Niki Lauda’s Race of Champions Mercedes 190E set for auction

Only time will tell, but we reckon this car could be the ‘sleeper’ auction lot of the month, if not the season. It’s the actual Mercedes 190E driven to second place by Niki Lauda in the extraordinary 1984 Nürburgring Race of Champions organised by Mercedes-Benz to mark the opening of the shorter, and considerably safer, GP Strecke circuit.

And the Race of Champions title was no exaggeration, because the grid comprised 20 of the world’s top drivers, nine of whom were already Formula 1 world champions and two of whom (Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna) were to go on to claim the title.

Never before or since have so many F1 champs taken to the track together, and each one was given a 190E 2.3 16, the new, high-performance saloon that Mercedes would launch a few weeks later.

Of the 20 190Es supplied, 10 were painted black and 10 silver – with the car on offer at Bonhams being the one allocated to Lauda (whose horrific injuries sustained at the Nordschleife in the 1976 German Grand Prix had led to the abandonment of the Nürburgring as an F1 circuit).

The idea behind the Race of Champions was to spotlight the new GP Strecke in a bid to get F1 back to the venue – and the 12-lap race certainly put the circuit on the map.

After all, who wouldn’t want to see Elio de Angelis, Jacques Laffite, Alain Prost, James Hunt, Carlos Reutemann, John Watson, Hans Herrmann, Stirling Moss and the aforementioned Lauda and Prost go head-to-head in identical cars?

Although the event was televised, the early stages weren’t shown due to a rambling speech by the regional president over-running – meaning a dramatic start in which Prost claimed to have been forced off the track by Senna on lap one was missed.

TV commitments had also prevented Lauda from getting much practice in, so he started from 14th position – only to put in a typically heroic drive after which he crossed the line in second behind Senna, whose victory at the event is often cited as having been the springboard to his stardom.

Senna’s 190E went straight to the Mercedes museum, where it remains today. Lauda’s, however, was snapped-up by a Swiss enthusiast and is now among 90 cars being dispersed by RM Sotheby’s from super-collector Daniel Iseli. It represents a unique opportunity, not least since only the cars driven by Senna and Lauda were left in their as-raced condition, the others being returned to road specification and put on sale immediately after the event.

But what is Lauda’s worth? We’ll have to wait to find that out – but we reckon the answer is certainly ‘a lot’…

1984 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3 16. On offer at RM Sotheby’s, St Moritz, Switzerland, September 15. No reserve. rmsothebys.com