Meet the American driver who saved Niki Lauda from his fiery 1976 Nurburgring crash

On 1 August, 1976, motorsport nearly lost one of its most iconic drivers, Niki Lauda, when he struck a barrier and his Ferrari burst into flame. Without the help of two drivers, Lauda would certainly have died.

Today, we’re delving into one of those two drivers, American Brett Lunger. Lunger, with help from Arturo Merzario, pulled Lauda from the cockpit and helped transport him out of danger.

Brett Lunger: American heir turned race car driver

Born on November 14, 1945 to the daughter of the iconic Du Pont family, Brett Lunger didn’t grow up dreaming of racing cars for a living. Instead, he fell in love with the more routine sports of an American childhood — baseball, hockey, football — and intended to pursue a degree in political science from Princeton University.

A friend brought Lunger to a Can-Am Challenge race in 1965, and Lunger was hooked. By the time the 1966 season rolled around, a young Brett Lunger had begun his racing career. Behind the wheel of a McLaren Chevrolet, he finished eighth in the 1966 Nassau Trophy race and decided that motorsport would be the way to go.

Still, he enlisted in the US Marines lieutenant in the Vietnam War after dropping out of university, before ultimately being promoted to captain. It was after his stint in the Marines that he really turned his attention to his motorsport career.

In 1971 and 1972, he finished third in the L&M 5000 Continental Championship driving a Lola-Chevrolet T192, but he knew that his aspirations were far more international. Lunger contested Formula 2, Formula 5000, and various forms of sports car racing, often as a privateer, before he felt he was ready to move up to Formula 1.

In 1975, Lunger joined the Hesketh Racing team alongside James Hunt after several friends helped him purchase a ride. He contested three races with a best finish of 10th at the Italian Grand Prix before moving to Team Surtees for 1976.

It was with Surtees that Lunger earned his greatest distinction in F1 — saving Niki Lauda’s life.

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On the second lap of the 1976 German Grand Prix, Niki Lauda was pushing his Ferrari to its limits; he had pitted on the first lap to swap from wet to dry tires and was desperate to regain his position.

But something happened. Lauda’s Ferrari 312T snapped to the right and spun into an earth bank, bounced back into the track, and was struck by the cars of both Brett Lunger and Harald Ertl.

Those two drivers, along with Guy Edwards and Arturo Merzario, climbed from their cars and began to attend to Lauda, whose car had been engulfed in flames.

Trackside marshals weren’t equipped to delve into the flames to rescue Lauda, but both Brett Lunger and Arturo Merzario chose to risk their lives to pull a conscious but struggling Lauda out of the car.

Lunger hopped on top of the Ferrari and grabbed Lauda’s shoulders. Meanwhile, Merzario — who was familiar with the complex Ferrari seatbelt latch — reached into the cockpit to undo the belt. Merzario would later take full credit for saving Lauda’s life.

Lunger dragged Lauda from the car; they were doused by foam and lay in the grass before realizing that burning fuel from Lauda’s car was leaking toward them. He helped Lauda walk a few steps away from the disaster.

Speaking to Autoweek in 2022, Lunger remembered, “It was a situation where something had gone wrong and you react and do what you have to do. What really made a difference was Merzario, who reached in and undid the seatbelt. If he hadn’t done that we would have still been struggling.”

When Lauda returned later that season at the Italian Grand Prix, he made sure to pay a visit to Brett Lunger, to thank him for his help in saving his life.

Unfortunately, that would be something of the pinnacle of Lunger’s F1 career; he raced a March, two McLarens, and an Ensign in 1977 and 1978, but with a best finish of eighth (which was not enough to score points at the time), his F1 career came to a close.

After retiring from motorsport, Lunger finished his degree at Princeton and became a journalist covering Formula 1. He founded the Responsibility Today movement, which encourages personal responsibility and provides resources to those in need — everyone from preteens to prison inmates.

In the Autoweek interview, however, Lunger lamented his role in the 1976 German Grand Prix.

“It was unfortunate on so many levels,” he said. “I didn’t want to be known as a race car driver who was involved in a crash. I wanted to be known as a race car driver who won races.”

It is perhaps a reasonable response from any racing driver — and yet, Lunger still has a deeply important place in motorsport history as a result of his immense courage and bravery.

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