niki lauda death

Niki Lauda died on 20 May 2019, aged 70, in Zurich, Switzerland, after complications related to a lung transplant he’d undergone in 2018. The man survived the Nürburgring inferno in 1976 and came back to win two more titles, but even legends have mortal lungs.

His family said he passed peacefully, and the sport lost one of its sharpest minds and bluntest tongues on the same night. The scars, the cap, the straight talk—he changed how F1 thought about safety, business, and winning. Raise a spanner to him; the grid’s a little quieter without that red hat.