Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  And yet, she continued to feel his presence strongly for many years. She said: “He’s like a guardian angel. He has given me a lot of strength to get through. When you lose somebody, you realise we are just mortal beings. I love life. I want to make sure that when I go, there’s something of me left behind. I can’t waste my gifts when James was so proud of me.” Ironically, she took up smoking after his death despite the fact that she had helped him give it up when he had been alive.

  She said by way of a postscript on their lives: “We had mapped out the rest of our lives together. To know you’re going to be with one person forever and then suddenly to have everything taken away, my whole world was whipped from under my feet.”

  The rest of the Hunt family carried on with their lives. Few of them had had day-to-day contact with James. He had rarely visited his parents prior to his death, and so their everyday existence was not much altered, although they all mourned in private.

  The Hunt sisters, Sally and Georgina, had followed the example of their mother and had chosen to devote their lives to public service. Sally was a lay pastoral assistant in her church and Georgina was a social worker with a charity.

  David Hunt ultimately failed in his quest to become a professional racing driver, and, after a test with the Benetton Formula One team, gave up. He entered business and made a great deal of money in direct sales. He bought Team Lotus from the liquidator after it collapsed in 1994. But he couldn’t do anything with it and is believed to have sold his interest in it for a nominal sum when the team was resurrected in 2010. Now, he wheels and deals in various business ventures.

  Peter Hunt continued with his accountancy business and won a battle with cancer. Today, he still looks after the many clients he met during his racing days with his brother.

  Tim Hunt, the youngest of the brothers, looked like he was destined to be the family’s highest achiever. He was head boy at Wellington and a winner of the Queen’s Medal for the student who most measured up to the standards of the school’s founder, the Duke of Wellington. He sailed into Oxford and shared his famous brother’s good looks and was even a male model for a period. He then went to work at Christie’s in London and eventually moved to New York to become a significant figure in the art world. He is now director of the Warhol Foundation. He married the American novelist, Tama Janowitz.

  And so for the Hunts, life went on. That is, until 2001.

  In March 2001, eight years after his son’s death, Wallis Hunt died after a long battle with illness. His death was a few weeks short of his and Sue’s 58th wedding anniversary. A memorial service was held at Wellington College in the chapel. He had attended the College in 1936 and was followed by his sons and his grandchildren. Afterwards, there was lunch in the college and then a rugby match. Strangely, in his address, Peter Hunt failed to mention the name of James Hunt at all.

  Today, his 86-year-old widow, Sue, is matriarch of the Hunt family and living out her life in splendid isolation in Wiltshire, wishing her sons and grandchildren would visit more often, but happy nonetheless.

  Jane Birbeck lives quietly and doesn’t seek any attention. After she split with Hunt, she took up with Olympics star Daley Thompson and they were together for over 12 years before he married someone else. David Gray says: “She has never married. She is just as nice as she was.” Apart from Gerald Donaldson, Birbeck has never spoken to a journalist about her relationship with Hunt and no quotes from her exist on the record anywhere. She prefers it that way.

  Taormina Rich married Peter Rieck soon after she split with James Hunt in the mid 1980s. She met her future husband at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1970 whilst still going out with Hunt. Peter Rieck became great friends with Hunt and they socialised frequently after he married Taormina. Now, the couple live quietly in Cambridgeshire.

  Sarah Hunt had a turbulent time after the death of her ex-husband. His death opened up all sorts of wounds as she battled with the family over his estate. Traumatised by the experience, she felt she had to fight her corner for her sons. She had suffered badly since the divorce and had panic attacks when in public places. Hunt’s death only aggravated the situation, as she said: “It’s taken me all these years to forgive myself for the fact that [the marriage] wasn’t working, which was terribly important because, until I’d forgiven myself, I couldn’t really go on.”

  She regained her sanity only when she got a job working at a local pub/hotel as a barmaid, waitress and cook. It gave her a new focus and she gradually began to recover. She occasionally spoke to journalists and said of her marriage: “I wouldn’t say I made a mistake the first time around; it was just one of those awful, sad things – our marriage simply didn’t work. We really had to stop fighting. Sadly, for people like us, when you get over excitable, you go down with an almighty bump.”

  Her children’s maintenance was guaranteed by a trust fund set up by Hunt after the divorce. But her own payments were not. She also had trouble settling down with another partner after her divorce from Hunt. She said: “I didn’t believe I would ever get married again. I was 100 per cent certain that the right man, or true love, whatever that may be, could not be found again.” Adding to her troubles, her father died two years after Hunt.

  But the aging process was very kind to Sarah, and as she got older, the more attractive she became and eventually she started dating again. She had an 18-month affair with a wealthy Italian Count called Alex Mapelli-Mozzi and then, in 1997, she met a handsome, 49-year-old divorcee, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Jeffery of the Royal Gurkha Regiment. They met at a local Beagle Ball in January 1997. When she met him, she said: “I knew absolutely that he was going to be my future husband and I proposed to him two or three weeks later.” He was naturally very surprised, and she gave him a week to think about it. When the time had elapsed, she said to him: “How’s the thinking?” He said: “Well, I think it all sounds rather nice.” That was the answer she was looking for and they were married a short time later. She was far better matched to her new husband than she had been to her first. He had no children of his own and was an accomplished horseman, being field master of the hunt in the Hampshire area. Sarah said at the time: “I never dreamt that I’d have those feelings for somebody else ever again.”

  He lived most of the year in Nepal, where his regiment was based, and she moved there with him after the wedding. Both Tom and Freddie went to a preparatory boarding school before Tom went to Wellington College like his father and Freddie to a succession of schools before ending up at the local grammar school.

  But her new husband was quickly was assigned to Nato’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corp at Rheindahlen in Germany, and Sarah followed him there. Jeffery and Sarah had a son together just over a year later. They named him Charlie, a half brother for Tom and Freddie. But Charlie was only seven months old when there was another terrible tragedy.

  At only 52 years of age, Christopher Jeffery was relaxing watching the 1999 Japanese Grand Prix on television when he started to feel ill and had a stroke. Having been rushed to hospital, he died two days later. He had been in England on leave for the christening of his and Sarah’s son.

  Sarah was effectively widowed for a second time in nine years and left with three young children without a father. The army recommended she receive her husband’s full pension entitlement for life. She bought a rambling ranch-style property, which stands in two acres of Hampshire countryside with a tributary of the River Rother on one boundary. She installed a new heated swimming pool for the children and carried on as best she could. She was in the news again in 2010 when her elderly mother, Rosemary Lomax, finally passed away.

  Tom Hunt went to Wellington College as planned and then onto university, unlike his brother Freddie, who was the image of his father in every physical and mental respect.

  Freddie was not academic and attended seven schools in all. Like his father, he hated it. As he admitted: “There are always mischievous kids at school, and I was one of them. I wasn’t always the most mischievous, b
ut the one who got caught.” Freddie found school a trial and couldn’t wait until he was 18 to leave. He is now a grown up young man with a mane of unkempt hair and slightly hunched shoulders, just like his father. Fiercely intelligent, he has an open, engaging and erudite personality, with a free spirit and fiery temper. As his mother says, it could almost be his father all over again.

  His first interest was his mother’s sport, horses, and he took up playing polo and became an accomplished player, owning six horses. Then, he caught the motor racing bug after a visit to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. He sold his polo ponies to fund his new career. He tried Formula Ford and Formula 3. But he found he was not good enough and did the sensible thing and retired after a couple of years. But not before he had his father’s signature tattooed on his back and inscribed on his crash helmet as a permanent memory.

  Today, Freddie is a wandering troubadour, seeking his future and his way in life. He is so like his father it is uncanny. Nobody doubts he will make a success of his life, but they have no idea how.

  Apart from Helen Dyson, BBC producer Mark Wilkin was the outsider most affected by his friend’s death and it took him a long time to recover. He continued producing the Grand Prix programme without Hunt, and it was traumatic. The first race, the 1993 French Grand Prix was a serious problem for him, coming less than a fortnight after Hunt’s death, as he said: “It was tough at the first race back, the French Grand Prix. It was awful to go do that without James, it really was.”

  Now, life has come full circle for Wilkin. In the late nineties, the BBC lost the Formula One contract to ITV. Two years ago, it came back to the BBC and Wilkin was back where he had been ten years earlier. He still remembers Hunt fondly, saying: “It’s one of the things, isn’t it? People who die young are forever remembered in life.”

  John Watson is long retired from driving and is now a TV pundit, much as Hunt was. For years, he fulfilled the same role on Eurosport until it lost the Formula One contract. He says of his old friend simply: “There was a truly decent, good man there.”

  Bubbles Horsley is now effectively retired. He inherited family money and made enough from business never to have to work again. He lives quietly in France with his family, but still retains an English house in Oxfordshire. Hunt’s death knocked the stuffing out of his life. As it did the lives of Hunt’s close friends John Richardson, Chris Jones and Mike Dennett. They all keep in touch with Peter Hunt and frequently reminisce about the good old days. But with Hunt dead, the zest has gone out of their lives.

  Lord Hesketh has had an eventful life since his brush with motor racing 35 years ago. After that, he dabbled in motorcycles and then started an airline. The motorcycle firm was ultimately unsuccessful but the airline was sold for a profit. In 2005, he decided he needed a break from the past and took the drastic step of selling his family home at Easton Neston, along with all the memories of Hesketh Racing. It was sold in 2006 to a Russian oligarch for UK£16 million. Hesketh is now busy selling the rest of the land and the buildings surrounding it.

  In 1989, he used his seat in the House of Lords to become a significant and active politician in Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government. He held the office of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment between 1989 and 1990 and was Minister of State in the Department of Trade and Industry between 1990 and 1991. After that, he was appointed Government Chief Whip in the House of Lords, a position he kept until September 1993.

  Eventually, he all but retired from public life and now lives quietly in the west country with his wife. Now 60 years old, his three children, Flora, Sophia and Frederick, are grown up.

  John Hogan rose to great s at Philip Morris International, and, under his guidance, Formula One was used to make Marlboro the biggest cigarette brand in the world. He went on to win many more world championships with Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna at McLaren before moving Marlboro’s sponsorship to Ferrari, where he won many more again with Michael Schumacher.

  He retired from Philip Morris in 2002 at the age of 60 and became a consultant, working closely with Vodafone. In 2003, he accepted an offer from Jaguar Cars to head up marketing for its Formula One team but, unhappy with its direction, left a year later. He was snapped up and became a key executive at Zak Brown’s fast-growing American sponsorship agency, Just Marketing, where he remains today, still making big deals and pulling levers behind the scenes.

  Soon after Hunt left McLaren, Teddy Mayer sold McLaren to Ron Dennis and then made a brief comeback in Formula One and Indy car racing. He finally retired to Florida and married former photographer, Pamela Rowe. He died last year.

  Alastair Caldwell moved to the Brabham team after Hunt left McLaren but it was not a particularly happy time, and he left motor racing to work with his daughter, Ruth, and started a storage firm, which is very successful today.

  Peter Warr left the Wolf team and it closed down. He moved back to Lotus when Colin Chapman died, and ran the team for a few years. The team fell on hard times and was eventually sold to Peter Collins, upon which Warr effectively retired.

  Harvey Postlethwaite moved to the Tyrrell team after Wolf closed down and enjoyed some success. He eventually left and set up an experimental Formula One team for Honda but died suddenly before it could enter the championship.

  David Gray became a very significant force in advertising with Collett Dickenson Pearce, one of the world’s great agencies. He semi retired and is now active again working on digital ventures. He is still a client of Peter Hunt’s accountancy firm.

  Peter Collins eventually lost control of Team Lotus, and it closed down in 1994. He had a torrid time with its new owner, David Hunt, and decided to leave Britain for Switzerland. Today, he is a sponsorship consultant and a successful driver manager. He first discovered Kimi Raikkonen and now manages Tonio Liuzzi, who drives for the Force India team.

  Ian Phillips had a very successful career in Formula One with the Jordan team when it was owned by Eddie Jordan. After new owners took over, he carried on. He finally left the team this year after nearly 20 years, and is now semi retired.

  Today, Tony Dron lives in an idyllic home in Cambridgeshire and works at his twin passions of writing and racing very successfully. His eyes still moisten when he discusses his old friend, as he says: “James always told me he would go until he had won or died. And that’s how his life went.”

  Gerald Donaldson used all the access he had to James Hunt when he was alive to write an eponymous biography of the driver, which was very successful. It came out in 1994, a year after Hunt’s death and was the family-approved biography. It made Donaldson a great deal of money. Now, he is a successful broadcaster, spending his time equally in Toronto and the English Cotswolds, and has since written a biography of Juan Manuel Fangio.

  After his early biography of Hunt, called Portrait of a Champion, Christopher Hilton wrote a book called Memories of James Hunt, which was effectively a pastiche of stories from hundreds of motor racing personalities who had known him. Hilton has become motor racing’s most prolific author and there is no racing fan who does not have at least one of his books on their shelf.

  But of all the active journalists, Nigel Roebuck missed James Hunt the most. He joined Gilles Villeneuve on Roebuck’s ‘idol list’ as he said: “I still miss the visits to that lovely house in Wimbledon, with the old Mercedes and A35 van outside, the soppy Alsatian, foul-mouthed parrot and bare-footed owner within. In an age made colourless by political correctness, he was genuinely a free spirit; it was a terrible sadness that, personally happier than at any time in his life, he left the party so early. ‘It’s always the bores that stay to the end, isn’t it?’, he would say.”

  Murray Walker carried on being Murray Walker after Hunt died but it was never quite the same again for him. He joined ITV Sport when it won the contract and retired from commentating some eight years later at the of his powers. Simultaneously, he published his autobiography, which sold a staggering 1.1 million copies.


  And so the James Hunt story came to an end.

  Apart from one nasty postscript. In 2001, Peter Hunt was approached by Ralph Lee, a producer for the independent production company Diverse Productions. Diverse wanted to do a documentary on Hunt for Britain’s Channel 4 programme. Peter Hunt didn’t appear himself, nor did members of the family, but he encouraged others to do so, including Bubbles Horsley, Chris Jones and Lord Hesketh. The interviews with Jones and Horsley were not particularly flattering to them to say the least, although Lord Hesketh came out reasonably well.

  But the worst damage was done by footage of the incident at the Doncaster nightclub in 1978, when Hunt was arrested for assault. The footage had previously been unseen and had been retained by the nightclub, which then released it to Diverse to broadcast it. It was very unedifying and caused considerable problems within the family. Peter Hunt even indirectly referred to it in his speech at his father’s memorial service. The programme also showed a highly distasteful interview with the Dutch reporter Alissa Morrien, who had seduced Hunt in 1977 and then written about it. It was all highly distressing, and upset Hunt’s mother and family greatly.

  The distress had a lasting effect and, after that, the family closed ranks and effectively abandoned the Hunt legacy. They wanted the story of James Hunt ended.

  But that could never happen. James Hunt belonged to the fans, not his family. He genuinely was the people’s champion. For all his faults and flaws, and there were many, James Hunt was a very great man. His memory can never be extinguished.

  APPENDIX I

  Formula One Grand Prix Career Statistics

  Races entered

  93

  Races Started

  92

  Race Finishes

  44

  Race Retirements

  46

  Races disqualifed

  2

  Race Wins

  10

  pole positions