Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  Hunt was now the biggest celebrity in Britain and one of the most famous sportsmen in the world. His marriage, divorce and succession of girlfriends, combined with his extraordinary success on the track, had made him a national hero. It was enhanced even more by the fact that he had taken on and beaten the ‘German’ enemy, Lauda – even though Lauda was Austrian. Although the war had ended 31 years earlier, it was still very fresh in the minds of the many 50-plus-year-olds who had fought in it. They were rooting for Hunt with the same enthusiasm as if the war was being fought all over again.

  Without question, Hunt was at the of his powers and more popular than any Formula One driver in history. The situation had even forced his employers to come out and issue a statement saying as much; Hunt was tickled pink by the accolades as Alastair Caldwell said: “I think Britain now has another Jimmy Clark situation with James Hunt. He is a super driver.” Hunt was mightily flattered by the comparison with Clark. But that didn’t stop him remonstrating with Caldwell for having referred to his hero as ‘Jimmy.’ ‘Jim’, Hunt told him, was the proper moniker. Teddy Mayer was even more effusive towards Hunt. He had never been known to praise a driver before, not even Fittipaldi, but now Mayer went so far as to say that Hunt was the best driver the team had ever employed: “Of all the drivers we’ve had, James has the greatest talent by far, in fact. He possibly makes more mistakes than, say, Emerson Fittipaldi, but he is certainly quicker than Emerson ever was when he drove for us. I think James is as consistently fast a driver as anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  Mayer wasn’t finished and went on to compare Hunt with yet another of his heroes: “I would begin to compare his talent with Jackie Stewart’s in his ability to win races driving a car that, in my opinion, is about the same as many others. Drivers like Jimmy Clark generally won races because they had superior cars. I think James’ car is good, but I don’t think it’s any better than several other cars. Possibly it’s more reliable, but it’s quick because James is quick.”

  The praise was justified, as Hunt had won the last three Grand Prix races on the trot – four, if the reinstated Spanish win was counted. He was now a firm second in the world championship with 44 points; within 14 points of Lauda’s score of 58. A championship bid that had looked impossible just four weeks ago now looked highly plausible.

  What’s more, he was about to race on Lauda’s home territory and in his rival’s absence. Lauda had been knocked out of the championship and no one, at that stage, thought he would return before the end of the season. So, at that moment, with five races to run, Hunt look certain to be world champion in 1976.

  The joy was compounded because it was now clear that Lauda had survived his accident and would not die.

  There had also been some doubt about the seriousness of his internal injuries when it emerged that Lauda had called in a Catholic priest to administer him the last rites. The suspicions of insiders were raised because Lauda was a confirmed atheist and, apparently, apart from when forced by his wife Marlene (for christenings, wedding and funerals), had never been known to step inside a church in his life.

  It had been suggested by those who knew him that he was perhaps playing mind games with Hunt. Wanting Hunt to believe he would not be returning, he might have been trying to convince people he was more seriously injured than he really was. Certainly, while his outwards burns were horrific and disfiguring, they were not life threatening. And when, two weeks after the accident, it leaked out that Lauda was sitting up in his hospital bed, signing autographs for the nurses and watching the Austrian Grand Prix on television, it didn’t square with the administration of last rites by a priest just a few days earlier.

  Ferrari had withdrawn its cars from the Austrian event, ostensibly as a mark of respect for Lauda. The decision had been made by Enzo Ferrari who, at 78-years-old, had made his comeback absolute. There was now no doubt that he was back in charge and calling the shots after the departure of Luca di Montezemolo.

  Enzo announced he felt cheated by what had happened at the Appeal Court in Paris and at Brands Hatch in the British Grand Prix. Enzo threatened to boycott Formula One until such a time when “the rules were enforced and justice prevailed.”

  Bizarrely, Enzo also blamed Lauda personally for casing the crash at the Nürburgring, thereby absolving his own engineers of any blame for the mechanical failure that was known to have caused the accident. James Hunt, speaking to reporters, called Enzo Ferrari: “an old man behaving like a child.”

  Daniele Audetto, on Enzo’s instructions, even suggested that the Grand Prix at the Österreichring should be cancelled out of respect for Lauda. It would have suited Ferrari perfectly had that happened. But the campaign to cancel the race incensed the organisers, and the compassionate plea was greeted with cynicism by those accustomed to Enzo Ferrari’s reputation for manipulating situations to his team’s advantage.

  Lauda, in his hospital bed, was also upset by attempts to cancel his home race. He told reporters what he wanted more than anything at that moment was “a feeling of continuity and trust.” Troubled by what Audetto had said, he was also dismayed that the Ferraris had been withdrawn, as he knew this would aid Hunt significantly.

  Huntmania may have been raging in Britain that summer, but it was not at all apparent in Austria as Lauda lay in hospital. In fact, what was immediately noticeable was that Lauda’s absence greatly reduced the number of spectators at the race. The promoters were enraged when Enzo Ferrari withdrew the entire Ferrari team; they had been expecting a replacement driver at the very least. As it was, the loss of Clay Regazzoni decimated the Swiss contingent, who usually travelled to see him race. The organisers also lost the enthusiastic Italians, who poured over the borders between Austria and Italy to support the Ferrari team.

  Despite the heat elsewhere in Europe, it rained for both qualifying days and, because the land was so dry, the water rolled off the hills and gathered in pools behind the circuit. But none of it affected James Hunt, who turned in a time that gave him his easiest pole position yet. The fast circuit suited him and his car perfectly. He would later set a new lap record at an average speed of 137.83 miles per hour.

  With Lauda gone, Hunt looked around and found an unfamiliar bearded face alongside him on the front row. Ulsterman John Watson had put his Penske-Ford car on the front row of the grid. It was Watson’s best moment in a stop-start career that had seen him drive for five different teams in three years with no noticeable success – apart from having an obvious talent for driving a car fast. In 30 races in the previous three years, he had scored points only twice; the highlight being a fourth place in Austria, in 1974, driving a Brabham.

  But he had come good in 1976, signing on as number one driver for the Penske team. Since then, he had visited the podium twice already. Penske was a well-funded team run by American auto industry entrepreneur Roger Penske and managed by Heinz Hofer, a very precise German. It was a poignant race for the team as, a year earlier, Penske’s partner and number one driver Mark Donohue had crashed on the morning of the race. The victim of a tyre failure, he was critically injured and died later that day in hospital.

  Watson had taken Donohue’s place in the team and it had been his big break. Although he was on the front row, however, he must have been dispirited when he came in a whole second slower than Hunt. Hunt attempted to excuse the Ulsterman for being so much slower, saying: “I knew that Watson was quite capable of going as fast, it was just that I’d got organised, had a new set of tyres fitted and gone quick before he had a chance to build up speed.”

  Rain threatened again on race day, slightly delaying the race start. But as the dark skies turned blue, the cars lined up on the grid. Frightened of running cars in the rain, the organisers informed the drivers that the race would be stopped if it rained suddenly. The high speed circuit, when wet, was too dangerous for cars on slick tyres, designed for dry running.

  From the start line, Hunt got away first for a change and led Watson. It was the briefest of leads as Wats
on quickly passed him and the cars swept down the long straight from the top of the hill.

  For two laps, Watson, Hunt, Ronnie Peterson (now driving a March-Ford), and Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell all diced for the lead. It was the closest racing Formula One had seen for years. Scheckter took the lead for one lap until a pattern formed with Watson, Peterson and Swedish driver Gunnar Nilsson’s Lotus-Ford ahead of Scheckter and Hunt.

  It soon became apparent that there was a problem with Hunt’s McLaren. It was understeering on full tanks. Hunt recalled: “I was having a real struggle to stay on the road.” Then Scheckter had an enormous accident at the top of the hill on the 14th lap, as the front suspension broke on his car. The Tyrrell-Ford comprehensively destroyed itself, luckily without injury to the driver. Hunt put his head down and proceeded to wring the maximum performance out of his badly-handling car. He set his fastest lap of the race, indicating just how hard he had tried.

  The understeering problem turned out to be due to a damaged front wing, and Hunt could do nothing to stop John Watson winning his first Grand Prix. Hunt was fourth behind Laffite and Nilsson.

  The real drama followed the podium ceremony as Watson, complying with the terms of a bet, shaved off his perennial beard in public to reveal a clean shaven look, which he was to keep from then on.

  Hunt was less than delighted with his fourth place, although Niki Lauda, sitting up in his hospital bed, reportedly whooped and hollered as the chequered flag fell. The score, he quickly worked out, was: Lauda 58, Hunt 47. Later that week, Lauda spoke to winner John Watson on the telephone from his hospital bed and thanked him personally for beating Hunt. He told him: “Anything to stop Hunt getting points.”

  Hunt went back to Marbella in the gap between races and started his birthday celebrations before flying to Amsterdam to travel to Zandvoort. His 29th birthday fell on the 29th August, which was the Sunday of the Dutch Grand Prix. His family, including his brother Peter, traditionally travelled out to Zandvoort, which was an easy car journey from Britain.

  Soon, Hunt was locked in conversations with his brother and John Hogan over his commercial future. He desperately tried to persuade his brother to come and work on his affairs full time and to give up his accountancy career. Although his brother would not do that, he did say he would form a department at his firm to look after Hunt’s financial affairs. They jointly decided to appoint Andrew Marriott and Barrie Gill of the CSS agency to handle his sponsorships. Those deals were now worth more than US$200,000 a year and his biggest source of income. CSS had been doing that unofficially anyway for the past two years, but Hunt had to pay two commissions on the deals, both to CSS and IMG. That had been bothering Hunt, especially as IMG had brought him no deals.

  John Hogan recalls: “The brothers eventually decided on a compromise whereby Peter stayed with his firm in London and handled James’ affairs from there.” Peter Hunt immediately took over responsibility for his brother’s accounts, paperwork, his diary and handling his fan mail.

  When he had thrashed out his deal with his brother, Peter Hunt arranged to meet with representatives of Mark McCormack to work out an arrangement to operate jointly until its contract expired at the end of the year.

  It was terminated on an amicable basis. Hogan says: “For James, it meant that he was able to be freed from the high-pressure American business approach and to operate more easily with his brother.”

  Gill and Marriott gradually assumed control of that side. Despite the potential conflict of CCS already having the John Player cigarette account in Formula One, Gill and Marriott had worked for Philip Morris in the very earliest days of Formula One sponsorship and could be trusted to avoid prospective biases.

  Hunt was also very content to be working with Peter. He said: “I’m fortunate to be able to work with Pete, who is a chartered accountant and now runs a little department within his firm which looks after people like me and one or two other drivers and sportsmen. He does everything as far as my management is concerned. Pete deals with it entirely and only the important things are discussed with me for decisions. He administrates the whole deal and wet-nurses me as well. When I want more socks, I phone up from wherever I happen to be in the world and they send someone out to Marks and Spencer’s to buy me more socks. So that side of it is great. It means I can concentrate entirely on getting on with my job, and when I’m not working, I can relax entirely. I don’t have to keep rushing into an office and checking on who has paid and who hasn’t, and keep track of my mail. It’s all done for me.”

  A year earlier at Zandvoort, Hunt had won his first Grand Prix driving the Hesketh, a masterful performance during which he was chased hard by Lauda, who was then on his way to winning the world title with the Ferrari. That race marked Hunt’s coming of age as a driver. Then, winning had been a fresh concept to him in Formula One, and he slowly became confident about leading and winning a Grand Prix under pressure. Now, a year later, the situation was different: Hunt was expected to win.

  Niki Lauda was making a remarkable recovery and called Hunt on the telephone from his hospital bed to wish him a happy birthday. The two men chatted for a long time.

  Observers were surprised about the phone call and felt Lauda was playing mind games with Hunt. Hunt claimed later that he felt a growing emotional bond with the Austrian as he fought back from his accident. It was a feeling he had not experienced before. But that didn’t stop him enjoying and taking advantage of Lauda’s absence.

  With Lauda absent, Hunt was finding a new rival at every race. In Holland, it was a resurgent Ronnie Peterson who was finally finding his form in the works March-Ford car. Many observers still regarded Peterson as the fastest man in Grand Prix racing, and had done so since Jackie Stewart retired at the end of 1973.

  Peterson had left Lotus at the beginning of the year after only one race. When team manager Peter Warr had refused to pay the money due on his contract, Peterson had simply walked out. He was as disgusted with Warr as Hunt had been with him when he invited him to lunch and then left him hungry.

  After listening to Peterson describe his situation with Lotus, Hunt was thankful that his lunch date with Warr had been such a disaster. The last place he would have wanted to be in 1976 was driving for a down-on-its-luck Lotus team and, even worse, being told what to do by Warr.

  So when Hunt looked around on the front row of the grid in Holland, he saw Peterson’s familiar blue and yellow helmet and felt somewhat reassured; it was a feeling he never had with Lauda. But this time, it was different. Peterson was on pole and Hunt second fastest; the March-Ford was eight hundredths of a second faster than Hunt’s McLaren-Ford. But what vexed Alastair Caldwell wasn’t so much that Peterson was faster, but that Hunt had endured handling problems in qualifying with a severe lack of traction and understeer due to a tyre problem.

  After qualifying on Saturday afternoon, there was a bizarre scene in the pit lane when Hunt’s close friend Jody Scheckter rowed fiercely with his team principal, Ken Tyrrell, over US$500. John Hogan had arranged for Marlboro to sponsor a pit stop competition whereby two cars would come into a simulated pit area, change all four wheels, and then go around the circuit. The winner got US$500 provided they lapped within ten per cent of the fastest qualifying time. The Tyrrell mechanics got Scheckter away in the lead, but because of a crowded pit lane he could not complete his lap within the ten per cent time limit and forfeited the US$500 even though he had won. He said to journalists that he was not prepared to plough into people merely to win US$500.

  But Ken Tyrrell flew into a rage when Scheckter balked at completing the lap in time. There was an ugly scene in the pits as the two men yelled at each other. The incident was witnessed by Hunt, who took Scheckter’s side in the argument and was horrified by Tyrrell’s attitude. From that moment on, Hunt took against Tyrrell in an animosity that would last the rest of his life.

  On race morning, Tyrrell and Scheckter refused to talk to each other, and the South African driver told reporters that he would be l
eaving the team at the end of the year.

  In the race, Hunt botched his start as usual, spinning his wheels and letting Peterson pull away in front. To add to the ignominy, John Watson came through from the second row and overtook Hunt at the end of the pit straight in full view of everyone.

  Hunt bided his time in third as Peterson and Watson scrapped for the lead. His McLaren was understeering again as a braking air scoop worked loose. Despite that, Hunt overtook Watson on lap seven and Peterson for the lead on lap 12. Afterwards, he said he simply took advantage of mistakes by both drivers.

  Hunt said: “I didn’t really do any serious passing of anyone during the whole race but it put me in the lead, which was the best place to be because I had a real problem with the understeer. It meant that the onus was now on Watson to get past me if he could. I think, if he had got past me, he would have left me.”

  In fact, Hunt had to drive as hard as ever to block Watson from getting past. In terms of car handling, the Ulsterman was easily faster, but Hunt was simply better at blocking than Watson was at overtaking. In the end it didn’t matter, as Watson coasted to a halt on lap 47 when his gearbox broke. Watson’s demise was a signal for Clay Regazzoni, in the lone Ferrari entered in the race, to take up the chase. Hunt got in a panic because he feared Regazzoni might have instructions to punt him off if he couldn’t get past. Hunt recalled: “Boy, was I in a panic. I was something like ten seconds ahead of Clay and I didn’t want him to get within reach.” By the end, Hunt won the race barely a car’s length ahead of the Ferrari – too close for comfort. Hunt was absolutely elated and threw both arms aloft as he had the previous year, and nearly put his car straight into the barriers as a result.

  John Watson remembers it as a classic race: “I had a car which was quicker over a whole lap, but he had a car which was fractionally quicker down the straight because we were running different levels of down force. He successfully defended his position with a fair degree of firmness. It was a classic duel of two Brits in Formula One.”