1955.

The following season Lauda did it again. Jenks wrote: “Lauda was on his own, driving with a visibly neat precision that many of the others could have benefited from watching.”

As he signed off his ’75 report, Jenks noted, “It was sadly ironical that neither Graham Hill, who has won the Monaco GP five times, nor BRM, who also have had five victories at Monaco, were able to qualify. Times change and there is no point in dwelling on the past.” It had been while driving for BRM in 1973 that Lauda triggered the chain of events paving the way to those victories. Heavily in debt as a result of buying his way into F1, Lauda had bluffed to get a BRM seat on the basis of sponsorship that didn’t exist – and payment was due. He had a strong race though, running third ahead of Ickx’s Ferrari… until his transmission broke.

As Lauda told Motor Sport in 2017, “That evening [BRM boss] Louis Stanley said to me over dinner, ‘D’you know what? You don’t need to pay money any more. Your performances have been outstanding. You just need to sign a contract for 1974 here and now.’ I was happy with that, signed and returned home.

“At the time my cousin’s secretary also worked as my PA and we