Niki Lauda's Spanish connections: Legend loved life in Ibiza
Niki Lauda's Spanish connections: Legend loved life in Ibiza
THREE-TIMES Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda, who passed away aged 70 on Monday, spent much of his time in Ibiza – and it was in Spain where he netted his first Grand Prix victory.
Austrian Nikolaus Andreas Lauda had undergone a lung transplant in summer, but was hospitalised in January after catching influenza during his Christmas holidays on the Balearic island and complications set in which he was unable to overcome.
The Vienna-born son of a wealthy paper factory-owning family had a house in Ibiza, where he spent as much time as he could, and six years after his motorsports début and three years after starting out in Formula 1, Lauda won his first Grand Prix at the El Jarama circuit in Spain in April 1974.
This was a year before his first world championship title, which he repeated again in 1977 and 1984, although he also took the reserve championship slot in 1976.
It was that year when Lauda suffered the notorious accident that left him severely disfigured – engulfed in flames when his car caught fire at the German Grand Prix on October 24, the Formula 1 legend suffered serious burns to his face, head and much of his body, but he was only out of action for six weeks before returning to the sport and, the following year, won his second and last world championship title with team Ferrari.
Lauda's nearest rivals for these two wins were James Hunt and Jody Scheckter, and he went on to beat the mythical Frenchman Alain Prost to make it a hat-trick in 1984.
At this time, Lauda had been back in motor racing for three years after taking a brief break in 1979 to focus on his new airline business, Lauda Air.
Considered one of the greatest names in Formula 1, with 25 victories and 24 pole positions in 173 Grands Prix, Niki Lauda finally retired after the 1985 season which was blighted by mechanical problems that forced him to retire from 11 races.
Still linked to the motoring world, Lauda worked in PR and management for Ferrari, Jaguar and Mercedes in the 1990s whilst continuing to run Lauda Air, although this was beset with struggles due to the rise in low-cost carriers and its founder left it for good in 2001.
Back in Spain, Niki Lauda and his son Lukas, now 40 – from his first marriage to Chilean-Austrian Marlene Knaus, with whom he also had Mathias, now 38 and a racing driver – joined forces with Spanish motor-racing driver Diego Albanell to set up Lauda Sports Management, a motorsport event organising firm, in Barcelona in 2003, the year in which he returned to the airline business by buying out the Austrian holding of Aero-Lloyd and rebranding it as Fly Niki which he eventually sold off to Air Berlin.
Winner of the World's Best Sportsman in 1976 awarded by Internationale Sport Korrespondenz in Stuttgart, Germany – and being included on the United Nations' blacklist from 1980 to 1988 for taking part in practice rounds in South Africa right in the middle of the Apartheid crisis – Niki had undergone three transplants in his life: prior to the lung transplant last summer, he was given a new kidney by his brother Florian in 1997, but this failed, and his then fiancée Birgit Wetzinger donated another to him in 2005.
Birgit, now 40 and Lauda's widow, gave him twins, Mia and Max, in 2009, and Lauda also leaves behind a fifth son, Christophe, born 38 years ago out of wedlock.
Niki Lauda's 1996 biography, The Third Life, was turned into a film in 2011, titled Rush, by US director Ron Howard.
He had been living on and off in his Ibiza villa for 14 years at the time of his death on Monday – an island where Niki and Birgit say they found a 'calmness and tranquillity' free from the paparazzi, a refreshing change from their native Austria.i
In fact, Mia and Max, who are now 10, go to the local school on the island and their parents planned to spend the rest of their lives mostly living there.
The only time the frequently-hounded celebrity couple were snapped by the media in their 14 years in Ibiza was in July 2015, when they were seen dining in the just-opened Restaurante Heart run by super-chef Ferrán Adrià and his brother Albert, a locale which had already, in the previous weeks, been graced by the likes of Leonardo di Caprio, Mariah Carey, Kate Moss, Robert de Niro and Cirque de Soleil founder Guy Laliberté.
Having managed to keep a low profile on their island haven, Lauda and Birgit were happy to talk to reporters who saw them at the restaurant and tell them how much they loved life in Ibiza.
