by Tom Rubython
His humor hid the fact that he was in some pain; his right thumb had been hit by the spinning steering wheel while the car was airborne, but this was going to turn out to be the least of his problems.
Amazingly, most of the other drivers had maneuvered safely around the scene of the accident, which was littered with debris. The marshals were quickly in action, and within a minute and a half, the track was totally clear. It also became very clear that the stewards had been premature in stopping the race, since the crashed cars and debris had been swiftly cleared away. With the track cleared, the race need not have been stopped at all.
Daniele Audetto ran over to the control tower when he saw what had happened and went berserk. He alleged that the British stewards had deliberately ordered the race to be stopped in order to give Hunt’s McLaren a chance of restarting.
Alan Henry, the well-known journalist, had a good vantage point that day, and didn’t believe that Hunt was still running when the red flag was shown. As he says: “I think James knew absolutely that he was out of that race, and that he’d actually stopped. He should never have been allowed to restart it, and I think the force of Teddy Mayer, particularly, bullying the stewards got him back in.”
Hunt believed differently and was genuinely unaware that it was against the regulations for him to restart. His initial thought was to switch to his spare car for the restart. But no one was quite sure whether the first race had been completely aborted.
Everyone had an opinion about what would happen next. Most of the team managers and race officials were now congregated in race control in the Brands Hatch tower, directly overlooking the start line.
The rules were unclear about what happened when a lap of a race had not been completed.
As it could have been declared an aborted start, Alastair Caldwell decided to keep his options open. As Hunt’s mechanics descended on his race car to repair it, Caldwell ordered others to get the spare car ready. Hunt recalled: “They didn’t know exactly which car we would be able to run at the restart.” In fact, the McLaren mechanics took the spare car to the grid and put it in position while arguments went on about whether or not it was eligible.
Hunt remembered: “The stewards couldn’t decide what to do because the rule book was unclear, and of course with that, there were also a lot of Formula One team managers with a lot of words to say on the subject. The stewards were confused and the rulebook was confusing, so chaos reigned.”
The rulebook actually stated: “When a red flag is displayed, the race must stop immediately, and if there is a restart to the race, all people who are competing at the time are allowed to restart.”
Caldwell and Mayer knew exactly what they had to do; they had to delay a restart as long as possible. So they deliberately inflamed the argument in the control tower in order to gain their mechanics valuable time to repair Hunt’s car. Every quarter of an hour, Caldwell was running back and forth from the pits to the tower, reporting to Mayer on the situation with the repairs.
The grounds for not allowing Hunt to restart were complex, but the essence was that he had not completed a lap at the time of the accident. He had also entered the pits from the wrong direction, but in reality, in the heat of this situation, no one was going to disqualify him for that.
Hunt’s contention was that he had seen the red flag displayed and had been obeying this instruction by stopping racing immediately. The rival team managers contended that a driver who hasn’t yet completed a lap is not competing. They also firmly stated that Hunt should be disqualified for entering the pits from the wrong direction as, at no time may a car be driven deliberately in the opposite direction during a race. That rule was clear.
Caldwell and Mayer argued that the obvious solution was to declare the first race null and void. For a race to be stopped after 140 meters (459 feet) was unheard of in Formula One racing. But the stewards decided that the race had gone on longer, as Lauda had managed to keep moving and had threaded his car out of trouble after the initial contact from Regazzoni, and that he had been the leader when the race was red-flagged.
Three cars—Hunt’s McLaren, Regazzoni’s Ferrari, and Jacques Laffite’s Ligier—had been damaged in the accident, and so when the cars were called back to the grid 30 minutes later, all three drivers appeared in their spare cars. The race was ready to restart, and it was officially announced over the circuit loudspeakers that the race would proceed as though the first lap had not occurred. However, this was followed by the announcement that no car would be allowed to restart that had not completed the first lap. The restart of the race, it had been decided, would include neither Hunt, Regazzoni, nor Laffite.
The British crowd had been watching and listening in silence. Initially they appeared stoic and ready to accept the decision to exclude Hunt.
But there was a troublemaker in their midst that day: a man who was determined that James Hunt would restart the race.
He was Andrew Frankl, a Hungarian-born publisher who was acting as a photographer for the race weekend. Frankl was the founder of Car magazine. He had volunteered for photography duties, as the position came with a much sought after pass that enabled the holder to go anywhere during the race. Frankl was a petrolhead and wandered around that weekend enjoying himself and talking to pretty girls in the crowd. The charmer had a certain way with the opposite sex.
But more seriously, Frankl also had a history. As a young man he had been a participant in the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Russians. His participation had caused him to have to leave Hungary and flee to Britain. He knew how to stir up a crowd as a result of his experiences back home.
At the time of the incident, Frankl was on the inside of the circuit, near the pit lane. Upon hearing that Hunt was to be excluded, he became angry and decided he would do something about it. He leaned over the fence into the public area and shouted to some fans to gather round him. Amazingly, they obeyed him. The Hungarian’s natural authoritativeness meant they did exactly as they were told. Frankl told them to start chanting: “We want James.” Soon 30 or so fans had taken up the chant, with Frankl conducting them with a stick he had picked up off the ground. Frankl was aided by Anthony Marsh, the circuit commentator, who helped him stoke up the crowd. Marsh himself began chanting through the 100-odd loudspeakers that lined the circuit.
Hearing the chant, the remaining 80,000 fans quickly joined in, and soon the words “We want James” reverberated around the circuit until it was deafening.
The roar of 80,000 fans shouting in perfect unison was extraordinary. The British stewards couldn’t hear themselves talking in the control tower. After 10 minutes, Frankl told his group to start a slow handclap. Gradually the crowd caught on and started clapping slowly and perfectly in time. Frankl believes that it was the first time 80,000 people had slow handclapped in the open air before in Britain, and it had an extraordinary effect.
But the demonstration did not remain entirely good-natured. The fans soon turned nasty and began throwing bottles and cans onto the track. The crowd in the main grandstands opposite the pit looked likely to storm the barriers in their quest to block the track and to prevent a restart without Hunt. As missiles of every description rained down onto the track stewards, the stewards were scared by what might happen.
Hunt was by now resigned to his fate, but the fans’ reaction stirred the caveman instinct in him. The support moved him and made him even more determined to start the race.
In the absence of Mayer and Caldwell, busy with their delaying tactics in the tower, Hunt took charge. He ordered his mechanics to leave the spare car on the grid and not to move it off despite the stewards’ orders. He told his mechanics that nothing and nobody would prevent him from starting the race—even if he was disqualified afterwards. Ferrari and Ligier mechanics, following Hunt’s example, did the same.
Hunt knew he had the support of 80,000 people.
The stewards down on the grid were frightened by what would happen if Hunt didn’t race and appeared to be
aware of the frantic efforts to get his car repaired; and they became almost coconspirators in the delay. Hunt said, “It was a fantastic feeling for me as I sat in my car to know I had all this support—really quite incredible.”
Sensing what might be about to happen, Daniele Audetto rushed back to the control tower and was adamant that if Hunt started in his spare car, so too would Regazzoni. Alastair Caldwell disputed it to keep the argument going, even though it was obvious they would be disqualified later.
But Caldwell wasn’t interested in running the spare car; it was a red herring. Caldwell knew that if Hunt started in the spare car, he would certainly be black-flagged. But a repaired race car meant all bets were off, as it would almost certainly be allowed.
Hunt explained: “We had realized that the spare car was out of the question. In the meantime, we were naturally trying to keep the argument going because they were hastily getting my car repaired in the pits.”
Meanwhile, John Webb, the managing director of the owners of the circuit and the man ultimately responsible for the crowd’s safety, recognized that Hunt would have to be allowed to race. Webb asked the stewards, on advice from the local police, to let Hunt start.
Webb remembers: “At the time, I don’t think they regarded it as terribly serious because British crowds at motor race meetings don’t get out of control. It was purely the James Hunt factor.”
Hunt said, “The organizers, rather than the officials, decided the only way they were going to get the race started was to start me, whatever happened, because [the crowd] were throwing beer cans on the track.”
In the control tower, the stewards consulted the FIA rulebook, watched by the team managers, all of whom seemed to have a different opinion about what should happen. The rulebook simply did not cover this situation.
The other team managers had also become aware of Caldwell’s tactics of blatantly playing for time. But by now they were on Caldwell’s side as the crowd turned increasingly ugly. Hunt remembered: “The crowd went completely hooligan. I’d never known anything like it. They’d got fed up with the rules and they didn’t want any more rubbish. They wanted to see a motor race.”
After an hour’s prevarication, Hunt’s race car was finally pushed back onto the grid and the spare car wheeled away. A new steering arm and front suspension had been fitted to his car.
With Hunt’s race car repaired, Caldwell now returned to the control tower and tried to have Regazzoni excluded from the start. Daniele Audetto stared at him in disbelief as Caldwell started arguing against spare cars being allowed to run. Audetto screamed at the stewards, who ruled to let both Regazzoni and Laffite restart in their spare cars.
So after 90 minutes, the start of the second race was on. The cars were allowed another warm-up lap, and Hunt found his car to be in good shape. As he said, “The boys didn’t have time to track it out, but we tweaked it a bit after the warm-up lap. It wasn’t very good to start off with, but then the car began to settle and then started going really well.”
Niki Lauda made the best of the restart and got off ahead of Hunt and Regazzoni. Carrying a full tank of fuel, Hunt’s hastily rebuilt car was not nearly as fast, but as the fuel load started to drop, Hunt found that he could throw the car around more and go faster. At half-distance Lauda was leading, but Hunt closed in on him. Hunt recalled: “I’d been catching Lauda steadily but not enough, and then I was helped by a couple of back markers trailing the field. He got the worst of that, and about five laps after that, I started stabbing at him.”
As Hunt began to seek ways past the Ferrari, the fans began cheering. The noise from the crowd was so loud he could hear it above the sound of his engine. On the 45th lap Hunt finally drove inside Lauda and passed him on the climbing approach to Druids Hill. The crowd was wild with joy, and emotions were overflowing. He said, “I knew I’d got him. I knew I was getting on top and our lap times were coming down. It was quite fantastic. We were racing at around 1 minute 19 seconds for a lap of Brands, the sort of time with which Niki and I had qualified with light fuel loads in practice.”
Rather fittingly, the man who had been responsible for Hunt being able to restart—Andrew Frankl—was in exactly the right place at the right time and got the only photograph of Hunt’s overtaking maneuver.
After he was passed, Lauda didn’t fight back and settled in to finish second. Regazzoni and Laffite dropped out with mechanical problems in their spare cars, thus saving the stewards the trouble of disqualifying them.
As he crossed the line and saw the checkered flag, Hunt raised both arms aloft to acknowledge the ecstatic fans. He said, “Brands is such an intimate circuit anyway, and you feel the crowd more than you do anywhere else. You can sense the emotion and the movement all the time, even though you are not necessarily looking at the crowd. It’s there, and you respond to it.”
As far as Hunt was concerned, he had properly and legally won the British Grand Prix. But not everyone thought that, and certainly not Daniele Audetto. Initially the Ferrari, Tyrrell, and Copersucar teams lodged official protests against Hunt’s victory. These three teams all stood to gain points if Hunt was disqualified. Tyrrell and Copersucar eventually withdrew their protests, and the stewards rejected Ferrari’s claim. Ferrari said it would take the matter under appeal to the FIA court in Paris, but no one took that threat too seriously. Since, Audetto had earlier been arguing vigorously that Regazzoni should be allowed to restart in his spare car, Caldwell asked him how he could now appeal against Hunt starting again in his race car. Audetto gasped at the hypocrisy, remembering how Caldwell had reversed his own spare car argument as soon as Hunt’s race car was repaired. He just stared at Caldwell and said three words: “It’s my job.” With that, he stalked away.
With the victory, Hunt had earned nine points and brought his total to 35 points against Lauda’s 58. He was now only 23 points behind.
CHAPTER 18
Enzo Ferrari Woos Lauda
New Contract Signed
July 1976
Only a few months earlier, Enzo Ferrari had wanted to sack Niki Lauda as team leader of Ferrari and replace him with an inexperienced young Italian named Maurizio Flammini. Now he had completely changed his mind and wanted Lauda to extend his contract. Enzo initially asked Daniele Audetto to deal with the matter of having the contract extended.
So Audetto went to Lauda and informally offered him a retainer of approximately $300,000 for 1977. But Lauda told Audetto he wasn’t interested in negotiating with him and any meaningful negotiations would be a “no-no.” Lauda spoke to Audetto as little as possible and wanted to keep it that way. There was simply no chance of his negotiating a contract with him.
Lauda’s refusal to negotiate infuriated Enzo.
The reason the contract extension became so urgent was simple: Lauda was leading the world championship with 61 points and had just scored two quick victories in Belgium and Monaco and second places in Spain and Britain. He led the championship from James Hunt by 36 points, a seemingly insurmountable lead, and he looked certain to be champion for the second year in a row. He had also vanquished his teammate, Clay Regazzoni, whom Lauda had made to look very second rate.
Ferrari also knew Lauda was being wooed by Brabham team boss Bernie Ecclestone to drive for him in 1977. As Brabham had Italian Alfa Romeo engines, that would have been a public relations disaster.
But Enzo was in a difficult position. After the fiasco with Flammini, he knew Lauda had lost respect for him. And that troubled him, as Enzo prized his relationship with his drivers and liked to be in charge of it. With Lauda, this clearly wasn’t the case.
Lauda had first met Enzo Ferrari in 1973, when he was 75 years old. He exuded great dignity, and like Lauda’s previous employer, Louis Stanley of BRM, he was the master of making a public entrance. When he came into a room it seemed almost like he had rehearsed it first. Once Lauda visited Ferrari in his garden, and while he sat waiting outside, Enzo preened himself before making a tour of the perimeter on his wa
y to enter Lauda’s presence on the lawn. At their first-ever meeting, one of Ferrari’s aides had primed Lauda and told him, “He is the figurehead; he is the marquee; he is life itself.”
But once the glitz and pomp was stripped away, Lauda found him less than impressive. As he said, “He had a couple of off habits; he would scratch himself in the most unlikely places and hawk and spit for minutes on end with obvious relish into a giant handkerchief, which, unfolded, was the size of a flag.” But Lauda still respected him, saying, “He still had all his wits about him, and his remarks were perceptive and amusing. He retained a fine sense of gentle irony.”
But Lauda had great difficulty taking him completely seriously, and when he asked him what he thought would happen to Ferrari after his death, Enzo replied, “I feel no excitement at the prospect of what may come after me.”
The legend of Enzo Ferrari had always been embellished by his refusal to attend races and travel outside his immediate home. Apart from the rarest of occasions, he never left the Modena region of Italy. Virtually the sole exception was to attend the Friday qualifying day of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, and that could not be guaranteed.
And it was his dislike of travel and subsequent isolation that caused most of his problems.
He lived in his own world, entirely dependent on others for his opinions or on what he read in the newspapers. Lauda said, “His information was supplied by lackeys.”
In July, as Lauda had moved from zero to hero, the same Italian journalists who had wanted him replaced began clamoring for his contract to be extended lest he move to Brabham. As usual, Enzo Ferrari reacted to the newspapers and called Lauda in.
Enzo was frantically worried about losing Lauda, who he knew was unhappy after Luca di Montezemolo’s departure. He was also scared by talk of big money offers from Ecclestone’s Brabham. The fact that Brabham had Italian engines made that notion completely unacceptable.
