Niki Lauda agreed with reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton about “ugly” trophies handed out to Formula One race winners and revealed he traded his silverware for free car washes for life at his local garage.
Mercedes-GP driver Hamilton was this week highly critical of the trophy he was presented with after winning last year’s British Grand Prix.
The two-time world champion revealed he is still irked by what he describes as the “terrible” silverware awarded to the podium finishers in motor racing’s elite category such as at the previous grand prix at the Red Bull Ring.
“The last one in Austria was wooden and the base was like lead – I mean what? It is supposed to be silver,” the Briton said. “We just need to make better trophies. It is shocking how bad they are.”
Mercedes’ non-executive chairman Lauda, who won three world championships during his 171-race career, told the BBC: “I binned them all, you’re absolutely right because in my time they were, most of them ugly and for me, useless.
“Therefore I binned them right away because I had the memory in my head anyway and not in the trophy and in this point of view, Lewis is right because the trophy should have a certain value when you look at them, that you like them. Most of them you don’t like them, even when you get them.”
When asked what he did with them, the Austrian said he gave them to a local petrol station for free use of the car wash.
“The guy was very pleased when he saw my first trophy and then I gave it to him as a friend, and then I said, ‘If you can give me a free car wash for the rest of my life you can have all of them’, and that is what I did,” Lauda said.
“They were still there until three years ago and then a friend of mine saw them. The guy died unfortunately, and his son was running the petrol station but they were so demolished and terribly kept there that a friend of mine took them away, polished them and then my kids took them and put them on eBay.”
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