Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry

by Tom Rubython

  His behavior completely disrupted the post-Monza harmony between the two drivers. Much later, Hunt admitted that for tactical reasons he had been keen to inflame the situation rather than cool it down: “I was deliberately trying to make Niki think that I was freaked out by what was happening so he would steer clear of me on the track. It was purely a professional piece of gamesmanship. If you can psych out another driver and make him frightened of you, then he’s much easier to pass. I certainly wasn’t about to shove him off the track, but I wanted him to think I was in that frame of mind.”

  Tossing aside their ethics, journalists also began to fuel the anger between the two drivers. Hunt, thinking that Lauda had tried to psyche him out earlier in the year by revealing that he had had the last rites administered to make him think he was out of the title race altogether, retaliated. Realizing he could intimidate Lauda to the point where he would let him pass on the track rather than risk a confrontation that might put both of them out, he added: “I had cultivated the idea with Niki that I was worked up and, without ever saying it, made him think that.”

  The feud was intense, and everyone knew what was happening. John Hogan, whose Marlboro cigarette brand sponsored both drivers, felt it more than most. He described one incident when he arrived: “I’d just got off the plane in Toronto, and I walked into the huge dining room at Mosport. Niki was sitting over there with the Ferrari guys, and James was sitting over there with the McLaren guys. And I walk in and Niki says, ‘Hogan, come sit here.’ Then James shouts, ‘Hogie, over here.’ So I started with McLaren, then moved over to Ferrari.” Hogan, who was close to both drivers and could take an objective view, mostly blamed Lauda for the trouble and believed he was guilty of exploiting his injuries to get an advantage. The disputes, he maintained, were not of Hunt’s making: “Niki was being a little bit the Austrian brat. Throughout that year, James had had sort of a testy relationship with Niki.”

  Hunt was walking around the motel like a bear with a sore head. On the following night he got into a furious row with Daniele Audetto in the restaurant. Teddy Mayer stood by while it raged on. It had all started when Audetto, a courteous man, attempted to convey his apologies to Hunt about losing the appeal. Hunt replied with two words: “Get lost.” Or at least these were the words reported in the Canadian newspapers. Audetto told him he was only doing his job. The fuse was lit, and Ferrari and McLaren personnel joined in until Hunt got bored and went to bed. He said the next day: “I thought Audetto’s apology was slightly gross. He didn’t have to apologize because he need not have protested my win at Brands Hatch in the first place. So I explained to him in a rather terse way that I wasn’t interested in his apologies.”

  It was Ferrari’s turn to be at a disadvantage, and the following day Audetto got a shock when the Canadian scrutineers told him that the Ferrari gearbox oil cooler was mounted in an illegal position, and it transpired that it had been in this position ever since the Spanish Grand Prix. As soon as it was pointed out, there was no arguing. Audetto could see it was illegal.

  Ferrari hadn’t been trying to cheat, as there was no performance advantage, but it was a mistake and it had not been spotted until Canada. The team simply had not understood the rulebook properly, nor had eight sets of previous scrutineers.

  Audetto was hugely embarrassed, and the team quickly repositioned the coolers. It left Teddy Mayer and Alastair Caldwell with a huge decision to make—whether or not to appeal the results that were clearly achieved with an illegal car. After a great deal of discussion, they decided not to protest. If they had, arguably Ferrari could have been disqualified from every race since Spain.

  When all the drama died down, the action on the track began.

  Ferrari brought 312T2 chassis numbers 26 and 27 for Lauda and Regazzoni, and chassis number 28, which was brand new, was kept under covers in reserve. The car had been built for Carlos Reutemann, but Lauda had enforced the terms of his contract and Reutemann was out in the cold. Audetto and Enzo Ferrari had wanted to replace Regazzoni with Reutemann, but Lauda had blocked that as well. He just didn’t like the man. The new Ferrari engine design was now sorted out, and the power advantage, especially at the lower end, was very noticeable.

  As soon as the race weekend got started, most of the differences between the drivers were forgotten. For the first time, it was apparent that Niki Lauda’s face was badly damaged by the burns he had suffered in the accident. Hunt was deeply sorry about Lauda’s disfigurement, which caused anguish to everybody in the Formula One paddock. Hunt knew life would never be the same for Lauda, and he could not help but confront the thoughts of his own mortality when confronted with Lauda’s visible injuries every day. Everyone seemed bothered except Lauda himself. The change in his appearance didn’t seem to bother Lauda at all. And if it did, he would never admit it. It did bother him that others were disturbed, but he realized he could do nothing about that and simply got on with his life with the cards that he had been dealt.

  McLaren had given up with its new M26 car, and Jochen Mass would not have to drive it again in 1976. Officially Caldwell told people that the team did not want to bring two sets of spares to the flyaway races. The trio of M23s sufficed, and Hunt had to use the spare car when his engine blew on the first day of qualifying. For both days, Hunt was easily the fastest man on the track, and he was never seriously challenged by Lauda or Regazzoni, despite their powerful engines. Qualifying was fought out between Hunt and Ronnie Peterson’s resurgent March-Ford. Peterson was now back on top form. But he wasn’t strong enough to stop Hunt taking pole position four-tenths of a second clear: a huge margin. Vittorio Brambilla, also in a March-Ford, and Patrick Depailler’s Tyrrell-Ford were on the second row. Lauda was only sixth fastest alongside an increasingly in-form Mario Andretti in his Lotus-Ford. No one could explain Lauda’s tardiness, but as Regazzoni could only manage 12th, it was assumed the car was not suited to the circuit’s characteristics.

  For Ferrari it was its worst overall qualifying performance of the year, and Lauda had no chance of winning the race. If Regazzoni had not been so slow, people would have blamed Lauda’s injuries. Lauda had a technical explanation of his own: “Cold weather brought out one of Ferrari’s weaknesses. When the camber of a wheel changes dramatically as it raises or droops on its suspension, it causes heat in the tires; and the ideal temperature of a racing car tire is a little over 100 degrees centigrade. The cars of most of the teams have suspensions that do a lot of the work, while the play in our cars is almost nil. In consequence, when the days were hot, we had the advantage. But at Mosport, it worked against us.”

  As had become, for him, depressingly normal, James Hunt made a very poor start to his race and was left behind on the grid by Ronnie Peterson. For eight laps he trailed the Swede before his superior speed got him past. A few laps later, Depailler in the six-wheeled Tyrrell nosed through into second place and moved closer to the McLaren. Hunt scythed through the back markers majestically. As he recalled: “They all gave way to me beautifully.” His tactics, intended to intimidate Lauda, had clearly worked on everyone else as well.

  The grand prix had been enlivened by the duel between Hunt and Depailler, who was a very strong challenger. But in the closing laps, Depailler began to drop back inexplicably, and there were six seconds between them at the finish as Hunt took the checkered flag to win, with Mario Andretti finishing third.

  Niki Lauda, who had had a very poor start, could not even finish in the points and came home a lowly eighth: easily his worst race performance of the year.

  He said later, by way of excuse, “A rear suspension component snapped and threw me right back.” Teammate Regazzoni beat him in the end to get a single point. Regazzoni could not move over and give Lauda the point, because Carlos Pace’s Brabham-Alfa Romeo was between them. Lauda simply could not get past him. Lauda had fought an ill-handling car with a rear suspension problem for the entire race. He had scored no points: a disaster for him.

  Afterwards, the Ferrari mechanic
s discovered that a rear suspension mounting had failed. At the time Lauda said, “About halfway, it started to oversteer very badly. I don’t know why.”

  Patrick Depailler was bemused as he stood on the podium; he believed he could have won the race. But it turned out that petrol fumes had been leaking into his Tyrrell cockpit, leaving Depailler feeling intoxicated in the last few laps. He said he felt as though he had drunk a bottle of whisky. When he removed his helmet, the padded lining was wet with fuel. Second place had become his specialty; he was to finish second five times in 1976.

  Hunt admitted that his victory had not been a formality: “Depailler was really giving me a hard time, keeping the pressure on, and if he had got past, he was probably capable of running a bit quicker than I was. But he wasn’t quite quick enough to attack me. My main worries in Canada were the back markers trailing the field when we came through to lap them, because you only need to do that wrong once and the guy trailing you is through and gone. The back marker moves the wrong way at the wrong moment, you have to brake and there is a big gap on the other side of the road. So I took great precautions not to let that situation arise. I started playing the back markers against Patrick. I’d cruise, as it were, between groups of back markers because I obviously wasn’t going to get away from him, so there was no hurry. Then, when we got near the back markers, I’d put on a real spurt to get as much air between him and me and to give myself a bit of maneuvering room. Soon I was timing my arrival with the back markers so that I was ready to pass them at the right part of the circuit. I was giving it real thought and I was managing to get through better than he was, but you need a bit of luck there as well.”

  Hunt was ecstatic when he passed the finish line. He had done what he had come to Canada to do. All thoughts of the Brands Hatch disqualification disappointment were banished from his mind. After the race, Hunt and Lauda got together to resolve their differences. Hunt consciously may have been playing up the much-publicized rift between himself and Lauda to his advantage, but there comes a point in any psychological confrontation when it is difficult to isolate the truth from the tactics. Hunt realized that this point had come and that the so-called feud needed to be laid to rest permanently.

  Hunt was tired of what had happened in Italy and Canada and wanted a fair fight to the finish in an atmosphere of good sportsmanship. He genuinely didn’t want to win in a state of gladiatorial confrontation with Lauda, especially after the Nürburgring accident.

  After Canada, with two races to go, the points gap had opened up to eight.

  CHAPTER 26

  Fate Intervenes in New York

  Hunt Victory Takes Championship to the Wire

  Watkins Glen: October 8–10, 1976

  Aweek after scoring no points in Canada, Niki Lauda took the short trip to New York fully expecting to wrap up the world championship.

  He had scheduled a major facial reconstruction operation for the following week and did not even intend to travel to Japan for the final race of the season—when Carlos Reutemann, who he now accepted would be his new teammate in 1977, would stand in. But those plans were soon to change when fate intervened at Watkins Glen.

  Watkins Glen is a small tourist town situated on Seneca Lake in New York State, around 120 miles from the Canadian border. No one would know about it were it not for the race circuit that had hosted the US Grand Prix ever since it was inaugurated in 1961. The focus of the Formula One circus was the intimate Glen Motor Inn hotel. Almost all of the Formula One drivers stayed at the Glen Motor Inn, with the mechanics staying at the nearby Seneca Lodge.

  The Franzese family managed the Glen Motor Inn at the time and were familiar with all the Formula One drivers. The Franzeses gave the race a real family feel, and the drivers loved it. So the Glen Motor Inn was an ideal venue for a rapprochement between Niki Lauda and James Hunt. A rapprochement sorely needed after the bitter disputes in Canada that had broken out over Ferrari’s Brands Hatch appeal and the safety issues at the Mosport circuit.

  In order to talk through their differences, the two men sat down for dinner in a quiet corner of the Glen’s dining room, surrounded by the giant picture windows overlooking the lakes. The scene could not have been more tranquil. At any one time, the whole of the Formula One community could be sitting down for a meal in the restaurant. They both realized it would be better if they discussed their differences before things got completely out of hand. Lauda insisted that he had never said the things he’d been quoted as saying after the announcement from Paris. He also said his derogatory remarks about Hunt at Mosport were a case of “flagrant misreporting” by a “vicious journalist.”

  Hunt also denied the quotes about Lauda that had been attributed to him. He was adamant his anti-Lauda comments had been instances of fabrication and misquotation. After they had talked, the two shook hands and the feud was buried forever. The meal had broken the ice, and the two drivers subsequently spent a lot of time together smoothing over their differences and renewing their friendship, which had been fractured temporarily by the events in Canada.

  Hunt said afterwards, “The press was winding up both of us badly, and we got a bit irritated. For a few hours we hated each other, but after we got it sorted out, our good relationship continued.”

  After that, they arranged to move to adjoining hotel rooms, where they kept their doors open and socialized together as much as possible. At the time, Fawlty Towers was Europe’s top comedy TV show, so Lauda used to wake Hunt in the morning with practical jokes and hilarious Fawlty Towers–type John Cleese impressions.

  But others do not remember the relationship being anywhere near so congenial—especially not John Hogan, who was secretly working behind the scenes to get Lauda to leave Ferrari and join McLaren to create a dream team for 1977. Hogan had sensed his chance after Lauda’s accident and Reutemann’s recruitment to Ferrari. Hunt was all for it, but Hogan says that Lauda balked at the idea of being Hunt’s teammate. As he remembered: “James had no problem at all. He said, ‘You gotta look at it this way,’ thinking about the game again, ‘you gotta put the competitors somewhere, so it might as well be in the same car.’ But Niki was: ‘ooooough.’”

  On track, qualifying was mostly uneventful round the 3.3-mile circuit save for the weather, which kept interfering. The first half of Friday was written off by torrential rain, but it cleared up in the afternoon. There was a very nasty incident when the air bottle that was used to pneumatically start the car fell off Hunt’s McLaren and was run over by Patrick Depailler and Emerson Fittipaldi’s cars. There was major damage to Depailler’s Tyrrell-Ford and some damage to Fittipaldi’s Copersucar. It was an extremely worrying moment.

  Friday afternoon was to prove the only dry period of the two qualifying days, when the fastest times were set.

  The weather seemed a minor irritation for Hunt, who, for the eighth time in the season, seized pole position. This time he had Jody Scheckter alongside him in the six-wheel Tyrrell-Ford, which was proving very effective in its debut season. Scheckter was improving race by race. But he had no future with the Tyrrell team after the Zandvoort incident. It was announced he was leaving Tyrrell to drive for Walter Wolf’s team. Wolf had paid him $250,000 just as a signing-on fee to persuade him to make the move.

  But Scheckter’s new turn of speed was not Hunt’s problem; his problem was Lauda’s performance. He realized that the odds were on Lauda retaining his title and said, “I hadn’t given up completely because where there’s life, there’s hope. I could only knuckle down and go after each race as it came and try to win it. If I couldn’t win, I had to finish as high as I could.”

  Hunt was aided by another indifferent qualifying performance by Lauda. He could only manage fifth, and the critics would have been all over him but for the fact that his teammate Regazzoni was way back in 14th place, beaten even by rookie driver Larry Perkins in the second Brabham-Alfa Romeo. Something had happened to the Ferrari’s speed at a crucial point in the season, but no one knew what. Lauda ke
pt insisting it was the cold weather, but this was a concept Mauro Forghieri could not understand.

  Saturday’s qualifying day was completely written off by torrential rain virtually all day. At one point the circuit was flooded, threatening the race.

  During qualifying, Hunt aggravated an inflamed nerve in his left elbow, and the pain became worse overnight. A doctor was called, and he was given painkilling injections before he got in the car.

  The race-day weather dawned bright and sunny, with no rain threatened at all. Hunt may have been on pole eight times during 1976, but he had only led one first lap, and this day would prove no exception.

  This time Hunt made a good start, but it was still not good enough to prevent Jody Scheckter from taking the lead. And that is how it stayed for many laps, with Hunt in station some three seconds behind Scheckter. Behind them was third-place man, Niki Lauda, five seconds back. But Hunt knew he had to win and started focusing hard on the physical act of driving the car, something which he confessed afterwards he did not do often. It usually all came so naturally to him, and that was often good enough. But that day, it wasn’t. His McLaren-Ford was oversteering alarmingly round Watkins Glen’s many corners. He remembered he spent 20 laps concentrating and working out a technique to go faster. He called it a “self-administered driving lesson.”

  He admitted afterwards that the exercise had given him huge personal satisfaction: “I got myself together. It is very important in all walks of life to be able to catch yourself when you’re doing something badly and to make sure you improve.” That day he was able to do it. Hunt gritted his teeth, gripped the McLaren’s steering wheel more firmly, and zeroed his mind in on Scheckter, who stood between him and the victory. Hunt was determined to get him. As he bore down on Scheckter, leaving Lauda farther and farther behind, he planned ahead, looking for likely passing places and opportunities to outmaneuver the leader.