by Tom Rubython
But Lauda was by now barely speaking to his team manager. At Zolder, and again in Monaco, Audetto had ordered Lauda to let Clay Regazzoni win, arguing that the victories and the glory must be shared equally by the teammates. Lauda told Audetto that his views were “nonsense and cheating the public.” Audetto ignored him, saying, “You must stay second.” Audetto told Lauda he would hang out pit boards to give him instructions during the race. Lauda’s exact reply to that was not recorded, but he later said his response to Audetto’s instructions was: “I told him he could hang out any notice board he liked—yellow, green, or red, with plus and minus and double minus—I shouldn’t look at it. And that’s what happened.” Lauda was at a loss to explain it and said, “Audetto had a sort of new-boy complex and thought he must be a great team leader with a great strategy.”
By the end of the Monaco Grand Prix, Lauda had completely had it with Audetto, and he stated, “One of the two of us would have to leave at the end of the season; that much was obvious.”
Finally Lauda managed to escape from Monaco after his victory lap. Not for him Hunt’s celebrations. He got on a helicopter at the heliport and flew straight to Nice airport, where he got on his own plane and flew back to Vienna. He said, “Joy over the victory had simply no chance to get through. Marlene needed me and I needed her, and waking next morning was lovely.”
CHAPTER 13
Lauda Has an Off Day
Alastair Caldwell in Denial
Sweden: June 11–13, 1976
There was only one opinion prevailing in the paddock as the Formula One circus assembled at Anderstorp for the Swedish Grand Prix on June 13: that Niki Lauda was already as good as world champion and that James Hunt was a busted flush. At that stage it seemed there could be no other possible outcome to the world championship. Hunt was seventh in the championship standings with 6 points, and Lauda was top with 51 points after six races.
Hunt’s own teammate, Jochen Mass, thought so as well and engaged in some very defeatist talk with journalists in the paddock, saying, “You have to be lucky and catch Niki on a bad day if you are going to beat him. Only a puncture or a mechanical failure can stop him these days.”
Lauda and the Ferrari team were exhibiting what was eloquently described in the Daily Express as “the charisma of superiority.”
But history would show that Sweden was Ferrari’s most disappointing performance of the year, as well as McLaren’s, as the race weekend turned into a fight between the resurgent Lotus and Tyrrell teams. The bizarre change of fortune was reflected by the fact that Chris Amon, in his Ensign-Ford car, qualified quicker than both Lauda and Hunt.
But on Friday, the first day of qualifying, it was business as usual, with Lauda on provisional pole. Conversely, Hunt was having a dreadful time and spun his car a total of six times in practice and qualifying. There was a terrible lack of rear-end adhesion, and he was 14th in the first session, 11th in the second session, and 8th in the final session, for a grid position on the fourth row.
Lauda fell apart on the second day of qualifying when the track conditions were significantly faster.
He had plenty to say about the performance of his car, which he described as a “compromise.” For some reason, the track at its optimum did not suit the Ferrari at its optimum. Lauda explained: “It’s going to be as good as it should be. It’s oversteering and understeering like all the others. But you expect that here and you set up the car in a compromise and just drive it.” He added, just so no one was in any doubt, “I’m trying bloody hard.” But it was only good enough for fifth on the grid as the Ferrari team’s confidence suddenly vanished. It was a serious wake-up call and probably saved the rest of their season, as Daniele Audetto realized that Formula One was not a one-way street in Ferrari’s favor and that things could change very quickly and often did. Jody Scheckter’s six-wheeled Tyrrell-Ford qualified on pole, with Mario Andretti’s Lotus-Ford alongside him.
Alastair Caldwell was still in denial about McLaren’s severe technical problems. His was a “wood and trees” problem according to Hunt. But between the second and final qualifying sessions on Saturday, it finally dawned on Caldwell that the car’s problems might have something to do with the changes he had ordered after Spain. So on race morning he woke up his mechanics and ordered the car to be put back to its previous specifications and setup, except for the oil coolers, which couldn’t be changed at the track. Hunt recalled: “We decided in desperation to put the car back exactly to Spanish settings, but it made no difference to the car at all.” McLaren was only saved from total humiliation by the problems that Ferrari was also having.
Race day dawned significantly colder, and that hindered Ferrari even more. For McLaren it didn’t matter; the car was so bad they could not distinguish the change. Lauda was having severe problem with tire temperatures in warm-up; they were 20 degrees lower than they should have been. The car was a mixture of severe understeer and oversteer.
Mario Andretti was the driver of the day. He stormed off into the lead but was then penalized by a minute for a false start. After that, Jody Scheckter led, and on the 45th lap, Andretti, trying so hard to catch him, over-revved his Ford-Cosworth engine and blew it up. So Scheckter and his teammate, Patrick Depailler, scored a Tyrrell-Ford 1-2, with Lauda third and Hunt fifth.
Lauda had driven like a hero to finish third and stepped out of his cockpit in an optimistic mood, as he realized what could be achieved when everything was stacked against him. Hunt was equally optimistic and shared Lauda’s thoughts, saying, “My best drive of the year; I finished miles behind in a very undrivable car.” He had gained two hard-earned points as he had wrestled his car around the Anderstorp track. Those two points earned in Sweden would prove absolutely vital a few months later. Afterwards, Hunt made sure that journalists knew how bad the car really was. It was the only way he felt he could put pressure on Alastair Caldwell to fix the problems, which were by now obviously related to the positioning of the oil coolers.
As the race ended, Lauda was leading Hunt by 47 points in the world championship and Jody Scheckter appeared to be Lauda’s challenger for the world crown. Hunt could have had no ambitions for the championship.
CHAPTER 14
Blood in the Garages
Caldwell and Hunt Sort It Out
Paul Ricard: June 1976
After three disastrous races in a row, Alastair Caldwell was having a personal crisis. Something had happened to the McLaren M23 to turn it from being the most competitive car on the grid to a dog. The lack of competiveness was threatening to ruin James Hunt’s season as the Belgian, Monaco, and Swedish Grand Prix came and went, with only 2 points scored out of a possible 27. Even worse, Lauda scored 22 points out of a possible 27 in those three races. The damage that had been done to Hunt’s championship chances couldn’t have been starker.
Back at the factory in England, Caldwell and the McLaren mechanics were panicking after Sweden. It seemed the last person to know what was wrong was Caldwell, and the mechanics had lost confidence in their team manager. A furious Teddy Mayer put Caldwell under intolerable pressure to fix the problems. Caldwell told friends that he feared for his job if he couldn’t work out a fix for the car’s problems. Caldwell was right to be fearful for his future. Mayer was so frustrated that he was considering taking direct control of the team himself. In that scenario, he had confided to Hunt that he would promote one of the mechanics to be the new team manager. Hunt was on Mayer’s side and, at that point of the season, would not have been unhappy to see the back of his team manager, whom he blamed personally for the problems.
In fact, Hunt was sure he knew what the problem was. He told Caldwell time and time again to put the car back to the original specs where it had been before the Spanish disqualification. Hunt believed that Caldwell had been overzealous in his attempts to make the car 100 percent legal.
But Caldwell simply wouldn’t listen to Hunt, or to anyone. But suddenly Teddy Mayer did. As Hunt recalled: “It was one of the p
roblems I had with McLaren: trying to persuade them to do anything. Straightaway I said to them this 3⁄8 inch on the rear track is screwing up the car. Something fundamental has changed, so why don’t we put it back to exactly how it was for Spain, except to be within the width limit?”
Mayer’s support forced Caldwell to take notice of Hunt. The mechanics had already put the car back to the Spanish Grand Prix configuration—apart from remounting the oil coolers. But Caldwell was sure that the mounting of the oil coolers wasn’t the problem, as outwardly there was nothing to suggest that it could be. Hunt recalled: “They had been moved so minutely from their old position relative to the wing that we couldn’t believe it could be that.”
In the end, Caldwell, under unrelenting pressure from Hunt and Mayer, was forced to put the oil coolers back to where they had been. With that, Teddy Mayer authorized an expensive test session at the Paul Ricard circuit in the south of France to try out the car in the revised configuration. There were a few days left when the team could test legally before the French Grand Prix proper. Caldwell remembered: “We went down there with a car and James.”
Caldwell recalled that when the team got the revised car to the Paul Ricard track, it was clear within a handful of laps that they had sorted the problem simply by reverting to the pre-Spain specification. Caldwell said, “We ran with the coolers on the back—James driving—then put them on the side, and James went a second and a half quicker.”
Caldwell said that Hunt was not immediately convinced, however, believing that the changing track conditions were affecting his time. Caldwell said he told him: “No, no, no. It’s not the car; it’s me. The track is cleaning up; the tires are working better.” Caldwell replied, “Ah, well, just to check, we’ll switch them to the back again.” According to Caldwell, Hunt then said, “No, no. No need to do that.” Caldwell responded, “Well, we’ll do it anyway.” The mechanics moved them back, and Hunt went out again. When he returned, Hunt asked, “What happened there?” Caldwell replied, “You were two seconds slower again.” Caldwell recalls that Hunt still did not get it, saying, “The track’s worse. It’s not the coolers; they have no effect at all.” Caldwell said, “Okay, we’ll change them back again.”
Hunt was becoming increasingly angry, and he said, “I won’t drive the car,” to which Caldwell replied, “Oh yes, you will.” The mechanics changed the coolers, and as Caldwell recounts: “James went one and a half, maybe 1.8 seconds quicker. That proved it to us.”
But that is Alastair Caldwell’s version of events, and many people dispute it. Some people present at the test session that day say that Caldwell rewrote history in his version of the events. In actual fact, they recollect things happening the other way around, with Caldwell not wanting to make the changes and Hunt forcing him to do so.
Caldwell made his comments to author Christopher Hilton after Hunt was dead and he was therefore unable to set the record straight. But before he died, Hunt had always been very clear about his version of what happened. As he said, “We were still struggling disastrously until, finally, I persuaded them [to make the changes].”
Hunt revealed that the McLaren mechanics finally worked out that changing the position of the oil coolers by less than 2 centimeters had been enough to upset the extremely sensitive pressure area under the rear wing and disrupt the airflow. Soon after, the McLaren-Ford M23 was a potential race winner again, and Hunt could feel it. It was a lesson in aerodynamics the team was never to forget.
And that is the version most people choose to believe, not Alastair Caldwell’s.
After the problems were sorted out, there was a huge feeling of relief and a sort of rapprochement between Hunt and Caldwell, with both men thankful that the problem had gone away. But scratch beneath the surface and it was clear that Caldwell carried a grudge against Hunt from that point on. He was frequently scathing of his abilities as a test driver, saying, “James was not a good test driver—lazy, never interested in testing, and the results he gave us were dubious.” He added, “He tried to be professional. But he was always lazy. We should have hired a more competent test driver and got the car quicker. Then on race day we could have dragged James in on his leash, strapped him into the car, and let him loose like a mad dog.”
But Peter Collins, the former team principal of Lotus and later a close personal friend of Hunt’s, disagreed strongly and said, “James was an extremely intelligent individual who thought about the science of motor racing. From my memory, James was very voluble about the problems after Spain and just wanted the car returned to its previous spec.”
Harvey Postlethwaite, who had worked with Hunt at Hesketh between 1973 and 1975, also disagreed strongly with Caldwell’s remarks: “James could talk about racing cars, about driving, understeer and oversteer, whatever. He was a super guy to work with; very English, very pragmatic, intelligent. One realized how technically good he was. He understood racing cars and he did not believe in the bullshit, and I found that refreshing.”
Whatever the truth of it, what couldn’t be hidden was the fact that inside six weeks, McLaren had almost ruined its world championship chances by its own hand. So much so that Hunt no longer considered himself in contention for the world championship title. As he said, “We lost Belgium, Monte Carlo, and Sweden as a result of that, which was extremely crucial to the championship. We were totally uncompetitive.”
Worse still, the team had a public relations problem on its hands. Caldwell and Mayer had told the world and the FIA that the 2 centimeters by which the car had been too wide had actually made no difference to its performance. But since they had reduced the width of the car, the car had actually become uncompetitive. The discrepancy did not bode well for the team’s chances of winning its upcoming appeal against the disqualification. Between the Swedish and French races, there were scores of newspaper articles on the subject—most of them condemning McLaren.
But at least the car was competitive again, which James Hunt would resoundingly prove at the upcoming French Grand Prix.
CHAPTER 15
Hunt’s First Proper Win
Ferrari Suffer from Engine Malaise
France: July 2–4, 1976
There was a three-week break between the Swedish Grand Prix and the French Grand Prix, scheduled for July 4. The race was due to be held on the 3.6-mile Paul Ricard circuit at Le Castellet, and James Hunt spent plenty of time testing and getting his McLaren sorted. By the time the pre-race test sessions at Paul Ricard were over, the cars had been examined meticulously and restored to their pre-Spain specifications.
Ferrari made a tactical error when it elected not to test at Paul Ricard, and instead it booked test sessions at Österreichring in Austria and the Nürburgring in Germany with Goodyear.
When Lauda didn’t arrive to test, Hunt realized it was a mistake and was delighted that Ferrari was absent from the test sessions. He knew that it would hand him an advantage, and he intended to make full use of it. To his credit, Daniele Audetto wanted to go to Paul Ricard and test with Hunt, but Goodyear boss, Bert Baldwin, persuaded him it was unnecessary. To soothe his fears, Baldwin bet Audetto $20 that Lauda would get pole position in France and that there was nothing to worry about.
After testing was over and in the few days before the race, Hunt went looking for some fun. He checked into the Ile Rousse Hotel, which overlooked a beach full of topless bathers. It was five days of pure hedonism, and he was in his element: inspecting his potential conquests by day, without the inconvenience of them being clothed, and bedding them by night. That carried on all weekend. But he overindulged on foie gras and made himself ill for the weekend of the race.
Niki Lauda had similar health worries and had spent the gap between races at home with Marlene, who was still recovering from her miscarriage. Lauda’s rib cage had healed, and he was suffering no pain for the first time in two months. But the rib problem had been replaced by a terrible dose of the flu, and Lauda was sniffling all weekend.
Like McLaren, the Fe
rrari factory in Maranello, Italy, had been very busy indeed during the three-week gap. Stung by its humiliating reverses in Sweden, Ferrari introduced a major redesign of its flat-12 engine, which was significantly more powerful—this despite the fact that it was already the most powerful engine on the grid. The mechanics had also revived the De Dion suspension and fitted it to the spare car for tryout during the practice periods. There were also modifications to the front suspension that were ruled illegal by Jabby Crombac, the official representing the CSI. Crombac told Audetto that the modifications infringed the rule about movable aerodynamic devices.
James Hunt started qualifying in a confident mood. In the first qualifying session, he was second fastest to Carlos Pace’s Brabham-Alfa Romeo. In the second session he was fastest ahead of Niki Lauda’s Ferrari. The times from the first day were the fastest of qualifying and were carried through to a slower final session on Saturday to put Hunt on pole position. It was immediately clear that McLaren was back as a force, and the sense of relief that permeated through the whole team that afternoon in France was almost palpable.
Niki Lauda was not having such a good time. Ferrari’s engine technicians were very cautious about the introduction of the new engine. The engineers imposed a rev limit on the engines and increased it gradually as the weekend progressed and as they became more confident. But the limits hampered Lauda’s effort to get a good grid position, especially when the first day’s times proved the faster.
Without the engine restrictions and the disqualified times, Lauda and Regazzoni would undoubtedly have been sharing the front row. They might also have had some prior notice of the engine problems they would encounter the following day.
