Testing the limits

For many years, Lauda championed safer racecar and track designs, and urged tighter controls over driving conditions and rules governing race organisers

Niki Lauda, the Austrian racecar driver who won three world championships in Formula One, the sport’s highest level of international competition, and was regarded as one of the greatest racing drivers of all time, died on Monday in Zurich. He was 70.

The scion of an industrial family that opposed his daredevil driving career, Lauda (pronounced LAO-da) was a road warrior who dazzled motoring experts and crowds that lined the twisting, turning Grand Prix courses of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas for gruelling all-weather races. For a driver, it took guts, focus and precision moves among the shifting packs roaring