MOTORSPORT: Legendary F1 driver Niki Lauda dies

The great Niki Lauda is dead – almost 43 years after he was given the last rites.

The Austrian, already a world champion, had an horrific fiery crash at the Nurburgring – the real Nurburgring, the 20.8-kilometre Nordschleife circuit in Germany's Eifel forests known as 'The Green Hell' – and doctors were sure he would die.

Not only did he survive, he came back to race – against the wishes of Enzo Ferrari – just weeks later with his head heavily bandaged and the skin still raw on his hands.

He had lost most of his ears and his face was eternally scarred.

Lauda might well have won a second straight world title at the end of the '76 season but, ever his own man, he pulled into the pits at the Japanese Grand Prix declaring the torrential rain too bad to race in.

That handed Englishman James Hunt the title. Those events were dramatised in the 2013 movie 'Rush'.

Yet Lauda reclaimed the mantle in '77, then fell right out with Ferrari.

He switched to the Brabham team that Bernie Ecclestone had acquired after the retirement of Australia's triple world champion, Sir Jack Brabham, and one of his victories came in the infamous 'Fan Car'.

He got bored and retired, then came back and won a third world title with McLaren.

Had not Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost come along so soon on his heels, and later Michael Schumacher, Lauda might well have been remembered as the driver who compared closest to Juan-Manuel Fangio and Jim Clark.

It is too often overlooked or forgotten that Lauda, together with manager Luca di Montezemolo and engineer Mauro Forghieri, picked up Ferrari from the depths much as Schumacher, Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne did more a quarter of a century later.

Lauda was the first driver to bring major sponsorship to an F1 team, buying his way into the sport with money borrowed from a bank. Yet it was soon obvious that his talent was worthy of being paid top price.

Later Lauda founded a commercial airline.

At various times he consulted, especially to Ferrari, but in more recent years he has been the chairman and a part-owner of the Mercedes team, where he was instrumental in enticing Lewis Hamilton – now perhaps on course to exceed Schumacher's seven titles and 91 GP victories.

Nine months ago Lauda had a lung transplant and in January he spent another 10 days in hospital with a severe flu.

Now his time is up, at 70 – and perhaps in death he will be accorded the fullest recognition due to him.

When Tigers Woods finally won a major golf tournament again recently, it was described as the greatest comeback in sport.

But none was greater than Niki Lauda's.