Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  For the record, at the end of the 1970 season, Hunt was placed sixth in the Shell Super Oil British Formula 3 Championship with 24 points. It was a creditable performance but he was beaten by a host of people who would go on to be far less successful. Tony Trimmer was F3 champion, scoring 44 points, with Dave Walker second with 41. In the Lombard championship, which ran alongside the Shell series, Hunt was tenth with ten points. He was even beaten by his old foe Dave Morgan, who managed twelve points. Dave Walker was champion with 48 points and Trimmer second on 43. In the Forward Trust series, he was a lowly 15th, scoring only four points. Carlos Pace focused on this series and romped away with it on 41 points, with Dave Walker second on 37. In truth, Hunt’s record did not look very good on paper.

  But he thought he had done well enough to get a Formula One offer or, at the very least, the offer of an assisted Formula Two seat. As he said: “I had plodded round, living in a tent and collecting start money. It was always a struggle and it meant that I didn’t really have the best equipment or enough spares. But it was good for me because it taught me a lot of things about driving, and it certainly taught me to keep out of trouble.”

  But no offers were forthcoming. And there were plenty of F1 seats available. Apart from the normal retirements, three additional drives had become available through the deaths that year of Bruce McLaren, Piers Courage and Jochen Rindt. It had been a terrible year of carnage in Formula One, but, despite that, there was still no team principal willing to give Hunt a chance for the 1971 season.

  The biggest disappointment was that Colin Chapman had passed on him. Chapman had authorised the gift of the Lotus 59 chassis purely to give him a front row seat to look at Hunt’s progress. It had been no altruistic act, and so Hunt’s biggest opportunity had passed him by. Chapman’s rejection hurt him hard, and for the first time he wondered whether he had what it took to go all the way. There was no Grovewood morale booster that year. He was no longer the coming man.

  The truth was that while Hunt had won four Formula 3 races in 1970, he had suffered from too many mechanical retirements. Moreover, after the fiasco at Crystal Palace, he was stuck with the nickname ‘Hunt the Shunt’. Although it undoubtedly gave him the publicity he might not otherwise have had, he acidly observed to friends that the moniker was a “double-edged sword of the sharpest kind.”

  With no alternative offers, he reluctantly concluded that another year in Formula 3 was necessary, if not a necessity. But he resolved that it definitely would be his last. As he said later: “I hoped that by staying in Formula 3, I would be able to get good sponsorship, really get into the racing and clean up, then jump straight into Formula One.”

  But it was taking too long and everyone seemed to know he had had no offers. Effectively, in that close season, he had three choices: stay as he was in F3; move sideways into Formula 5000, sports car racing or even saloon car racing; or move up to F1.

  The latter option didn’t exist for him. The option of moving sideways would effectively have been a concession that his dream of Formula One was over. He would have become a driver for hire in classes of racing not considered part of the upward ladder – albeit he would have been well paid to do it. In truth, in those days, a driver rarely graduated to Formula One from sports, saloon or F5000 cars. Moreover, there was then no option to take your career to America and compete in Indy cars or Nascar, as these were the exclusive domains of Americans.

  Hunt’s main asset was that he was now the best driving talent in Formula 3, and on that basis he succeeded in attracting an offer from Max Mosley of March to drive in its works Formula 3 team. It would be a one car team run by mechanics at weekends who worked in the factory on the production line during the week. Mosley remembers: “I received a long hand-written letter from James saying: ‘I will drive, I will win. I will.’”

  Mosley had been very impressed by his drive a year before at Cadwell Park and had seen nothing in 1970 to change his mind. He also liked Hunt on a personal level. Mosley sweetened the deal by telling Hunt he would give him a run-out in a Formula Two race sometime during the year.

  And on the positive side, he had a works drive for which he didn’t have to pay, although once again he would have to fund his own expenses and would not get paid a salary.

  Getting a works drive for 1971 was particularly important because it was the year that Formula 3 technical regulations changed. With all-new 1600 engines, all the previous year’s cars and equipment were rendered effectively redundant. The new chassis was made safer with deformable sections and honeycomb filled fuel tanks, as used in Formula One. The monocoque chassis also arrived in Formula 3, as it had in Formula One five years earlier.

  The engine change was particularly significant. Ever since the birth of Formula Ford, F3 had had a problem in that it used smaller capacity engines than the lower formulae. The change had resolved that anomaly for good. But it inevitably meant a rise in costs and the demise of some lesser funded teams, who relied on being able to use secondhand cars.

  Rose Bearings was brought to the team as a sponsor by Hunt. The money was small however, and the team would not be particularly well-endowed. Hunt was more worried about money than usual, saying: “The change in formula and the increase in costs became heavily inflated, to the point where a driver needed a lot of sponsorship. The income that you could derive from Formula 3 became irrelevant weighed against the costs.” But he had no choice but to proceed the best he could.

  March provided Hunt with a brand new March 713M chassis. The 713M looked far more purposeful than its predecessor, the 703, which, in truth, had been a dog of a car. It was an important year for March in only its second season making F3 customer race cars for sale. The 713M had to succeed or it might not get a second chance.

  Curiously, to hedge its bets, March made a monocoque and a space frame version of the car. The 713M was the monocoque car and the 713 the space frame. It was a curious decision and was never fully explained.

  In 1971, there were once again three principal Formula 3 championships in Britain: the Shell Super Oil, the Lombard North Central and the Forward Trust. But this time, Hunt put the most effort into the big European races.

  Initially, the strategy looked like it was paying off, as Hunt started by winning at Montlhéry in France on 28th March. There, he beat the cream of the French up and coming drivers. Young talented Frenchmen were being produced in droves thanks to sponsorship by the Elf oil company.

  Then, two weeks later, he did the same to the Germans at the Nürburgring, when he won the second big international race of the year. The start to the season could not have been better.

  But after that, his season deteriorated somewhat. At the next four big international events at Barcelona, Pau, Silverstone and Zandvoort, he retired after accidents that could probably have been avoided. To crash out at four big international races in succession was pushing coincidence to the maximum. In Barcelona, he was leading by a staggering 90 seconds when he hit the Armco barrier after a cloudburst. At Pau, in France, he was caught up in someone else’s accident on the first lap. And at Silverstone, he hit another car in the rear.

  But worse was to come. At Zandvoort he suffered the worst accident of his career to date. He had started on the last row of the grid for his heat after blowing up his engine during qualifying. But he easily did well enough to get into the main race. But the March was not handling correctly, as March mechanics had too hastily rebuilt his car after the accident at Silverstone.

  On the 11th lap at Zandvoort’s Tarzan corner, a 180 degree bend, he touched another car trying to get past and his car flipped upside down. When it touched the tarmac, the steel roll bar which protected the driver’s head snapped cleanly off and the car skidded along the tarmac for at least a hundred metres with sparks flying. Hunt went into the catch fencing upside down on the outside of Tarzan corner.

  Luckily for the driver, the car did not catch fire thanks to the new honeycomb filler material in the tanks, which stopped the fuel spillin
g out. With the old cars, it would all have sloshed out, ignited and burned Hunt alive.

  It was still a very serious accident, and the marshals did not expect to find the driver alive when they turned the car back over. But Hunt had saved his own life, as he did time and time again, by pushing his head down into the cockpit between his knees. His only outward injuries were severely grazed knuckles on his hand, where he had been clenching the steering wheel as tightly as he could. The bones were exposed and he needed immediate medical treatment. The hidden injuries were torn back muscles and some damaged vertebrae. His back was also blue from bruising.

  When the marshals got him out, he sat by the side of the track. Drivers in the race were astonished to see him alive after witnessing the severity of the accident. As soon as the circuit ambulance got to him, he was taken straight to the medical centre for treatment. People remember him being totally unconcerned about his injuries; he was simply worried about the ramifications of his retirement and what all the accidents would do to this career.

  Hunt was right to be worried. March was on the point of withdrawing its works team from F3; it could no longer afford to repair his car after all the crashes. As it was, he was faced with a month lay-off to recover from his internal injuries and damaged hands.

  Howden Ganley, who was keeping his eye on Hunt’s career, recalls it as being his lowest moment: “I’d see James occasionally and I knew he had a lot of problems, the Armco kept reaching out and grabbing him.” Well that was one way of putting it, and it made Hunt laugh at a time when there was not much to laugh about. Hunt himself couldn’t believe just how many times the “Armco had reached out to grab him” in 1971, as Ganley had put it.

  Zandvoort proved to be the last straw, and the rumours were revealed to be correct as March was about to close down its works team. The March 713M had been a big success and other drivers, particularly Roger Williamson, were flying March’s flag. March no longer needed Hunt.

  But help was at hand. A young Irishman called Brendan McInerney arrived at the March factory with bags of cash and wanted to buy a March, but he had no team to run it for him. Max Mosley decided to run McInerney as a second works driver and he introduced a third party entrant willing to run the team. So Hunt was saved when the running of the team was contracted out to Chris Marshall, who then ran Sloan Marshall Garages in Surrey.

  Marshall had been running a private March for a no hoper driver, and gaining the works March contract was his chance of a lifetime. If he seized the opportunity and did well, he was all set for the future. If he did badly, he would be back to where he started – as a chancer who dabbled in motor racing.

  Marshall obtained some new sponsorship from Baty Engineering, precision engineers. The team was renamed Team Rose Bearings/Baty Group. Marshall ran the team from the premises of his garage business in Barnes, Surrey. McInerney had brought with him some UK£8,000 in cash to fund it. McInerney also bought the team a new transporter.

  Marshall and Hunt got on well and quickly became firm friends. But Marshall felt rather overawed by Hunt and, as a result, the two men did not have the schoolmaster-pupil relationship a team entrant and his driver usually have. Subsequently, Hunt did not have the discipline which he so clearly needed.

  Although popular, Marshall had the reputation of being a somewhat flaky individual, who sometimes appeared to have difficulty making up his mind about things. Some people questioned his judgment, and Hunt perhaps could have wished for more in a team entrant. But the two men had a good, easy rapport and it was a happy team, if not a particularly effective one.

  The new team started off well after Hunt returned from injury and won first time out at Crystal Palace on the 18th June. But the season deteriorated from then on. Chris Marshall’s standards of preparation were not the best, and the car was far from reliable. There were a series of mechanical failures which frustrated Hunt in what he regarded as his make-or-break season. To be fair to Marshall, his small organisation was unprepared and had had little time to get organised. It was stretched running two cars, and the March factory was too busy to help.

  The poor spell was broken in mid-August at Brands Hatch when the car held together for once and Hunt beat Formula 3’s current star, Roger Williamson. Williamson was an up and coming Brit in an identical car. He was sponsored by wealthy builder Tom Wheatcroft. At the finish line, the gap between the two cars was not measurable, but the stewards judged Hunt was first across the line.

  On 10th September, he led the Crystal Palace race on a damp track, but crashed into another car. At Mallory Park, he had another crash

  At Snetterton on the 3rd October, he had another serious accident when he drove head on into an earth bank after a shock absorber broke and the suspension collapsed. He was injured for the second time in the season with torn ligaments in his shoulder. He also had a broken arm and a broken shoulder. But he didn’t tell anyone about the breaks and was racing again a few weeks later, finishing second at Thruxton on 16th October.

  But then serious disaster struck at Brands Hatch on 24th October, far worse than any accident Hunt had suffered. This time, the injury was not physical but to his reputation.

  Hunt and Marshall, frustrated at how the season was going, unbeknownst to anyone else, had begun to seek an unfair advantage. It was a serious lack of judgment from Marshall and a mark of Hunt’s desperation, as he knew he had not performed well enough during the season and thought his career might end in 1971.

  With the bigger-engined formula cars, speeds were restricted by an air intake, which closely regulated how much air could be sucked into the engine when the throttle was pushed down. The air intakes on every engine were identical and rigorously monitored by the race scrutineers. In mid-September, Hunt and Marshall’s team members got their heads together and decided to drill a tiny hole in the manifold to increase the amount of air the engine sucked. They figured they could complete the last few races and that the manifold was unlikely to be checked. Or so they figured.

  Somehow, what they were doing leaked out, and Marshall’s team was shopped to the stewards. After the Formula 3 race at Brands Hatch on 24th October, scrutineers swarmed all over Hunt’s engine and took it apart, examining every part of the manifold and air intake minutely. Inevitably, they found the small hole. The car was immediately disqualified.

  The governing body of British motorsport, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) could easily have banned the team for the rest of the season and thrown Hunt and Marshall’s team out of the sport. But it didn’t. Immediately after it happened, Hunt became very emotional and started crying like a baby in the Brands paddock in full view of fans and other teams. It was most unedifying, as he shouted out: “I’m finished, that’s me finished!” Hunt fully expected himself and the team to be banned for the rest of the season, and he knew his career wouldn’t survive it. If that didn’t happen, he believed March would withdraw its backing and take back its cars. He was also scared of being branded a cheat for the rest of his life. At that moment, Hunt thought he was staring catastrophe in the face. But he was overreacting. In truth, everyone in motor racing had cheated at some point in their careers, but they had simply been careful enough not to get caught. Some even cheated on a regular basis as a way of life. Chris Marshall had just been stupid and virtually got caught first time out.

  Tom Wheatcroft, Roger Williamson’s team entrant was horrified when he saw Hunt on the ground crying. Wheatcroft, a no-nonsense individual, dragged Hunt to his feet and marched him off to the back of the pit garages, his hand firmly on the scruff of his overalls, so they could talk privately.

  When he got to the privacy of the pits, Wheatcroft pushed Hunt to the ground in disgust and told him to wipe his eyes and not get so emotional. Wheatcroft gave him a dressing down and said, in his own inimitable down-to-earth style: “Look, lad, don’t let the public see you like that. You must try not to let your feelings show.”

  At the time, John Webb was unaware of the paddock outburst, but he was not surpri
sed to learn of it, saying later: “He really caused us nothing but embarrassment. His general behaviour, outside of being a very good racing driver, was quite embarrassing.”

  Hunt had done himself no favours, and, when he returned to his parents house that night, he was full of regrets and wished he could turn back the clock. He had been complicit with Marshall when the manifold had been drilled and could not blame his team manager.

  But Tom Wheatcroft, a natural fixer who had done plenty of his own share of bribing and cheating in the building trade to get vital planning permissions over the years, had a word in the right ears. March was squared away by Wheatcroft, who knew the RAC would not act.

  Wheatcroft liked Hunt and had helped him out in the past when he had been down on his luck. And when it had looked as though the works March team would be closed after Zandvoort, he had been ready to buy Hunt a car to be Roger Williamson’s teammate.

  But Wheatcroft was right: the RAC had no wish to wash the dirty linen of motor sport in public. It was aware that other teams had been doing the same thing. The RAC simply chose to make an example of Hunt and Marshall by disqualifying them, and left it at that.

  Hunt never knew what Wheatcroft had done for him, and the builder was not a man to blow his own trumpet. Later, Wheatcroft would lend Hunt an engine and commend him to Lord Hesketh when he was having his doubts.

  Hunt never knew this, and, when he got into Formula One, he actually came to resent Wheatcroft, perhaps because he had witnessed him at his weakest and most emotional.

  Wheatcroft was sad and disappointed, but not surprised. He had witnessed all sorts of human frailties during his life on the building sites. As he recounts in his autobiography, Thunder in the Park, written shortly before his death in 2006: “Once [Hunt] had made a name for himself, his attitude towards me changed completely, and it was as if our friendship had never existed. I would see him in the paddock and he would look straight through me. I didn’t have a lot to do with him from then on.” He adds: “He was not always the easiest man to get along with, and, as soon as he made a name for himself, it seemed he didn’t want to know me anymore.”