by Tom Rubython
Hogan now believes that Lauda overstated his injuries in order to get a psychological advantage over Hunt and to lull him into false sense of security. But Lauda was obviously still very frail and weak, and it was clear he should not have been there. In today’s strict medical environment, he would not have been allowed to race. Although they were hidden by bandages, his face and head were still visibly disfigured. He kept his cap firmly planted on his face, but the disguise wasn’t enough to allay the serious doubts about his fitness to race – doubts being expressed even within his own team. Hogan said: “He looked horrible: blood and puss all over him.”
In the pits, Lauda’s wife, Marlene, kept attending to her husband’s face and stroking it to give him reassurance. She had her sewing kit and was constantly modifying Lauda’s new flameproof balaclava for maximum comfort. She wanted there to be no irritation to the sensitive new skin grafted around his eyes. Everyone was deeply impressed by Marlene’s devotion. David Benson wrote in Saturday’s Daily Express: “I am conquered by her courage. Here is a woman truly worthy of a very great sportsman.” He added: “Marlene is a delightfully warm person. Her handshake is firm. Her eyes are steady and constant. They are the eyes of a woman who could inspire a man to great things.”
And that is exactly what she did that weekend.
It seemed clear that the Ferrari team didn’t want Lauda back. They thought he was finished and wanted him gone. As Lauda recalled: “They didn’t know what to make of a defending champion with a disfigured face who carried on as if everything was quite normal.”
His quick return also caused all sorts of confusion for Daniele Audetto and Enzo Ferrari. In Lauda’s absence, Enzo had hired a replacement, Carlos Reutemann. Reutemann had fallen out with Bernie Ecclestone and had abruptly left the Brabham team, probably sensing that a more competitive Ferrari drive might be available after Lauda’s accident. It was.
But ironically, news of Reutemann’s appointment inspired Lauda to return quickly. Enzo could not have chosen a bigger motivator; Lauda truly detested Reutemann. He admitted: “We never could stand each other.” The notion of Reutemann inheriting his drive spurred Lauda on, as he said: “Instead of taking pressure off me, they put on even more by bringing Carlos Reutemann into the team.”
Reutemann’s premature signing had been fuelled by all the hysteria in the Italian press. It was a huge error and caused immense problems. With Lauda back, the team had to enter a third car for Reutemann at Monza. It breached Lauda’s new contract and, as a result, Enzo Ferrari had to beg Lauda to waive the clause for Monza. Lauda agreed, but only for one race, believing he would soon see the back of Reutemann. Inwardly, Lauda was furious with Enzo and Audetto, as he said later: “To the outside world, Enzo Ferrari and his company were standing by their slightly singed world champion but, from the inside, the pitiful insecurity of each and every one of them was palpable. Tactics took precedence over trust. Ferrari kept telling the world how solidly they were behind me but, in private, they were at sixes and sevens.”
The fact that Lauda had signed a new contract for 1977, before his accident, put him in a very strong position. He said: “If I hadn’t had that contract, they could have ground me down mentally and turned me out to pasture. It was my one piece of good fortune that [Enzo] Ferrari had been so anxious to get me under contract for the following season.”
The McLaren team was unaware of the politics raging within Ferrari, and had problems of their own to worry about. McLaren was not only fighting Ferrari for the world title, but were battling the entire Italian nation. In a fair fight, there was no doubt that Hunt could beat Lauda. But Teddy Mayer knew that the Italian Grand Prix was unlikely to be a fair fight. He knew the Italians would join forces to nobble Hunt.
There wasn’t long to wait; it started as soon as the McLaren team’s trucks reached the Italian border. There was nothing wrong with the paperwork or the trucks, but the Italian border guards decided to take rather a long time signing off on there being nothing wrong. A day and a half was lost at the border, eating into precious time at the track to prepare the cars.
And when the trucks finally did pull into the Monza paddock, they found a hostile reception from all the Italian speakers. At the circuit gate, as they entered the park, they saw fans holding up banners that read ‘Basta con la Mafia Inglese.’ Translated, they said: ‘Away with the English Mafia.’ And whenever James Hunt appeared in public, he was loudly booed.
But all this was nothing compared to what would happen in scrutineering, which was outright Italian chicanery. The FIA seemed powerless to intervene as the Italian scrutineers pored over Hunt’s car. It seemed they had already decided how to hinder him. But even they had no idea how effective they were to be as the rains fell from the skies rather conveniently for Ferrari.
The first qualifying session on Friday was wet, and Hunt spun off and damaged the nose of his car. When he walked back to the pits, the Italian fans erupted in the grandstands with joy. It was unseemly as they spat on him from the stands.
Meanwhile, Niki Lauda, with the Italian crowd right behind him and willing him on, got back into a car for the first time since his accident. On Friday, he had employed his normal mental preparation tactics, which included an objective review of his emotions to ensure he was mentally “well primed” before going out to qualify. But then it all changed for Lauda: “When I climbed into the cockpit at Monza,” he recalled, “fear hit me so hard that all self-motivation theories flew out the window.” Lauda’s lap times were poor, and he admitted later that he had lied to journalists, including David Benson whose interview had been published only that morning, about his state of mind. Truthfully, he had been “rigid with fear” during qualifying and the rain had been “terrifying.”
Lauda explained later: “I had to play the hero to buy myself enough time to sort things out. The fact is you have to play the hard man on occasions, whether you actually feel like one or not. It is really all a game of mental hide-and-seek; you would never be forgiven if you blurted out the truth at an inopportune moment. You would be finished.”
That night, alone in the quiet cocoon of his hotel room, Lauda reviewed his performance and tried to identify what had gone wrong. He had been trying to drive as he had before the accident and it wasn’t working. Feeling insecure, he said: “I had got myself into a stupid tangle.”
His overnight analysis helped him, as he put it, re-programme his brain for the following day and eliminate all the pressure he felt. Managing to repress his anxiety somehow, Lauda told himself to “drive more slowly.” He said later: “And that’s what I did. I started slowly, then gradually built up speed until, suddenly, I was the fastest of the Ferraris – faster than Regazzoni and the newcomer Reutemann. I had managed to prove in practice what I knew in theory: I could drive as well now as before the accident.”
Lauda was fifth fastest by the end of the session. For some reason, both the Ferraris and the McLarens had been slow, but Lauda was fastest of the five. He had out-qualified both his Ferrari teammates, causing Reutemann and Clay Regazzoni considerable embarrassment; not to mention James Hunt, who could only manage ninth place on the grid. There was no excuse for Hunt, as Monza was a fast circuit that suited the characteristics of his car.
Jacques Laffite put his Ligier on pole followed by Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell-Ford, Carlos Pace’s Brabham-Alfa Romeo and Patrick Depailler’s Tyrrell-Ford.
During the Saturday session, fuel checks were made by the scrutineers in the pits. Forewarned Texaco had made absolutely certain that the McLaren’s fuel was legal, which they measured at 101.2 octane.
Lauda’s miracle return became a sideshow compared to the events that followed on Sunday morning. Overnight, the Italian stewards analysed the McLaren’s fuel and found it was 101.6 octane, not 101.2, but allowed for discrepancy, saying it was within the allowed limits.
Then, feigning ignorance of the rules, the Italians telexed the FIA in Paris and asked the governing body for clarification of its own
ruling. The message in the telex was vague in the sending, which was deliberate, and even vaguer in the reply. The secretary of the FIA’s sporting division, the CSI, replied and said the maximum allowed was 101.
So on Sunday morning, the Italian stewards announced that the Hunt’s and his teammate Jochen Mass’ fuel was illegal and that their Saturday times would be disallowed. Only their Friday qualifying times, run in the wet, would count. The cars were sent to the back of the grid. They also disqualified Saturday times for John Watson’s Penske car. The Penske team had no argument, as their fuel was almost certainly over the allowed maximum. They had pushed the rules to the limit and imported special fuel from the United States. Team principal Roger Penske had it specially flown in from their fuel sponsor, Union 76.
The organisers’ clear intention had been to put the cars out of the race completely. The disallowed times effectively meant that Hunt, Mass and Watson would not be allowed to start; their sub-two minute, rain-affected qualifying times on Friday were not fast enough to get in the race.
But even before all this happened, there was an even more bizarre incident – one in which Italian police came to the McLaren pit and took Alastair Caldwell away. They arrested him on suspicion of importing illegal fuel into Italy. It was a trumped up charge, and Caldwell’s theory was that Ferrari wanted him out of the way when the stewards made their fuel announcement. As Caldwell would later recount to James Hunt’s biographer Christopher Hilton, Enzo Ferrari had been able to manipulate the situation by calling a friend in the local station: “[Enzo] Ferrari had obviously said: ‘We need to get rid of Caldwell completely because he’ll go bananas. He’s the man to worry about. What can we do? We’ll pretend that the fuel has been illegally imported, we’ll tell him that and have him arrested on this basis.’ We had Texaco fuel, which had been brought in a truck from Belgium certainly imported correctly with the right paperwork, but that didn’t matter. They had an excuse to lock me up.”
Caldwell was put in a cell at Monza police station for over two hours until a Texaco technician brought the customs paperwork that proved the fuel had been correctly imported. Caldwell emerged from incarceration only to be hit with the shock that Hunt was out of the race.
Meanwhile, in the absence of Caldwell, Mayer had stormed the stewards’ office with Texaco’s analysis in his hand, demanding to know what was going on. The Italians showed him the telex they had received from the FIA; but, crucially, they showed him only the reply and not their original message. It was deliberate underhanded skullduggery as the scrutineers had always known exactly what the rules were. If they hadn’t, they had the very articulate Teddy Mayer on hand to remind them.
Waving the telex in his hand, the Italian chief scrutineer sent Mayer away fuming. His number one driver had been properly nobbled.
Hunt was initially furious with Texaco and with John Goosens, who headed up Texaco’s racing effort in Europe. Goosens was adamant that Texaco had done all it could, but Hunt was having none of it. John Hogan remembers: “James’ demeanour didn’t get on particularly well with John Goosens. He couldn’t figure James at all.” But Hunt got on very well with Texan Tom Cottrell, a top executive of Texaco in the United States, who was in overall charge of the oil company’s European operation. When Hunt clashed with Goosens, he turned to Cottrell for support. Hunt liked Cottrell’s straightforward approach to sorting out problems. As he recalled, Cottrell’s solutions always began with his favourite saying: “I come from a place where a man puts his pants on one leg at a time.” Cottrell eventually defused the Hunt-Goosens standoff by appointing veteran executive Neil McCann to liaise directly with Hunt and to avoid clashes with Goosens. McCann commanded a great deal of respect, and had been friends with Mike Hawthorne and Peter Collins.
That morning, in Caldwell’s absence, Mayer was continually on the telephone to Paris asking the FIA officials exactly what was going on.
Hunt was apoplectic, not so much because of his exclusion, but by the scrutineers’ assertion that he was a cheat. The implication by their actions was that the team had not competed fairly throughout 1976. Hunt recalls: “The implication that we had been cheating annoyed me enormously. Not only had we not been cheating, but running a high octane fuel would not help unless we had increased the compression ratio of the engine to match the increased octane rating. You have to modify your engine accordingly, and we certainly hadn’t done that – we could have run 150 octane petrol and our engine wouldn’t have given an ounce more power. Our fuel was totally legal and we had gone to a lot of trouble before the race to make sure that it was, but to have that understood by the general public was more than one could ask. So this mud had been thrown, and some of it was inevitably sticking.”
Both Mayer and Hunt realised what was going on but were powerless to do anything about it. They appealed the stewards’ decision straight away, which proved to be a mistake as the matter then became sub judice in the eyes of the stewards. They subsequently refused to discuss it further, as Hunt remembered: “Because we appealed, we couldn’t discuss it further so I was stuffed out of the race. You can’t run the Grand Prix a month later; and by putting me on the back of the grid, the argument could only be sorted out later.”
The fuel situation was later clarified and corrected by a statement from the FIA, but by then it was too late; the damage had been done. Hunt laughed when he saw the statement and said: “I was frustrated even more when the CSI put out a press release saying that everything was alright and that the McLaren team hadn’t been cheating.”
Added to what had happened in Spain and Britain, the Italian press ran huge headlines announcing: ‘McLaren cheats’, and the coverage was being read around the world. Mayer said: “I think Ferrari began to believe that if James could beat them, we must be cheating; and they began to try and find excuses.”
It was later found that the Italian fuel checks had been wrongly interpreted by the stewards.
But at that moment, the Italians believed that Hunt, Mass and Watson were out. But then something equally bizarre happened. Before the exclusions, three drivers hadn’t qualified for the race: Brett Lunger’s works Surtees; Arturo Merzario’s Williams; and Otto Stuppacher’s private Tyrrell. Gradually, all three drivers withdrew to make way for the disqualified drivers and, much to the chagrin of the Italians, Hunt, Mass and Watson were back in the race.
But Hunt would still have to start the Italian Grand Prix from the second to last row of the starting grid. Hunt was so angry, he even thought about withdrawing. But realising it would be a fruitless protest, he focused on trying to get some points – although he knew he could no longer win outright.
But his heart was not in it, and by the 11th lap he was in 12th place when he came together with Tom Pryce’s Shadow and went off the road. His McLaren-Ford went into the sand and beached with its rear wheels spinning wildly. The sand traps, which were gradually replacing catch fencing, decelerated cars very effectively and slowed the McLaren so that it stopped just in front of the barrier. Hunt jumped out of his car and walked round checking for damage. Seeing it was intact, he pushed the car out of the hole dug by the spinning tyres. But he was then prevented from getting back in the car by the Italian marshals. For once, the Italians were abiding by the rules; although they didn’t please Hunt. But the longer time went on, the less relevant it became. Hunt said: “They wouldn’t let me get back in. They pounced on me. But it wasn’t really worth making an issue of it because, firstly, the car was stuck in the sand and, secondly, I was now completely out of the race even if I could have restarted. It was then hopeless trying to gain points as far as I was concerned.”
All this was going on against a backdrop of hissing and booing Italians. It was more like feeding time at a zoo than a motor race as they started throwing the contents of their picnic baskets at him.
Hunt was stupefied with frustration and wanted a fight with the whole Italian nation as he began his long walk back to the pit lane. During that walk, he made up his mind t
hat his accident had been the fault of Tom Pryce, so he decided to have it out with the young Welshman after the race. The blame culture and revenge-seeking was a throwback to his public school background. When it surfaced, it exhibited the worst elements of his character. The truth about the accident was that Hunt had become distracted when he went into the corner and had braked far too late, with the inevitable result.
Convinced that Pryce had blocked him, however, Hunt stormed up to him after the race and shouted: “You are a brainless moron”, adding in for good measure that he was “absolutely brainless.” Almost immediately afterwards, as he cooled off in the motorhome, he knew he had been wrong. He went to find Pryce to apologise. He said later: “I just made a mistake.” His high emotional state after the race had been made worse by his walk back to the pits, where he had been spat upon and booed by the Italians. He called them “animals” and explained: “They were spitting and hissing. I wanted to confront them but thought better of it.” In the end, Hunt confessed: “I must admit I was quite pleased to get out of there unscathed. The propaganda campaign against me in the Italian press was really quite incredible; a very heavy deal. They really hated me in Italy, to an extent that was quite unbelievable. Anybody would think it was I who had caused Niki’s accident.”
Hunt later described the entire incident in his book Against All Odds, which was published a year later. It was an interesting insight into the mind of a top driver and the manner in which decisions are taken on a race track. He said: “Going out of the first chicane, I missed a gear and Pryce was going to come up alongside me. I could see that, but rather than fight him – we were all in a hurry and wanted to get on with the race – and take the inside line going into the next corner, I took the normal line. But he came hurtling up the inside, outbraking me, racing me into the next corner. That really took me by surprise because if he got past me again all he was going to do was hold both of us up. We would have both gone quicker if he had followed me. I had to fight it out with him then because I’d had a hell of a job passing him already, so I decided to go for it. When we did get to the corner, he was inside me, I couldn’t get in and I went off the road of my own accord. It was my fault, but at the same time I had to fight. I took the decision when he arrived alongside me to fight him out, and it didn’t come off. But I still think it was the right decision because, had I let go then, I would never have finished in the points. It was a calculated risk. In different circumstances, you adjust the size of the calculation. At Monza, it was always a risk whether I would finish the race because I had to really try hard. If by half distance you are getting into the points, the first six places, then you adjust yourself and reduce the amount of risk you take because you’ve got more in the bank to protect.”
