Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry

by Tom Rubython

  Hunt was full of praise, and any ill feelings toward Lauda from the past were genuinely put aside as the two men became temporary friends again and started speaking every day on the telephone. Hunt said, “To virtually step out of the grave and, six weeks later, to come fourth in a grand prix is a truly amazing achievement.” He added, “Niki drove a typical Niki race: well contained within himself and within his new limitations.”

  The race was won by Ronnie Peterson in the March-Ford. It was the first win by March in almost five years and the first for Peterson since he left Lotus. Regazzoni was second and Jacques Laffite third in his Ligier. The three points Lauda won for finishing fourth in Italy gave him a five-point lead over Hunt, with Lauda on 61 points and Hunt on 56.

  When the race was over, Ferrari team manager Daniele Audetto was very embarrassed by what had gone on that day. Audetto may have been overbearing at times, but he was fundamentally an honest man who believed in playing by the rules. He knew his countrymen had not been playing by the rules. He confessed admiration for Hunt, saying that the crowd’s hatred had been directed at the McLaren team and not at Hunt personally.

  With that off his chest, Audetto then decided to make some bizarre and seemingly unprompted predictions about what would happen in the last three races. He predicted Hunt would win the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, finish second in Canada, and third in Japan. Lauda, he said, would win the Canadian Grand Prix, finish second at the Japanese, and not score at all at Watkins Glen. How he knew all this was beyond anyone’s guess, but his predictions were widely reported around the world and taken seriously by many, especially Italian journalists.

  Audetto also praised Lauda’s teammate, Regazzoni, predicting he would finish third, second, and first in the remaining three races. Again, no one really understood what he meant or how he could make such accurate predictions. But they also received wide publicity in Italian newspapers. But it was all typical Italian false praise, as Enzo Ferrari had already decided to fire Regazzoni and to replace him permanently with Reutemann after Monza.

  Audetto’s ultimate prophecy was that Lauda would take the championship by one point from Hunt, 76 to 75. But interestingly, Audetto’s prediction took no account of the outcome of Ferrari’s protest against the British Grand Prix and the mountain that Hunt still had to climb to win.

  For Hunt, things could only get better. But first they would have to get much worse.

  CHAPTER 24

  Hunt Loses British Win

  McLaren Mess Up the Hearing

  Paris: September 24, 1976

  As the hoo-ha at Monza died down, James Hunt made a critical decision not to appear at an appeals court hearing in Paris that would either confirm or cancel his win at the British Grand Prix. The FIA Court of Appeal in Paris was convened to consider an appeal by the Ferrari team as to whether Hunt’s McLaren-Ford should have been disqualified from the results of the British Grand Prix. Ferrari had appealed the result, but James Hunt didn’t think they had a chance of success. Instead of planning a schedule that included going to the hearing in the three-week gap between Italy and Canada, he embarked on an alternative schedule of his own choosing—one that combined spending money and having a good time. He opted to ignore Paris and leave it all to team boss Teddy Mayer.

  Astonishingly, Mayer told Hunt he could handle it. But the truth was that he couldn’t.

  McLaren was very confident that it would defeat the appeal, and Hunt was simply too lazy to go and was overconfident about the result. As he said, “I didn’t see how they could possibly throw us out because it was an open-and-shut case as far as the legalities were concerned.” But, he admitted later, “I was a little nervous of the outcome.”

  Much of the blame for Hunt’s absence at the hearing lay at the feet of Teddy Mayer. Mayer was a trained lawyer and must have known how important Hunt’s testimony would be, but he still wasn’t able to exert his authority over the driver and make him attend. Hunt was the principal witness and, arguably, the only witness who mattered. His nonappearance was inexplicable and fatal to McLaren’s defense.

  So as soon as the Italian Grand Prix was over, Hunt hotfooted it back to London’s Heathrow Airport and hopped straight onto a flight to New York that Sunday night, where he would earn $10,000 competing in an IROC saloon car race the following weekend. He then flew straight to Toronto in Canada and drove in a test session at Mosport, the venue for the Canadian Grand Prix.

  When he finally got there, Hunt was looking forward to having a marvelous time in Canada enjoying the country’s many attractions. His libido seemed to be at its highest, as he had a different woman on his arm every evening and was even indulging during the day where he could.

  There was an embarrassing moment at the Mosport track during testing when he seduced the Mosport circuit manager’s wife while her husband was standing nearby. Getting on very well with the woman, Hunt spotted an empty ambulance by the pits with the doors unlocked and invited her inside. Meanwhile, her husband strolled up the McLaren pit to have a word with Alastair Caldwell just as the ambulance was rocking on its shock absorbers in the background. Back at the hotel in the evenings, Hunt was also busy seducing the singer of the band that was entertaining in the hotel lounge.

  After an incident-packed few days of testing, Hunt flew back to London and then straight onto Malaga and home. After a few days at home in the sun, he flew back to Toronto on September 23 to get ready for the race at the Mosport track on October 3. It was an extraordinary schedule, motivated by his desire to earn some extra money and spend a few days at home in peace before the end of the summer and the run-in to the championship-deciding races.

  But Hunt never should have been in Canada at all. In going so early and not attending the upcoming FIA Court of Appeal in Paris, he made a catastrophic error of judgment that would cost him dear.

  On September 26 the FIA hearing got under way in Paris. The issue at stake was simple: Ferrari appealed Hunt’s win at the British Grand Prix, arguing he should have been disqualified after the race was restarted. Ferrari was seeking to have the stewards’ decision, which had declared Hunt the winner of the race, overturned.

  The hearing was in front of a six-member panel of judges composed of FIA delegates from France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Switzerland, and the United States.

  Ferrari’s case was presented by its team manager, Daniele Audetto, accompanied by two lawyers. Audetto stated that after the accident at the start of the race, Hunt’s car had been abandoned by the driver and was being pushed by the McLaren mechanics while the race was still in progress and was therefore incapable of completing the first lap.

  McLaren’s defense, presented by Teddy Mayer and a lawyer representing the British Royal Automobile Club, stated that Hunt stopped only when he saw the red flag being displayed and that the car was only pushed after the race had been officially halted. Hunt, they maintained, could and would have completed the lap had he felt it necessary.

  Teddy Mayer brought with him to the proceedings a videocassette machine and a recording of the race. The videotape, he thought, substantiated McLaren’s claim beyond doubt. Caldwell agreed: “We had clear video evidence of him driving the car; the video was taken to Paris, and a CSS producer swore that this was untouched film.”

  But without Hunt, much of McLaren’s evidence was still all hearsay, and the team effectively had no case. His absence annoyed the six judges immensely; it smacked of arrogance.

  In contrast, Ferrari made no such mistake, and there was never any doubt that Niki Lauda would show up to give evidence. Although Lauda had not really been directly involved, he was an eyewitness and he was present to give what evidence he could. His appearance gave Ferrari a tremendous tactical advantage, which it fully exploited.

  Mayer couldn’t believe it when Lauda made his appearance. Immediately upon seeing Lauda, he realized that McLaren had made a mistake not having Hunt present, and he hoped it would not be fatal—although from that moment, he feared it would
be.

  Lauda had flown in from Salzburg to Paris for the hearing and arrived at the FIA’s headquarters with a blood-soaked bandage on his head. Since his wounds had healed by then, it was thought by many to be pure Italian theatrics to gain the court’s sympathy. Lauda’s appearance was an emotional moment, and the judges were visibly moved when he entered the room. They were honored that he had taken the time and trouble to come.

  They listened carefully to every word he had to say and, astonishingly, appeared to view him as an independent and uninterested witness, so convincing was he.

  In top form, Lauda was very persuasive and visibly swayed the judges. Alastair Caldwell recalled: “Niki was the living saint, and the silly old sod who did the deciding decided that it was unfair on poor Niki.”

  Additionally, Lauda was portrayed very effectively by Ferrari’s lawyers as a victim. If Hunt had been there, he might have countered the argument. But he wasn’t, so he couldn’t.

  The hearing took 11 hours, completed in one session, and the next day the secretary of the FIA delivered the verdict. It was simple: Hunt was disqualified from the results of the British Grand Prix and would lose nine points. To make matters worse, Lauda was promoted to winner and gained three points.

  All in all, Hunt had effectively lost 12 points. The points score now stood at Lauda 64 and Hunt 47, a 17-point difference. And it was all the English driver’s own fault.

  Hunt was playing squash in Toronto on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 28, when he heard the result of the appeal. A call from a Canadian journalist got through to the club where he was playing, and he was handed a piece of paper by a club staffer that read: “Call me back and be prepared for bad news.”

  Hunt knew exactly what that meant. As he said, “News is only good or bad, and it was going to be a black-or-white answer anyway.” With that, he effectively knew the result and didn’t immediately return the call. Taking his cue from Sir Francis Drake, he decided to finish his game of squash first. As he said, “I wanted to think about it a bit, so I went to the changing rooms and straight down to the court. I’m pretty tough professionally, and it’s difficult to move me because I’ve trained myself to be hard—there’s no mileage in letting things upset you. But boy, I couldn’t hit that squash ball and I couldn’t concentrate on the game at all.”

  By the time Hunt finished his game, word had traveled around and he had been joined at the squash club by a horde of journalists telling him more about what had happened. He was very upset but still spoke to them. He described the decision as “a very heavy deal.”

  Hunt was never given the real reason for being thrown out of the results. He said, “They never said why. In appeals prior to this, they had always stated the findings of the court and their reasons for finding it, but in this case all they did was issue a result.”

  There was only one possible reason in Hunt’s mind: the FIA had simply chosen to disbelieve the witnesses, including the clerk of the course and the marshals. Hunt never considered his own absence to have been the reason. He said, “The fact was that my car was running and hadn’t retired, and I can’t see how anyone can talk about a driver’s intentions, because not even I knew then whether I intended to retire or not—it was totally irrelevant.” But he had not been there to tell them that, and now, 3,500 miles away, it was too late.

  Later, he did admit that when he heard the result, it occurred to him that perhaps he had been wrong not to go to the hearing.

  Years later, he tried to rewrite history by saying the hearing took place a week after it did: “I was already in Canada waiting, ready to race. I have to say it was a supreme shock to me to get the news from Paris two days before practice for the Canadian Grand Prix started.” But his protestations were undone by Lauda’s appearance in Paris at the hearing.

  Later Hunt blamed Ferrari for having brought such an unnecessary appeal. Hunt said, “I happened to be the guy who was beating the great Ferrari machine, and they didn’t like it. They’ve done a lot of work to make sure I didn’t succeed, starting with the fuel business at Monza and, now, this. Combining this news with the Italian fiasco, I felt really cheated—yes, cheated. Here I was in a position to win the world championship after 10 years of effort, and here I was being politically assassinated, being cheated by events over which I had no control whatsoever. It was downright wrong, and there was just nothing I could do about it.”

  Afterwards, Teddy Mayer was totally shocked by the result and said, “James won the race fair and square; there was no question about that, there was no question of his car being illegal.”

  Later Hunt would admit he and the team were somewhat at fault in not preparing for the hearing thoroughly enough: “Quite honestly, neither I nor McLaren took it particularly seriously because there was nothing in the rulebook, no grounds in the rules, that could possibly suggest that I was going to be disqualified or that it was going to be a problem. As a result, I think McLaren and Teddy Mayer didn’t set up a proper defense when they went to Paris in September.”

  Alastair Caldwell summed it all up: “We were never any good at politics at McLaren. We got done.”

  Meanwhile, Niki Lauda was ecstatic and was quoted widely as being “delighted at the outcome—madly delighted.” To journalists who contacted him at his home in Austria, he said it was a “proper thing” that the FIA court had done and that “at last, a positive decision had been taken.”

  Lauda laid it on thick for the press, and Hunt got very worked up when he read it.

  Hunt accepted any television interview offered to him to attack Lauda and Ferrari, and Lauda responded in kind. Hunt said, “We all live in glass houses, and I don’t understand the self-righteousness that was shown by Ferrari saying that they never broke rules. It’s all right to say those things, but to say them and believe them is something else. To display the sort of self-righteousness that Ferrari did seems to me childish.”

  Lauda felt that Hunt was overreacting and being malicious: “When I was robbed of the Spanish Grand Prix, James did not say anything to me or tell me that it was a bad decision. So why should I say anything to him about the decision at Brands Hatch? Sure it was a surprise to me; I did not think that the FIA would cancel his Brands Hatch win, but they took the evidence and they decided that it should be canceled. It is very tough luck on James; he drove a very good race that day. But the decision has been made and we must accept it. We must not go on shouting about it in public.”

  Many years later, Hunt tried to explain why he hadn’t gone to Paris. He said the reason was simple: that he didn’t want anything negative distracting him from the last two races in North America. He was in a very confident mood and was totally focused on the world championship. He wasn’t sure he could beat Lauda for the title, but he believed he would run him close.

  As everyone assembled in Canada, Lauda and the whole Ferrari team was exultant about the result of the appeal, and some gloating in the press was inevitable. It stirred up tremendous resentment between Hunt and Lauda, and any notions of friendship or rapprochement apparent after the Italian Grand Prix were long gone. But Hunt was up for the fight with three races to go. He said, “I was all set to give it a go. I was fired up and wanted to drive, and the only place I could be on my own to get on with the job was in the car. So I enjoyed my driving there more than ever because it was such a relief. The rest of it I hated.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Hunt’s Faint Chance

  Only Winning Would Suffice

  Canada: October 1–3, 1976

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Niki Lauda was intensely safety-conscious after his accident, and as soon as he arrived in Canada, he went to war with the organizers of the Canadian Grand Prix, due to be held over the first weekend of October.

  The 2.1-mile Mosport circuit is situated in an idyllic and magical lake land surrounded by a wilderness of trees that are beautifully red-brown in the early autumn. But it suffered for being under snow for most of the winter, which caused considerable damage
to the circuit, exacerbated by the fact that it was not well maintained.

  The state of the track was atrocious and a serious safety hazard. So the stage was set for a nasty confrontation as the teams checked into the Flying Dutchmen Motel near Bowmanville, 45 miles from Toronto. James Hunt described the atmosphere as “tightrope tension,” saying, “I eventually got so depressed by the whole scene that I locked myself in my room on the Thursday night and waited for Friday’s official practice and the opportunity to get back to the sanity of the cockpit of my car. Once I was in the car, all the aggravation, all the pressure, disappeared and I concentrated on driving. It was beautiful.”

  The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association safety committee, led by Lauda, remonstrated with the organizers over the condition of the track. Finding no satisfaction, a meeting was scheduled to discuss it. When he was asked by Lauda to attend the circuit safety meeting, Hunt apparently shouted at him, reportedly saying, “To hell with safety. All I want to do is race.”

  It was the last thing Hunt wanted to say to the injured Lauda, but his reaction was the fallout from the British Grand Prix appeal and what had happened at Monza. Lauda understood and remained reasonably philosophical about it: “We have been friends, but James broke the rules in England. If you break the rules, you are out. No argument. Now he shouts at me. This is not right. He should respect me as a driver. We have a job to do. Bad feeling only makes it more difficult.”

  Hunt didn’t attend the official safety committee meeting and made his excuses. His absence severely weakened the drivers’ position. The other drivers were furious, and some questioned Hunt’s motives. The truth was that there was a real danger of the race being canceled, which was not in Hunt’s interests at all. With one less race, he had no chance of winning the championship. Alastair Caldwell probably advised him not to go, but of course Hunt wasn’t about to admit that. Drivers always maintain that safety is paramount. But on this occasion, as far as James Hunt was concerned, it wasn’t.