by Tom Rubython
CSS called in every favour and gathered together enough cameras and crew to make an excellent film of the race, which was shown the following Saturday on ITV’s ‘World of Sport’ programme, presented by Dickie Davis. Because of all the publicity of the Hunt-Lauda fight and the start line accident, it drew a huge audience, far bigger than the BBC would have attracted live. It turned into a huge success for everybody, and Bromley had no problem with the Durex logos.
It was also not lost on Marriott that, because of the delayed start after the accident, the BBC would have not been able to carry the race live anyway as it would have run over its slot on Sunday. The huge success of the ITV broadcast also woke up the BBC to the potential of Formula One and all that it would entail a year later.
The Lauda-Hunt battle had caught the public’s interest, and Hunt really was the man of the moment. The British public identified with him more than they had with any previous British driver. Hunt was loveable because he was different; different because he wore t-shirts and jeans, walked barefoot, smoked cigarettes and drank beer. His television appearance playing the trumpet had also had an enormous impact.
Both Hunt and Lauda were very anxious. Although Lauda 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 waiting to happen. He could lose the championship because of his own team, despite any opposition from Hunt.
Brands Hatch was not Hunt’s favourite type of track, although he had enjoyed much success there. It also wasn’t suited to the McLaren he was driving, as both car and driver preferred faster tracks. It was no surprise, then, when Lauda took pole and Hunt came in second, six hundredths of a second slower on the 2.6-mile track.
But Lauda’s pole was not such an advantage at Brands because, as many people pointed out, it was on the wrong side of the front row. The second spot was in fact a better grid slot. 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 towards the verge on the slope of the road if the wheels spun at the start. 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. Many 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 each other.
As race day dawned, the roads were jammed with a capacity crowd trying to get in. Earlier that morning, a helicopter had hit the main power cable supplying electricity to the circuit. Either by luck or good judgment, Brands Hatch’s managing director, John Webb, for the first time had hired a giant standby generator for the race. When the power went out, it immediately cut in and no one noticed.
Come the start of the race, anticipation reached fever-pitch as fans eagerly awaited the battle between Hunt and Lauda. Brands Hatch has always had an atmosphere like no other circuit in the world, but that day it was unparalleled by anything seen in Britain before or since.
Hunt made his usual poor start, but Regazzoni made a storming start from the second row and ran straight into Lauda’s flanks. 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 quite 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, and he calculated the damage it would do to Ferrari’s morale. 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 realise that I could have been on my head.” That Paddock Bend accident was one of the most spectacular in Formula One history, with much of the crowd right on top of the action and the majority able to see it from the grandstands. Hunt later described Regazzoni’s driving as “a serious bout of brain fade.”
Hunt’s McLaren had been launched into the air but it had impacted the ground squarely the right way up on its wheels. The impact with the ground, however, had damaged the car. He said: “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.”
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.
But Hunt was heartbroken. He had driven just 140 metres of a Grand Prix he had hoped to win. However, despite the emotions, he maintained his cool and kept the engine running. He put it into gear and let out the clutch. The car moved, but the steering and the front suspension were both seriously damaged. 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?”
His humour hid the fact that he was in some pain as his right thumb had been hit by the spinning steering wheel whilst the car was airborne, but this was going to turn out to be the least of his problems.
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 had 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. The rules were unclear about what was to happen when a lap 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.
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. Caldwell and Mayer knew exactly what they had to do: to delay 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 15 minutes, Caldwell was running back and forth from the pits to the tower, reporting to Mayer on the situation with the repairs. 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 rule book was confusing, so chaos reigned.”
The rule book 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.’
The grounds for not allowing him to restart were complex, but the essence was that Hunt had not completed a lap at the time of the accident. Furthermore, he had entered the pits from the wrong direction.
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 is not competing if he hasn’t even completed a lap. They also firmly stated that Hunt should not have entered 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 metres 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 he had been the leader when the race was red-flagged.
It also became very clear that Dean Delamont, the clerk of the course, had been premature in stopping the race. Apparently, he had taken advice from his senior safety official who had been worried that cars would complete the first lap and be confronted with a blocked track full of debris. Delamont took the decision to stop the race and erred on the side of caution, but the crashed cars and debris had been cleared away by the very efficient British marshals almost immediately. With the track cleared, the race need not have been stopped at all; that it had been, was Hunt’s good fortune.
As the arguments raged about what to do next, Daniele Audetto alleged that Delamont had deliberately ordered the race to be stopped in order to give Hunt a chance of restarting. On the surface, his argument was sound and made sense, but the obvious and transparent honesty of Delamont and the British officials was clear to everyone present.
All the teams were protecting their interests. 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 if 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 race, it had been decided, would include neither Hunt, Regazzoni, nor Laffite.
The Brands Hatch crowd had been watching and listening in silence. They appeared ready to accept the decision stoically. But there was a troublemaker in their midst. Andrew Frankl, the Hungarian born publisher of Car Magazine, was acting as a photographer that day and was wearing a valuable circuit-issued roam-anywhere photographer’s lanyard. Frankl had a history, and as a young man had been a leading participant in the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Russians. Consequently, he knew what to do to agitate and stir up a crowd.
Frankl was on the inside of the circuit, near the pit lane. Upon hearing the announcement, he became incensed and leaned over the fence into the public area and shouted to the people to gather round. Guided by the Hungarian’s natural authoritativeness, the public did as they were told. Frankl told them they needed to do something quickly in order to put pressure on the organisers to allow Hunt to start. He suggested to his crowd of attentive supporters, now at least 30-strong, that they start chanting. They decided on: “We want James.”
Hearing the chant, the remaining 80,000 fans soon joined in and the words reverberated around the Brand Hatch amphitheatre. The roar of the crowd chanting in unison was extraordinary. Delamont couldn’t believe it; he couldn’t even hear himself talking in the control tower. After ten minutes, Frankl, who was now standing on some wooden boxes directing the proceedings like an orchestra conductor, told his people to start a slow handclap. Gradually, the crowd caught on and started clapping perfectly in time. No one had ever heard 80,000 people slow handclapping in the open air before in Britain, and it had an extraordinary effect on the mood in the control tower.
British motor racing had never seen anything like it. But it did not remain entirely good-natured. The fans soon turned nasty and began throwing bottles and cans onto the track. It was getting very ugly and the crowd in the main grandstands opposite the pit looked likely to storm the barriers in their quest to block the track and prevent a restart without Hunt. As missiles of every description rained down on the track stewards, Delamont seemed genuinely scared by what might happen next – especially if Hunt was excluded from the restart.
Hunt had been resigned to his fate, but the fans’ reaction stirred the caveman instinct in him. The crowd’s constant baying made Hunt determined to start the race. In the absence of Mayer and Caldwell, busy with their delaying tactics in the tower, he took charge. He ordered his mechanics to leave the spare car on the grid and to not move it off, despite the steward’s 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.
This was the Vallelunga incident all over again, and Hunt became determined to start the British Grand Prix – come what may. He knew he had the support of 80,000 people just a few metres away.
There is no question that the stewards on the grid that day had their own agenda, and were deaf to many of Delamont’s instructions coming from the control tower. They 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 co-conspirators in the delay.
Regazzoni was sitting in his car on the grid behind Hunt, and Audetto was adamant that if Hunt started in his spare car, so too would Regazzoni. Caldwell remembers that they disputed it to keep the argument going, but it was obvious they would be disqualified later. But McLaren weren’t interested in running for the sake of it, as Hunt said: “We had realised that the spare car was out of the question. In the meantime, McLaren were naturally trying to keep the argument going because they were hastily getting my car repaired in the pits.”
Hunt and Mayer were very conscious 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 legal.
Meanwhile, John Webb was watching with wry amusement. Hunt had been the bane of his life since he was a Formula 3 driver; always causing him trouble. Now he was the biggest star in Formula One and nothing had changed. Webb was responsible for the crowd’s safety and, as the mood grew uglier and there were fears of a riot, he was the first to recognise that Hunt would have to be allowed to race – if only for purely practical reasons. He told the stewards so. He was the most capable man on the scene and his view would eventually prevail. He said: “There was indeed nearly a riot.” Webb was called by the police for a meeting to warn him of impending trouble.
Webb blamed Anthony Marsh and the other circuit commentators for stoking up the crowd. He said: “He got them in a rebellious state and the police were quite anxious at that time. We couldn’t do anything about it. We were the circuit owners but the meeting was being run by the RAC.
“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. If it had been any other two drivers, nobody would have bothered too much.” But the modest Webb eventually told Delamont what he would have to do to save the day.
Hunt remembered Webb’s intervention well, saying: “The organisers rather th
an 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, Delamont and his officials continually consulted the FIA rulebook while being watched by 30 or so people, all with a different opinion about what should happen. Delamont couldn’t make any sense of what they rules actually meant. The starting grid was also thronging with people with different opinions, and, in the intense heat, arguments broke out between the teams. The arguments continued as the clock ticked on and Hunt’s race car repairs neared completion. The other team managers gradually became aware of Hunt’s and Caldwell’s tactics of blatantly playing for time. But, by now, the team managers were on Mayer’s side, as the crowd turned uglier and uglier. 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.”
It was close to an hour since the accident had occurred when Hunt’s race car was finally pushed back on to the grid and the spare wheeled away. A new steering arm and front suspension had been fitted to his car. As Hunt admitted: “They’d put a whole new corner on it.”
Caldwell returned to the control tower and now started arguing against spare cars being allowed as Audetto stared at him in disbelief, especially when a surprised Mayer chimed in as well. Audetto was screaming about Regazzoni and, although it was clearly against the rules, the stewards ruled to let both Regazzoni and Laffite restart in their spares. The stewards reasoned that the irregularities would be sorted out later.
