Happiness is an enemy. It weakens you. Suddenly, you have something to lose.
My experience enables me to select the very best pilots in the market.
Jean Todt's system will never succeed, not even with Michael Schumacher.
In Germany air became generally accepted Berlin in this area. It operated with 45 airplanes within the Low Cost range from Germany, and is one the most successful carriers in Europe.
I've been through a lot and I realise the future can't be controlled. I'm not worried. You can always learn to overcome difficulties.
I want to bring passengers on my airplanes to present to them my product.
I see myself as the mind of the business which takes care of every last detail; if you do not do this you cannot be fast enough.
I see myself as a classic middle market entrepreneur, and this is the role I fulfil.
I maintain that the maxim is still to be faster than the others.
I employ 20 people in Vienna. The other 130 coworkers are pilots and flight companions. The Overhead is limited with me. Reduces naturally the costs of my fliers.
I am someone who places great value on the detail. That was always the case, even in my days as a racing driver.
I always want to know whether the customers are satisfied; customer satisfaction is, after all, my ultimate goal!
I always go extreme ways.
Grey zones do not interest me at all.
Giving up is something a Lauda doesn't do.
From success, you learn absolutely nothing. From failure and setbacks conclusions can be drawn. That goes for your private life as well as your career.
Don't talk too much, be focused on the goal and achieve it.
Business is much less transparent than a win in a Grand Prix; in a race you drive over the finishing line first and you have won. In business it is different.
Airlines go in the long run at the competition to reason. For the passenger the competition is good, because each competitor tries to undercut the other one.
A race isn't won until it's over.
A lot of people criticize Formula 1 as an unnecessary risk. But what would life be like if we only did what is necessary?
I was not interested at all in Formula One when I left; I was very busy with my airline. But slowly I started missing the adrenaline rush and the driving of such fantastic cars at the limit. In reality this urge never disappears when you're a top driver, because I think we're a different breed of people, we need to take chances, we need to push ourselves to the limit all the time, that sort of thing. It stays with you, although you can kill it by losing motivation or other things in your life, but it never leaves you forever.
If you are for a long time at the top you've basically achieved everything you wanted to. Then the ball's breaking stuff starts to be too much: it's not what you do in the car, it's what you do outside the car - the press conferences, the interviews, the sponsorship commitments, the marketing appearances - that sadly go up to a level that the whole package, including the risks you take, the workload you do to get the car to work and for you to be quick in the races, it becomes too much.
It was the same with Schumacher: the need for the adrenaline rush, to push himself to the limit was always there. So without a Formula One car to race with he went on to do motorcycle racing and other stupid things, and obviously that wasn't enough to keep him happy, so he had a problem to sort out and returning to racing was his answer to the problem.
