Mark Hughes: Lauda vs Marko and how Verstappen extended grand old F1 rivalry

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F1 Retro
Max Verstappen's 40th F1 win in Barcelona was the latest landmark in a long history of rivalry and friendship between Helmut Marko and the late Niki Lauda and Dietrich Mateschitz

Helmut Marko Niki Lauda GP

Lauda and Marko: rivals and friends

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Last Sunday at Barcelona Max Verstappen ticked off career grand prix victory number 40, with as dominant a performance as is feasible to deliver in the current era of tyre management and safety car gaps. Just seven years ago at the same venue, he scored victory No1 on his very first drive for the senior Red Bull team. Years pass so fast, but history’s roots and tentacles are always just below the surface.

Niki Lauda had spent much of that 2016 race in the Mercedes team cabin along with Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, part of a post-mortem after the latter two had collided on the opening lap of the race, beaching their damaged cars in the gravel. Rosberg, leading, had been in the wrong engine mode, Hamilton had tried to capitalise, Rosberg cut him off and they’d collided heavily. But now as the race was nearing its end Lauda reappeared from the long discussion and was in the pit garage area as 18-year-old Verstappen took the chequer, having soaked up intense pressure from Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari throughout.

Lauda sought out Max’s father Jos, put his hands on his shoulders and spoke with him, tough old Jos looking into Niki’s eyes while unsuccessfully trying to hold back his tears of joy. Niki then spoke to the TV cameras and said, “I take my hat off to Max. He is a talent of the century. Normally I am against fathers telling drivers what to do because [drivers] must be an emancipated personality. But he couldn’t prevent Max being emancipated because he was so young. What Jos did, he did everything right. To make him safe, to make him comfortable so he can race with Kimi Räikkönen right behind him for so long and not make a single mistake. I have to say it: Marko made the right call. He is the master of the Verstappens.”

Helmut Marko BRM team 1972

Marko was a rising F1 star in the early ’70s

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Marko and Lauda. The two old Austrian ex-F1 stars, with very similar roving roles at Red Bull and Mercedes respectively, free of corporate strings and not answering to anyone, yet highly influential in the key decisions of their respective teams. Their rivalry began back in 1969. They were certainly emancipated, free from any restrictions to their own free will, each going against the wishes of their traditional dynastic families, Marko’s in law, Lauda’s in banking. Marko, tall, blonde, very Teutonic. Lauda small, wiry, buck-toothed. Similar backgrounds, different personalities, but each with a sparkle of mischief in their eyes. Mischievous, ambitious and free-spirited, they were on their own paths and each was in the way of the other to an extent.

From the archive

Marko was competing at an Austrian hillclimb in ’69 when he was approached by a local fan. The guy’s name was Dietrich Mateschitz. He was a couple of years younger than Marko but knew all about him. He idolised Marko’s friend Jochen Rindt – then F1’s fastest, most intoxicatingly exciting driver, who had converted a big chunk of the nation’s population into motor racing fans, just as would Verstappen do in the Netherlands many decades later. Rindt’s success in F1 had even sparked the creation of the country’s own race track, the Österreichring, and the Austrian Grand Prix was going to return to the calendar the following year. All on the back of the inspirational, swashbuckling style of one driver (managed, incidentally, by entrepreneur and failed racing driver Bernie Ecclestone). Young Mateschitz was just one of so many new fans of F1 in his country. Sounds kind of familiar from the era of Max, doesn’t it? Mateschitz and Marko became firm friends.

Marko was ‘The Man’ in Formula Vee in 1969. He’d followed his childhood buddy Rindt into racing, albeit a few years behind once he’d gained his law doctorate. Now Marko was making his way up the ladder, fast and ambitious and making up for lost time. But at the Formula Vee support to that year’s German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring Nordschlife, his dominance of the category was threatened by a 20-year-old upstart, Lauda. The younger guy in the privateer car set pole, marginally faster than Marko. With the F1 teams looking on, this was an unwelcome development in Marko’s career trajectory. They left the others far behind in their fierce duel that day, one in which Marko had to resort to showing Lauda the grass on the last lap in order to win. The third-place guy was a minute behind. The atmosphere on the podium was reported as frosty and there was talk of a protest. It came to nothing, but their long rivalry had begun.

Helmut Marko Niki Lauda 2016 Mexican GP

Marko, Lauda, Wolff and Verstappen at birthday celebration for Bernie Ecclestone at the 2016 Mexican GP, months after the Dutchman’s remarkable first win

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With the death of Rindt in qualifying for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix, Marko and Lauda represented Austria’s future F1 hopes. Although they made their F1 debuts at the same race (Austria 1971), Marko’s career had more momentum. He’d won that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours driving for Porsche and had been recruited by BRM for the rest of the year and into ‘72, whereas Lauda had rented a March for a one-off at his home track, the Österreichring.

Marko’s parallel sports car and F1 programmes continued into ’72 and after a sensational performance for Alfa Romeo at that year’s Targa Florio he was invited by Ferrari to stand-in for the injured Clay Regazzoni at the Österreichring 1000kms. He led for a time and impressed Ferrari sufficiently that by the time of the French Grand Prix a couple of weeks later, he had in his briefcase a Ferrari contract for F1 and sports cars in 1973. At Clermont Ferrand, he’d qualified his BRM on the third row and was dicing with Ronnie Peterson’s March when it threw up a stone from its tyre straight through Marko’s visor and into his left eye. He pulled the car over to the side before passing out with the pain. The loss of the eye and with it the great career: no F1, no Ferrari.

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“I often remind Niki that he only succeeded because he was able to take over my drives,” smiled Marko when I interviewed him for Motor Sport a few years ago. “He took my BRM drive, then my Ferrari drive.” Lauda would fire back that Helmut shouldn’t worry about it, that he’d made better use of them than Helmut would’ve done. They’d long-since become friends, but the rivalry never stopped.

So when this sensational karting kid Max Verstappen was making waves, Helmut in his driver development role was trying to enlist him to the Red Bull junior programme. Red Bull, the team founded by his old friend Mateschitz. Father Jos always said no, shrewdly reckoning that he’d have more leverage later, when Max had scored more success. In his first season of car racing, he was creating a sensation in Formula 3 in 2014 – and now the Verstappens were being courted not only by Marko, but by Mercedes too. In the person of Lauda, representing Toto Wolff. The two old rivals were at it again.

Helmut Marko Niki Lauda Dietrich Mateschitz

Dynamic trio: Marko, Lauda and Mateschitz formed a powerful Austrian presence in F1

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There was a tug of love for Max’s services, with Jos openly talking to both sides. Mercedes was prepared to find him a seat in GP2 with a top team as part of a planned pathway to F1. Mercedes was winning everything at that time. What could Red Bull offer that Mercedes could not, pondered Marko. He played the only card he could – an F1 seat with the Red Bull junior F1 team Toro Rosso. Straight to F1. Jos asked Max if he felt ready for that. Max didn’t need to be asked. Victory for Marko.

And now in Barcelona 2016, victory for Max, first time out for the big team, having run just out of Räikkönen’s reach, as the flat-beds delivered the wrecked Mercs back to the paddock. Niki is gone now, Mateschitz too. But their names are part of the sport’s fabric and echo strongly still. They created their own histories, inspired by the deeds of others. It’s all linked – and as Max took victory number 40, there stood a proud battle-scarred old man, looking on, applauding yet again. To think, his parents wanted him to work in a law firm…