by Tom Rubython
Hunt was totally captivated by what he witnessed at Silverstone that Saturday 21st August 1965. The meeting was for saloon cars and sports cars, which then formed the staple of the British racing scene. 12 races were scheduled, and the makes of competing cars included everything from Bentleys to Minis.
Christopher Hilton, one of Hunt’s biographers, described the scene as only he could: “Ham’s Aston Martin was in the lead, hotly and resoundingly pursued by Chamberlain’s Cooper-Jaguar, although pulling away towards the end. Riley in the Mini-Cooper S was hanging on gamely, fighting off Cox’s Mini-Cooper, with Gibson’s Jaguar-E fifth, Leo’s Lagonda back in sixth place after a spin at Woodcote, and Symondson driving his Bugatti with consummate ease. What a race.”
Hilton attempted to describe the effect on Hunt’s emotions: “Any race, particularly the first time you see, hear and smell it, can be extremely intoxicating...like a feast, with men and their machinery at the limit. To a first-timer with a receptive mind... [it] would grip the imagination and not let go.” Hilton added that, as far as Hunt was concerned, “it never did let go.”
Hunt later remembered: “I thought: ‘This is bloody good.’ I absolutely adored driving fast anyway, and was always trying to organise races with my friends on the roads around home.” He was almost completely ignorant of racing up to then, as he admitted: “I’d never known there was such a thing as club racing. As far as I knew, motor racing was something impossibly remote; a thing carried out by Jim Clark and a lot of continentals with long names. But here was something within reach of a mere mortal.”
In fact, Hunt was completely intoxicated and became, in modern parlance, a petrolhead. The word wasn’t in use back then, but now describes human beings affected by the smell of petrol to the extent that they become obsessed with cars being driven at high speed in circles in competition with others. That was it, in its simplest sense: Hunt had swapped the smell of ether in a hospital for the smell of petrol at a race track.
But deciding to be a racing driver and actually having the talent to do so are two very different things. And this is where Hunt’s intelligence kicked in. His decision to change careers was not as hit-and-miss as many people would like to believe.
As he walked around the paddock that day at Silverstone, and as he chatted to some of the young drivers, he discovered that race driving was all about hand-eye coordination and peripheral vision. If he possessed those two abilities, there was a chance he could succeed.
Apart from that, he also thought racing would quench his thirst for competition. As he explained: “It was the immediate answer to this problem of having my needs to compete satisfied.” He had long ago realised that he had an obsession with competing against other human beings, which, he concluded, was why he liked sport so much.
Hunt knew from his tennis, squash, cricket, golf and goalkeeping prowess that he had excellent hand-eye coordination. He wasn’t sure about his peripheral vision but tested himself as soon as he got home. He found it was well above average when he compared it to that of his friends.
With that, he decided he would become a race driver.
He had not pursued careers in tennis, squash, cricket, golf or soccer because he didn’t feel inspired to. But now, he felt invigorated by what he had witnessed at Silverstone, and it had been enough to make him seriously choose it for a career. As he told Gerald Donaldson years later: “All these guys from perfectly ordinary homes had saved up all their money and gone club racing, which is just about within the range of one’s pocket if one works at it and one saves up very hard. I thought: ‘Well crikey, if they can do it, so can I. I’m jolly well going to have a go.’”
He was as surprised as anyone by the instincts and desires that had been awakened in him after the visit to Silverstone. It seemed that he had always liked driving cars fast and, when he looked back, he realised he had always been what he called “car crazy”. He said: “I was 18 and, for the first time in my life, thought that here was something I might be able to do well.”
His first contact with cars had come at the age of 11, when he drove a car during a family holiday at a farm in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Going to farms for their holidays was the sort of thing the Hunt family did; Wallis and Sue thought it educational.
James was bored stiff and had no interest in farming at all – he liked animals, but that was about it. So he sought other pursuits and persuaded one of the young farm workers to let him have a go at driving his tractor. Unthinkable now in an era of strict health and safety regulations, Hunt took the controls and drove round the farm. Afterwards, he was allowed to drive the farm’s Land Rover, which he found even more to his liking than the tractor. Finding he had a natural instinct for it, he knew how to drive it straightaway. His only problem was with changing gears, as the clutch was heavy.
Hunt spent an hour driving up and down the two-mile drive to the farm. When Wallis saw how happy his son was at the wheel, he let him drive his car on the same track.
From then on, Wallis periodically let him drive and put him behind the wheel on private roads. Seeing all of this as a perfectly natural part of his eldest son growing up, Wallis had no idea where it would eventually lead.
But car racing was by no means his only obsession. Hunt was also obsessive about music and was always listening to the record player in his room. Like all teenagers, he loved pop music but, even from a very early age, he also enjoyed classical music and was encouraged in his tastes by Nigel Davison. He particularly enjoyed Beethoven. In 1967, his life changed when he was given a Philips cassette recorder for his birthday. The invention of the tape cassette meant he could listen to the music he wanted while on the move. From that moment to the end of his life, he always carried a cassette player with him. As he said: “I love music and it’s very important to me in my life. I always take a cassette player when I travel to races and it gives me comfort and relaxation. You spend a lot of time on your own, lurking in hotel rooms in strange places, and it’s nice to have music with you.”
When he was 16, he started driving a scooter and, as his 17th birthday dawned, he applied for his provisional driver’s licence and took his first driving lesson. Folklore says he passed his driving test one week after his 17th birthday but, in reality, it took a little bit longer than that. By Christmas 1964, he had his full driver’s licence. For James, it felt as though his life really began that day. He remembered later: “I drove immaculately. My hand signals were perfect and I never exceeded 30 miles an hour in a built up area.” But he added: “As soon as the examiner got out of the car and handed me my pink slip, I revved up and roared away like a lunatic.”
Wallis Hunt soon became painfully aware of his son’s new status, and he had two damaged road cars to show for it. As Wallis told Gerald Donaldson: “He wrote off our minivan, rolling it across a field near Epsom.” The minivan belonged to his mother and the crash was serious. Hunt was going too fast round a bend and he clipped the kerb at the outside of the corner. The minivan was launched over a fence and 50 metres into the air. It landed upside down in a farmer’s field. Hunt had been very fortunate not to break his neck. When the accident happened, he had crouched down in his seat and braced his head between his knees, and he climbed out of the Mini with just cuts and bruises. It was a survival technique he would use very successfully throughout his racing career, and one that undoubtedly saved his life at least four times.
Wallis decided not to replace the van, which Sue Hunt had used for her charity work. He also banned his son from driving his car. So James bought a moped for himself. But Wallis saw how upset his son was at being grounded.
Six months later, Wallis bought his wife a new Fiat 500 and the ban was lifted. Wallis said: “We thought, with its top speed of about 50 miles per hour and no acceleration, that he can’t do much harm in this.” Wallis could not have been more wrong. The new Fiat 500, his mother’s pride and joy, was quickly written off as Hunt tested the limits of his skill on the public roads. Wallis was furious and decided he
would not repair the car; he left it on the drive as a permanent warning to his son.
Wallis Hunt remembered the exact moment when he was told the Fiat 500 had been wrecked: “That very night, there was a knock on the bedroom door at about 2 o’clock in the morning. James stood there, looking rather sheepish, and asked if I could spare a minute to come downstairs. I went down to find a large assembly of his friends, all looking solemn and serious.” Hunt explained to his father that he had been driving along at about 15 miles per hour when he came upon a car sitting in the middle of the road with no lights on. He explained that he had swerved into a lamp post in order to avoid hitting the car.
Wallis didn’t believe a word of it despite the vast number of friends Hunt had brought along as witnesses and whom he had undoubtedly persuaded to lie for him. The only truth in the entire account was that he had certainly hit a lamp post.
Later, Hunt admitted that he was not a responsible driver on the road: “In those days, I never drove anything except flat out. I had a good feel for the road, but I was very raw and driving with no margin for error. It was incredible luck that I wasn’t killed.”
With that history in mind, he thought about his future very hard that week and was naturally nervous about breaking the news to his parents that he was going to be a racing driver.
Throwing caution to the wind, James decided he would pitch the idea to his father as a deal. He figured it was going to cost some UK£5,000 in fees to put him through medical school, for which his father had agreed to pay.
On his 18th birthday, he sat down for a cup of tea with his parents – as was typical when he had something important to tell them or, as was more usually the case, when he wanted something.
His mother set great store by the family having tea together in the beautiful sitting room she had created in Belmont. As he sat down, James announced: “All your anxieties about my fecklessness are over. I am going to be a racing driver. And I shall be world champion.”
If Wallis spluttered into his tea, he could have been forgiven. His mother, not being familiar with motor racing, was not sure what he was talking about. Donaldson wrote of the occasion: “His parents thought their boy was mad. Perhaps a surfeit of confusing teenage male hormones had short-circuited his reason and caused him to take leave of his senses.”
His parents were taken completely by surprise. The only sign that he was ever interested in motor racing had been his childhood obsession with the Scalextric set they had bought him when he was eight.
When Sue Hunt realised what he was saying, she became very cross. She remembers telling him, in so many words, that “instead of dedicating his life to saving others, he would be risking his own in an endeavour which was totally useless and unproductive for society.”
There is no question that her analysis of motor racing was entirely correct; indeed, it was an endeavour “totally useless and unproductive for society.”
Whereas now it employs tens of thousands of people all over the world and has an annual turnover in excess of US$5 billion globally, back then it was a totally unproductive occupation.
Despite an overwhelmingly negative reaction from his parents, Hunt pitched his father with a financial proposal. Years later, he recalled the moment: “I needed money fast and I offered my old man a deal. It would have cost him about five grand to put me through medical school, but, as I wasn’t going, I told him I’d settle for UK£2,500 cash now to get my racing car.”
Wallis Hunt thought his son’s proposal “preposterous” and told him so. His mother was flabbergasted. Hunt says his father used words to the effect of: “Get stuffed.”
Hunt left the family sitting room totally demoralised. He had genuinely expected his father to see the merit of the idea and had not foreseen such a negative reaction to his new career choice. Afterwards, he approached his maternal grandmother for the UK£2,500 he needed, and she sent him packing as well.
Apart from the absurdity of it, the Hunt family simply could not afford to fund his racing career. The medical school fees would have been spread out over at least five years, and, as Wallis Hunt told Donaldson: “At the time I was earning a reasonable income, but we had no surplus to throw around. We weren’t poor, but we certainly weren’t rich. We were just managing to cover everyone’s education and take minimal holidays and that sort of thing. And, taking the view that fair is fair, we had six children to help get started in life and we simply couldn’t afford to throw it all at one of them.” While his grandmother could have afforded it, she chose not to.
Afterwards, Wallis could see how downcast his eldest son was after they had dismissed his plan. Feeling guilty about it, Wallis decided to speak to some friends who knew about motor racing. He wanted to see if there was any merit in the idea, and they suggested that he speak to Stirling Moss, a friend, on the phone. Moss suggested that the first step would be for James to take some race driving lessons at Brands Hatch to see if he was any good at it.
So Wallis told his son that he would pay for a course of lessons at the famous Jim Russell School at Brands Hatch.
Wallis was surprised when his son failed to show any enthusiasm over the proposal. The course was not cheap, at UK£165, and he had expected more gratitude. The truth was that Hunt felt it was beneath him; he had already decided he wanted to race and that he was good enough to race, and he didn’t want to go to race school in the company of some novice no-hopers.
Eventually concluding that it was better than nothing, Hunt went to Brands Hatch and took the course. It emerged later that Wallis had paid for the course on the hope that James would realise he was no good and drop the idea. And, indeed, that almost came to pass.
Inexplicably, Hunt did not do well on the course and failed to distinguish himself. The lack of any form of competition completely floored him, and he was not motivated or enthused by it. Afterwards, he said the UK£165 had been wasted and he would rather have had the money to help him buy a car.
But he had found out enough about himself on the course to know he had what it took, so when he got back home the first thing he did was to write to Bart’s hospital and withdraw from medical school. When he told his parents, they were devastated. They effectively told him he was now on his own as far as his motor racing ambitions were concerned. Wallis and Sue told him they would provide shelter and food, but the rest was up to him.
It was probably the low point of his relationship with his parents, and Hunt effectively abandoned his education. He famously said: “I could speak the Queen’s English and I knew how to hold a knife and fork properly, that was all I needed.”
The line had been drawn in the sand, and Hunt knew he had to get on and pursue his dream himself. He felt his only option was to pay for his motor racing obsession himself. And that meant getting a job and earning serious money.
James’ first job was for a local printing company, which employed him as a messenger driving a minivan. He was quickly fired when he was seen doing handbrake turns in the vehicle. His next job was selling ice cream from a van on Epsom Downs for another local firm. But he gave ice cream cones to children who didn’t have any money and, on another occasion, loaded up the van and drove off to Epsom without turning on the refrigeration unit. The whole day’s stock was ruined and, when he returned to the depot, he was sacked.
He then got a job at his local J. Sainsbury supermarket stacking shelves in the evenings, but it lasted a week and he was sacked when he told his supervisor that he didn’t think there was enough money in his first pay packet. He briefly apprenticed at a local garage as a trainee mechanic, but quickly left there as well. Four jobs in 12 weeks was not an auspicious start to working life, as he admitted: “I hated every minute of it.”
Hunt was also finding out about himself. He decided he was not a public school type. He may have been to public school, but he did not feel part of it. As one of his friends famously described him: “He came from suburbia like the rest of us and he always preferred to be with his suburban mates.”
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His friends would prove to be very important to him over the years that followed. He struck up friendships with several key people, which endured for the whole of his life. His three closest friends were John Richardson, Chris Jones and Malcolm Wood. All three grew up locally, near the Hunt family home in Belmont. When he left Wellington, those friendships strengthened. When he entered Formula One in 1973, he trusted them because they had known him before he became famous. Richardson said: “He was a terribly hard person to get really close to, and I don’t think many ever did.” But after he left Wellington, those carefree days with his three friends became the stuff of his happiest memories.
Whilst he was raising the money to buy his own car, he attended as many race meetings as he could and became one of Simon Ridge’s hangers-on. The experience was to prove invaluable when, one day, he finally cast his eye on what was to become his Mini in the classified pages of Motoring News. At last, he had found one he could afford.
CHAPTER 6
Mini Racer 1965 to 1967
The unreal becomes real
At the age of 18, James Hunt took his first serious step into motor racing. It was an important transition from merely thinking about it to actually doing it. But he had little idea how to go about it; particularly with no money available to fund such an adventure.
His only clue was that a brother of a friend, someone called Simon Ridge, had bought a Mini and converted it for racing quite successfully. He decided that if his friend’s brother could do it, so could he. As he said: “Here was my mate’s brother, who was about twenty with very little money but had worked as a garage mechanic and built himself a racing Mini.”
Hunt had already separately surmised that the easiest point of entry into motor racing would be amateur saloon car racing, which was not as organised at the time as it was later to become. His only other real choice was to make his start in go-karting. But, at 18, he was already too old for that. He had caught the motor racing bug relatively late and had some catching up to do.
