Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry

by Tom Rubython

  Throughout qualifying, Lauda was far from happy with his car. The Paul Ricard circuit was windswept and had changing conditions, which once again did not suit the Ferrari, which thrived on stable track conditions. Lauda kept moaning: “One day it’s hot and the car handles in a certain way. The next day it’s cold and the car handles differently. Then they have more stupid races and the track becomes covered in oil. So the guy who understands his car the best . . . will win the race.”

  With the technical problems all solved, Alastair Caldwell was back at his best in charge of the McLaren team, and all his usual astuteness came to the fore. As qualifying progressed, his sharp eye noticed that the Goodyear tires Hunt was using were behaving strangely. He spotted that once they had been on the car for a few laps, they were a lot quicker and more consistent. He also noticed that the new cold tires were very unstable.

  Caldwell called the team together and told them they would gamble on starting the race with a set of part-worn tires, which he thought would stay consistent throughout the race. Hunt thought about it and agreed with Caldwell’s analysis of the situation and agreed to start the race on worn tires. As he said, “We could be pretty confident of our handling staying consistent throughout the race.”

  Sadly for Ferrari, Daniele Audetto was none the wiser, so Lauda started as usual with a new set of tires. Indeed, Audetto was astonished as he walked the grid and noticed that Hunt and Mass were starting on old tires. Lauda was on brand-new tires that had been lightly scrubbed in during the earlier warm-up session.

  The new tires were the best choice at the start, and Lauda made the best of it and disappeared into the distance, easily outdragging Hunt off the line and expanding his lead by a second every lap. But Hunt noticed straightaway that there were problems with Lauda’s engine. There was a vapor trail from the exhausts, which meant trouble. So he bided his time in second place. After seven laps, Hunt could see quite clearly that Lauda’s engine was losing oil and water out of the back, and he knew it was just a matter of time before it blew up.

  At the very start of lap nine, Lauda’s engine seized, and he managed to dip the clutch quickly enough before he was punted off the track. He called the experience “terrifying” and said, “Bang in the middle of the Mitral straight, it happened right out of the blue: sudden silence, and my rear wheels locked. The Ferrari spun out of control and ran right across the track. I don’t think I have ever stamped on a clutch so fast in my life before.”

  Lauda coasted to a halt with a broken crankshaft. He sat in the cockpit, quite unable to believe what had happened. He had forgotten what it was like to retire from a race and not score any points. The broken engine ended a run of 17 successive grand prix races without a retirement. The Monaco Grand Prix of 1975 had been the last time he had suffered a mechanical failure.

  Teammate Clay Regazzoni was ordered by the Ferrari pit to attack Hunt, and he took over the lead using every bit of power in the revised Ferrari engine on the long Paul Ricard straights to extend his advantage over Hunt’s McLaren. Eleven laps later, Regazzoni’s Ferrari suffered its own crankshaft failure, and the engine seized up. But Regazzoni was not as nifty as Lauda and didn’t get his clutch down in time. Regazzoni spun wildly, and it looked as though there would be a serious accident. But somehow the speed was scrubbed off, and the car got caught by the catch fencing and came to rest safely. Ferrari mechanics were devastated that both of their cars had retired. The engineers had got it totally wrong. After the disappointments in Sweden, they had introduced the new engine too quickly, been too cautious in qualifying, and paid the price in the race with two retirements. It was an own goal. Lauda simply said, “We realized that our attempts to squeeze a few more horsepower out of the engines had overdone it for the time being.”

  After that, Hunt led comfortably from Patrick Depailler in the six-wheeled Tyrrell-Ford until the 40th lap, when he began to feel ill and was sick inside his helmet. He was not helped by the fact that he had hardly anything to do for the last two-thirds of the race and barely made it to the checkered flag, with Depailler 12 seconds behind him in second place. John Watson came home third and Carlos Pace fourth. Despite the comfortable victory, Hunt knew it had been a lucky win, saying, “It was all rather depressing for the first laps of the race because of Ferrari’s special engines. They just disappeared from me, and there was nothing I could do. It was simply just a matter of power as they whizzed off down the straight, and they really got a big lead. But you have to give credit to their quality control, because it handed me the race on a plate, and I absolutely needed it.”

  After the podium celebrations, there was a fright as John Watson was initially disqualified after his rear wing was found to be too high. The stewards also announced they weren’t sure about the legality of Hunt’s rear wing either. Hunt spent an uncomfortable two hours waiting for the verdict, which eventually put him in the clear. When the stewards made their announcement, wild celebrations broke out among the McLaren mechanics as they packed up the cars.

  The story of France was the story of McLaren’s comeback. Its Spanish Grand Prix victory was restored along with the nine points that shot Hunt up the world championship table to second place, only 26 points behind Lauda. The restoration had a double whammy effect. Hunt gained nine points and Lauda lost three, so Hunt effectively gained 12 overall.

  CHAPTER 16

  FIA Restores Hunt’s Points

  Turnaround in Paris

  Paris: July 1976

  At the end of the French Grand Prix, James Hunt went back to his hotel with the McLaren mechanics and celebrated with the girls from the beach, although not as late as he would have liked, because he and Teddy Mayer were due to fly to Paris for the appeal hearing against McLaren’s Spanish Grand Prix disqualification the next morning.

  Mayer had filed the appeal directly after the Spanish disqualification, and his objective was clear: to get Hunt’s victory reinstated and the punishment reduced to a small fine. As Mayer said, “I’m not denying the car was technically infringing the rule book, but you could have disqualified every car on the grid in Spain for some minor rule infringement. What we want is a reduction of the punishment meted out to James.” Mayer’s strategy was an excellent one, because it precluded any debate or judgment about the offense and merely questioned the punishment.

  At dawn the following morning, Hunt, Mayer, and Lotus boss Colin Chapman flew to Paris in Chapman’s airplane. Chapman had generously agreed to testify on McLaren’s behalf concerning the technical issues that had led to Hunt’s disqualification. Dean Delamont, secretary of the Royal Automobile Club in London, was also a witness.

  The hearing was held at the FIA’s headquarters in Place de la Concorde in front of five FIA-appointed judges. Chapman and Delamont were the star witnesses and supported the argument that the penalty had been too severe.

  At the end, Mayer, an accomplished lawyer, summed up very eloquently with an end message that was simple and to the point: “The punishment did not fit the crime.” Mayer asked the judges to substitute the disqualification for a fine instead, and he could tell that his words resonated with the judges. Mayer walked out of the building greatly encouraged by the impartiality of the judges. As he said afterwards, “They obviously hadn’t prejudged the matter.”

  The five judges went away to deliberate for over 24 hours.

  On the Tuesday morning, Jean-Jacques Freville, Secretary General of the FIA, came out of the FIA building and told waiting journalists that Hunt’s McLaren was “only minimally in excess.” His statement read: “The exclusion incurred by the McLaren car driven by James Hunt, who had won the event, is annulled, with all the consequences that this measure entails.” Hunt’s championship points were reinstated, and the team was fined $3,000 instead. According to Caldwell, the win in France—with the car back to the original pre-Spain specification—had been the reason for their successful appeal. He said, “I’m certain the psychological advantage of us winning the day before proved decisive. If we
hadn’t, Ferrari would have carried the day. They would have been able to say, ‘Look, these bastards are uncompetitive because they’ve narrowed their car, so they did have an unfair advantage when it was wider in Spain. They shouldn’t get their points back.’ But we proved by winning with the narrower car that it made no difference, and the hearing said ‘okay.’”

  James Hunt, not quite able to believe the turn of events, simply said, “It has been a pleasant surprise being reinstated in Spain.”

  Added to the points won in France, Hunt now had 18 extra points and Lauda had lost three. In the space of two days, Hunt had effectively moved 21 points closer to Lauda. With Lauda now at 52 points, Hunt was up to 26.

  At the halfway point in the season, winning the world championship no longer seemed as impossible as it had only 48 hours earlier.

  CHAPTER 17

  Fiasco on Home Ground

  An Extraordinary Sunday Afternoon

  Brands Hatch: July 16–18, 1976

  After the race in France, James Hunt was only 26 points behind Niki Lauda in the world championship. With eight races to go and a potential 72 points to play for, it was game on.

  Hunt’s victory in France set the scene for the upcoming British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch as a grudge match between Hunt and Lauda, and between Ferrari and McLaren.

  British newspapers were full of inevitable speculation about Hunt’s chances of winning the British Grand Prix. The last English, as opposed to British, driver to win it had been the late Peter Collins, driving a Ferrari in 1958, some 18 years earlier.

  The Italian press was also in action, stirring up a campaign of hatred against Hunt among native Italians. Enzo Ferrari kicked off the hate-fueled weekend when he told Italian journalists that the decision to reinstate Hunt into the Spanish Grand Prix results was “a wicked verdict” and that the perfect revenge would be for his cars to trounce McLaren at its home race.

  Niki Lauda was hunkered down at home in Vienna, enjoying the long hot summer of 1976 beside his newly completed swimming pool. He planned to do nothing before the race aside from a day’s testing on the private Ferrari test track at Fiorano.

  In contrast, James Hunt flew straight to London from Nice for 10 days of nonstop activity before the race. In the past few months, he had become a national celebrity in Britain, and his principal sponsors, Texaco, Vauxhall, and Marlboro, were taking full advantage with a huge program of events planned for him.

  He was the star turn at a big televised event at London’s Albert Hall called “Grand Prix Night with the Stars.” The Albert Hall’s private boxes were packed with celebrities in evening dress who had paid UK£500 (approximately $1,200 at the time) for a box principally to get a glimpse of the new British hero. Hunt obliged them by playing the trumpet onstage.

  Hunt also drove a Vauxhall in the Texaco Tour of Britain, an informal pro-am rally for road cars driven by celebrity drivers. His codriver was BBC radio presenter Noel Edmonds, and sensationalist newspaper headlines about Hunt and Edmonds accompanied every incident-packed day of the event. In the end, his Vauxhall fell so far behind with all the duo’s mishaps that it had to retire from the event early.

  The British public identified with Hunt more than they had with any previous British driver. He was loved because he was different: different because he wore T-shirts and jeans, walked barefoot, chain-smoked cigarettes, and drank lots of beer. His television appearance playing the trumpet also had an enormous impact.

  After the rally was over, Hunt returned to his parents’ house in Surrey to rest. As he explained: “I realized I had been living my life up to the red line, and I had drained myself completely. The peace and quiet was like a cocoon to me. I needed my solitude. I needed to wind down totally before cranking myself up to the intense pitch which is vital to a good result in the race.”

  Niki Lauda was very anxious before the race. Although he was comfortably ensconced at the top of the world championship points table, he could sense Hunt was on a winning streak. He also knew he was hampered by his own team’s politics; a disaster, he thought, was waiting to happen. He knew he could lose the championship because of his own team, regardless of any opposition from Hunt. Lauda also thought the British officials might try and favor Hunt and McLaren, thereby disadvantaging himself and Ferrari. He was certain that would be the case, with the Italian officials in his favor, when the Italian Grand Prix came around.

  To counter that, Lauda got on the telephone to Luca de Montezemolo, the former Ferrari team manager, in Turin and begged him to come to Britain for the weekend to help him out. Surprisingly, Montezemolo agreed to come so long as Lauda would pick him up in his airplane and fly him in. Lauda agreed.

  Brands Hatch was packed every day from Thursday to Sunday for the grand prix weekend. The maximum capacity was around 80,000, and it had been years since the race had attracted so many spectators.

  The fact that the race was being held at the twisty Brands Hatch track, and not Silverstone, favored Lauda. Brands Hatch was not Hunt’s favorite type of track, and it wasn’t suited to the longer wheelbase McLaren car.

  Ferrari prepared for the race the best it could. They built a brand new car for Lauda, called chassis number 28, and held a test session at Fiorano to bed it in. The new car was lighter, as it did not have the internal framework that stiffened the chassis of Lauda’s previous car. The extra stiffening had proved unnecessary. Lauda spent the first morning of qualifying bedding his new car in.

  With Montezemolo present, Lauda was transformed from the morose character he had been of late into a happy-go-lucky, fun-loving fellow. Montezemolo stoked controversy by telling journalists that he was present to “guard Ferrari’s interests against local officials.”

  The battle for pole was always going to be between the two men. No other driver got a look in. Lauda swapped around between cars and at one point thought his engine was about to blow up. But then he changed his mind and kept to the newer car. Hunt concentrated on his regular car, getting his time up every lap.

  On the first day, Hunt squeaked past Lauda for the quickest time, with Ronnie Peterson the next fastest. But on Saturday, as Lauda finally got his new chassis sorted, it was no surprise when he took pole with Hunt second fastest, six-hundredths of a second slower round the 2.6-mile track.

  But Lauda’s pole was not such an advantage at Brands, as he was on the wrong side of the front row. Pole meant an inside run to the first corner, a drop-away right-hander. But the track at the start line was slightly banked, and it was possible to slide sideways toward the verge on the slope of the road if the wheels spun at the start. The second spot was in fact a better grid slot. Aware of this, Lauda elected, as was his right, to start from the left-hand slot—the higher side—to get a long angled run into Paddock Bend.

  So Hunt was effectively on pole even though he was only second fastest, and some observers felt Hunt had been sandbagging in qualifying because this is what he had wanted all along; he had been playing games with Lauda, who might have been second-guessing which position Hunt would choose. Regazzoni’s Ferrari had been third fastest behind Hunt, with Mario Andretti’s Lotus fourth. The 26-car grid was very competitive, achieving times that were all within three seconds of one another.

  Brands Hatch circuit is set in a natural amphitheater and has an atmosphere like no other circuit in the world, but that day it was unparalleled by anything seen in Britain before or since. As race day dawned, the roads were jammed with a capacity crowd trying to get in to see their hero, and anticipation reached fever pitch as fans eagerly awaited the battle between Hunt and Lauda.

  The atmosphere was electric as the cars stood on the grid and Hunt waved to the crowd. Unsurprisingly, Hunt made his usual poor start, but Clay Regazzoni made a storming start from the second row and ran straight into his own teammate’s car. As Hunt described it: “Clay had made a super start—a real stormer. He went up on the left of me, sliced back in front of my car and dived at the inside of Niki from way too far back. It was q
uite ridiculous. Niki was already turning into the corner, and Clay dived in and hit him.”

  For a split second, Hunt was elated, as it looked as though Lauda was out already at the hands of his teammate. He remembered: “I was able to enjoy it for, I suppose, half a second because it was wonderful and extremely funny for me to see the two Ferrari drivers take each other off the road. But it quickly became obvious that I was in it too. I got on the brakes because there was no way through, and I was punted up the rear. Then all hell broke loose. I was into Regazzoni’s car, which was sliding backwards, and my rear wheel climbed over his. My car was in the air, flying, and then it crashed down again on its wheels. I didn’t have a chance to be frightened or to realize that I could have been on my head.” The accident had been spectacular, and Hunt described Regazzoni’s driving as “a serious bout of brain fade.”

  Although Hunt’s McLaren was launched into the air, it impacted the ground squarely the right way up on its wheels. He kept his engine running, put it into gear, and let out the clutch. The car moved, but it was obvious that the steering and the front suspension were both seriously damaged.

  In fact, Hunt’s car was quite badly damaged. As he described: “It launched my car up in the air, and as it came down, it broke the front suspension. I had to limp in at the back of the circuit.”

  As he limped through the part of the circuit called Druids Loop, Hunt saw the red flag; the race had been stopped and a restart ordered. He remembered: “I gave a whoop of delight. I thought all my birthdays had come at once. One second, I was despairing of my luck, and now it was all on again. I turned into the back road to the pits, because the car wasn’t steering properly. I abandoned the car and ran down the pit road to tell the lads to come and do something about it.” As he was walking back, a journalist asked him a question about what had happened, and Hunt said: “Forget that. Haven’t got a cigarette, have you, old boy?”