Mercedes to race with red Halos in honour of Lauda

2019 Monaco Grand Prix

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Mercedes has revealed an image of the red Halo it has created for its cars at this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix as a tribute to Niki Lauda, who passed away earlier this week.

The three-times world champion was also the team’s non-executive chairman, and played a major role in encouraging Lewis Hamilton to join them in 2013. The red design echoes Lauda’s trademark bright red cap and his red crash helmet.

RaceFans understands Mercedes will use the red Halos for the rest of the race weekend.

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff paid tribute to Lauda’s determination to win, saying his only concern this weekend would be how the team performed.

“Niki watching us would be interested to see how this weekend goes on track, here, and nothing else,” said Wolff.

“I think one of the most immense character traits that Niki had was that he never stopped fighting. His accident definitely is a date that is important in his life but Niki would have seen it differently.

“He lived his life every single day he was able to live in the present, not look into the past, he didn’t care about the past, the past was gone. He lived in the present and he wanted to achieve more in the future.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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24 comments on “Mercedes to race with red Halos in honour of Lauda”

  1. I’m just guessing Lauda himself would have been scathing and dismissive of an inane gesture like this.
    He might even have said that if the halo had existed when he had the accident, he would not have survived..

    1. Inane gesture? Do you you think they’re marketing the colour red or something? What a stupid comment.

      1. It may seem stupid to a stupid person, I can’t help that…

        1. You, sir, have no soul. You’re an asoul.

          1. Spot on … what a jerk.

    2. Bad day , eh?

    3. Sergey Martyn
      24th May 2019, 20:19

      Dismissive and inane comment by a scathing person.
      I love the idea. Hope they’ll put Niki’s name on it too.

      1. yeah, we all have to think changing the colour of a halo is a grand and fitting tribute for Niki, or we get called names LOL…. I like it!

        1. yeah, we all have to think changing the colour of a halo is a grand and fitting tribute for Niki, or we get called names LOL…. I like it!

          You’ll notice I called your comment stupid and you decided to try and label me as such for having that opinion of it. The comment. Now who’s calling people names?

          Crawl back where you came from. (You’ve earned a direct insult now, well done.)

    4. what and eh?!

    5. He might even have said that if the halo had existed when he had the accident, he would not have survived

      Yep you’re the stupid one

  2. I hope they run red halo for Austrian GP as well.

  3. Awesome!

  4. Nice one! I would add some stickers on halo and rear wing for the on-board cameras with a “Thank you Nikki” or something like this. Let’s see tomorrow. I have a feeling that they have already thought of this!

    1. I would put some Parmalat, Oerlikon, Aabar, Novomatic decals on it.
      @ioannisk

      1. @coldfly Lol, unless you are being ironic, what you suggest would be advertisement. Too far fetched.

      2. They could just superglue niki’s cap on top of the airbox.

    2. Inside the halo it says Niki we miss you.

      1. @nico21 Well, you possibly ruined the element of surprise for me but that’s ok!
        “We miss you” is way too cliche for my taste, but anyway I won’t google anything, I’ll just wait and see it on FP3 as I imagined that it would be.
        @socksolid I am not sure about your intensions with this, but for sure it initiated a nervous laughter that I am still trying to control!

        1. No intentions at all. Just a funny quip.

  5. Great tribute. I really like the idea.

  6. They should keep it.

  7. Lauda hated the Halo. And getting rid of the grid girls.

  8. The nicest tribute to this great man would for the top step of the podium to have one of his trophies on and for the top three to stand as one in front of the 1st 2nd 3rd podium.

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