The Italian driver and the 1976 Nurburgring accident: “I threw myself into the flames twice to extract Niki. With artificial respiration I prevented him from falling into a coma”
His cowboy hat is the same as it was then. As if the time machine had stopped in those roaring 70s in which Arturo Merzario was one of the most recognizable characters in Formula 1. The era of Enzo Ferrari and Colin Chapman, of Niki Lauda and James Hunt, of motor racing heroic. He is a survivor, because racing meant defying danger, risking his life every second, as Jackie Stewart knew well when he saw his beloved teammate Francois Cevert die torn between the sheets of his Tyrrell. Merzario also witnessed an accident that could have ended in tragedy and went down in history. It was August 1, 1976 at the Nurburgring, Lauda’s Ferrari went up in flames after a crash during the German GP and it was Merzario who saved him.