How Niki Lauda clinched his second F1 driver's championship - then immediately left Ferrari

That Niki Lauda is one of the greatest to ever do it in the sport of Formula 1 is not up for debate. The Austrian driver was a consistent threat at the top end of the field and won three championships in his career. And lest we forget, this is a man who came back earlier than expected from a near-death car crash in 1976 – and then almost won the world championship anyway. However, he was not going to be denied a year later and would seal the title in the United States Grand Prix held on October 2, 1977.

With 45 years having passed to the day, let us look back at the race where Lauda sealed his title – and the aftermath of his championship win.

The background

The 1976 F1 season was one for the ages, as Niki Lauda and James Hunt fought it out in an epic title battle. Lauda suffered a horrific crash at the German GP, sustaining fatal injuries and multiple burns.

Amazingly, he was back racing three races later and would lose the title by a point. Yet there was to be no such drama in 1977, when Lauda was at the absolute top of his game.

That season, coming into the United States GP, Lauda needed only a point to seal the title. He led the championship with 69 points, with Jody Scheckter in second with 42 points.

Such was Lauda’s lead that he needed a point in any of the three remaining races to win the title. This is regardless of how many points his rivals scored.

Yet a race win to seal the title seemed unlikely for Lauda. This is because, both in Friday practice and Saturday’s qualifying, it was Hunt’s McLaren that was the faster car.

He duly took pole position too, with Lauda starting the race from seventh. A significant improvement on his grid position was needed if he wanted to seal the title in America.

James Hunt wins the race, but Niki Lauda wins the title

The race began in somewhat dramatic fashion. The day was cold but dry, yet five minutes before the race was set to begin it began to rain.

The rain worsened to the point only one driver – John Watson of Brabham – took the risk of starting on slicks. That decision would backfire as he finished the race in 12th, well outside the points.

His Brabham teammate, Hans-Joachim Stuck, fared differently. He started second behind Hunt but, in the opening lap itself, got the better of the defending world champion.

Stuck was going well in the rain despite losing his clutch cable and pulled away from Hunt. However, struggling to change his gears, he would go off the track and be forced to retire.

Hunt, now in the lead, began to pull away from Mario Andretti in his Lotus, with Scheckter behind the two of them in third. That is the order in which the race would finish, although Andretti had closed the gap on Hunt to 1.5 seconds on the final lap.

Hunt upped his pace on the final lap though, and took the chequered flag 2 seconds ahead of Andretti. Scheckter came home in third, but the real story was the man in fourth – Lauda.

His finishing spot granted him three points – and the world driver’s championship. However, all was not well in the Ferrari camp at the time.

Lauda leaves Ferrari in acrimonious split

It was a well-known fact that Lauda would leave the team at the end of the season. However, what eventually transpired was a departure from the team right after the US GP.

Lauda had grown weary of the team’s political machinations. To make things worse, he did not like Carlos Reutemann, his new teammate that year and who had earlier served as his replacement.

The icing on the cake came when his mechanic was personally fired by Enzo Ferrari. The team then took the decision to run a third test car in the Canadian GP for a then-unknown Gilles Villeneuve.

This extract from the book “Niki Lauda: His Competition History” makes clear the level of dissent that existed within the team.

“Lauda then decided to opt out of the Canadian Grand Prix the following weekend. Ferrari announced on the morning of Friday practice that he was unable to race for medical reasons, but in reality he was not prepared to drive given the toxic political climate at the Italian team, a fact he admitted with typical candour when asked.

“There were three things that particularly irked him: he was dismayed by the sacking of his faithful mechanic Ermanno Cuoghi; he was annoyed about the decision to run a third car for Gilles Villeneuve in the French-Canadian’s home race because he thought this would stretch the team’s resources too far; and he had had enough of Mauro Forghieri’s histrionics at races, considering that they detracted from focusing on the job in hand.”

Lauda did not race for Ferrari again, making his media commitments the only thing he did for the team. Years later though, he admitted he should not have left the team.