by Tom Rubython
Niki Lauda immediately knew his car would perform badly in the prevailing weather conditions and that nature had handed James Hunt a big advantage.
The organizers responded by hiring dozens of laborers, whom they kitted out with cagoules (lightweight hooded, weatherproof jackets) and wide brooms. These men started sweeping water off the track all around its length. As the fog rolled in, no one could see the circuit sweepers in their gray-colored cagoules.
In the morning warm-up session, several cars crashed and one aquaplaned off the main straight. When Lauda took out his car, he knew he was in deep trouble. Not only was his car useless in the conditions, he was very worried about his eyes in the wet conditions and his reduced visibility. He said, “Rivers course down across the circuit. Doing no more than 20 miles per hour in a warm-up lap, you are simply flushed away at corners because the tires cannot cope with that volume of water.” For him the rain was an absolute disaster, and he knew it would probably cost him the world championship. He said, “In the wet you have to call on additional reserves of motivation and endurance. I have no such reserves. I am finished. The rain has totally destroyed me.”
But there was still a chance that the race would be canceled or postponed to the following day and to better weather conditions. Hunt was a member of the drivers’ safety committee with Lauda, and the two now joined forces to tell the organizers that there couldn’t be a Japanese Grand Prix, as it was far too dangerous for the drivers. With the exception of Brambilla and Regazzoni, all the drivers voted against racing.
But Hunt’s attitude incensed Alastair Caldwell. He was absolutely adamant that Hunt drive, saying to him, “James, don’t be an idiot. You can’t win the championship unless there is a race.” James simply responded by saying that safety came first and that he and Lauda would not race. Jochen Mass agreed with Hunt.
Hunt had become so friendly with Lauda after Canada that he was now in his camp where safety was concerned. In fact, Hunt was so adamant he would not race in the conditions that he said, “I would rather give Niki the title than race in these conditions.”
The team managers usually took little notice of the drivers, but this time they were worried. In normal circumstances, as the weather was so bad, the race almost certainly would have been abandoned. But these were not normal circumstances. The organizers had spent over $1 million to stage the event and would have to refund the spectators who had paid high ticket prices. The circuit was full of television crews from all over the world who had booked expensive satellite time to broadcast the race live. From a financial point of view, there had to be a race. There were nearly 80,000 people rammed into the circuit, and the world championship had to be decided. There had never been so much pressure to hold a sporting event to schedule.
As the day wore on, however, the race was not canceled, so Hunt told Lauda they should try to have the race postponed. However, postponement didn’t appear to be an option the organizers were willing to entertain. Slowly the drivers’ moods began to change, and Ronnie Peterson, Tom Pryce, Vittorio Brambilla, Clay Regazzoni, Alan Jones, and Hans Stuck all fancied their chances on a wet track and decided they should get on with it. When Hunt heard this, he knew he was fighting a lost cause; once a few drivers lined up on the grid, others would surely follow—especially as their team managers were threatening to fire them if they didn’t race.
Meanwhile, with the race still in doubt, Hunt was behaving very bizarrely. At one point he came out, jumped over the pit lane counter, dropped his overalls to his ankles, and proceeded to urinate in full view of the crowds in the grandstand. The spectators, many of whom had high-powered binoculars trained on him, applauded him after he finished. He waved back.
As the Formula One cars remained motionless, covered in tarpaulins in front of the pits, the team managers huddled with organizers and race officials in the first floor of the race control tower. It was plain to everyone that it was too dangerous to race. The time scheduled for the race start came and went. The pressure from the television crews was relentless.
The pressure on organizers was immense. They sought the opinions of both Hunt and Lauda, asking them if they wanted to race. Lauda didn’t want to race. Hunt was now ambivalent, although he still agreed with Lauda. Hunt had decided to defer to Lauda and told him that he personally felt they should wait and race the next day. But he told Lauda he would participate if the race was held, saying, “Everyone was still arguing and expressing their point of view. Mine was to not race, to have it another day or something like that. But you get a few weak people to break the strike and then everybody’s at it.”
After further discussions, Hunt changed his mind again and told Alastair Caldwell that he and Lauda were withdrawing from the race, whatever decision the organizers made.
Meanwhile, Bernie Ecclestone was frantic. He had sold the broadcast rights for large sums of money, and if there was no race, he faced having to give it all back. He was not sure where he stood if the race was postponed to Monday.
The grandstands, which ran the whole length of the main Fuji straight, were packed with fans sitting silently beneath a sea of umbrellas. The crowd sat motionless and in absolute quiet, a perfect demonstration of Japanese reserve. There was none of the Brands Hatch mayhem; it was a different world.
Caldwell thought them too quiet and, remembering what had happened at Brands Hatch, decided to get the crowd agitated. He got one of the McLaren mechanics, Lance Gibbs, to stand and blow his whistle to get them roused. Caldwell knew that most of the Japanese carried whistles. The gesture worked, and they all brought out their whistles and started blowing to put pressure on the organizers. With Gibbs’s encouragement, they also started shouting.
As the crowd became increasingly roused, the organizers became more and more nervous. Bernie Ecclestone also frightened the organizers by telling them they could have a riot on their hands if there was no race. Ecclestone, by now frantic with worry, told them, “You’ve got to hold the race. You’ll have a riot. They’ll tear down the stands.”
Caldwell believed that the fans and their increasing agitation, admittedly stirred up by him, was a strong factor in eventually getting the race started.
Lauda remembered: “We all refused to drive in the prevailing conditions. We sat in the race officials’ trailer and told him ‘no go.’ At that point the organizers had decided there would be no race. But they were being stalled from making an announcement by Bernie Ecclestone and others.”
At four o’clock in Fuji, it started to get really dark. Ecclestone told them, “The race must start.”
Caldwell had noticed Lauda’s demeanor and guessed there might be a problem with his eyes in the wet. He knew it was now or never, and if the race was canceled or abandoned, then McLaren might lose the title race by default. Caldwell literally grabbed Hunt by his overall lapels and told him that if the race was on, he would drive. A shocked Hunt agreed. Lauda was now in a difficult position, saying, “It was barely credible as it was now raining harder than ever.”
The race should have started an hour and a half earlier, and in another two or three hours, the Mount Fuji circuit would be in darkness. Finally a decision was made and announced over the loudspeakers; the Japanese Grand Prix would begin in five minutes. Vittorio Brambilla led the drivers out to their cars.
But James Hunt was missing. And at the precise moment the start was confirmed, he was elsewhere according to Patrick Head, then technical director of the Walter Wolf racing team. Head had accidentally walked into a pit garage that was empty—but not quite empty. He was surprised to find Hunt inside, with his racing overalls down around his ankles and a young Japanese girl kneeling in front of him with his penis in her mouth. Hunt laughed when he saw him, but Head hemmed and hawed and quickly left in a daze, not quite believing what he had seen. He was clearly disturbed by having witnessed such antics from a leading participant so near to the start of an important race. When Head recounted the story at dinner later in Tokyo, he found that no one was sho
cked at the story and said they had seen him do far worse before a race.
When Hunt emerged from the garage, he rushed to get into his car. Lauda, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Carlos Pace were all determined not to race and would do just a few laps to please their team owners. Lauda said, “We went to the start so that our respective teams could pick up their starting money, but then we would pack it in because nothing changed. Everything was just as dangerous as before, and the fact that it was getting dark could hardly help matters.”
The drivers went out and did some exploratory laps and then came back in to vote again. Another drivers’ meeting voted by a substantial majority that the circuit was too dangerous, but the organizers overruled them and decided to hold their motor race. But the new worry was the light and the deteriorating visibility.
They opened the pits, and the cars trickled out one by one to take up their positions on the grid. Hunt again told Caldwell that he wasn’t driving, and, again, Caldwell told him he was. Hunt said to Caldwell, “Alastair, fuck this, I’m getting out.” Caldwell retorted, “Get out of that car and I’ll break your fucking neck.” John Hogan witnessed this and remembers: “James replied, ‘Oh, all right.’ And that was it.” But Caldwell wasn’t completely reckless and did recognize the dangers. He told Hunt that if he wasn’t happy after the warm-up lap, he could come into the pits and retire without consequences, but he warned him that his championship bid would be over.
So the race officials took the decision away from the drivers, and the showdown in Japan finally got under way. Niki Lauda would start the race and see how conditions were. He said, “At the start, the feeling was absolutely unbearable. I was sitting there, panic-stricken, rain lashing down, seeing nothing, just hunched down in the cockpit, shoulders tense, waiting for someone to run into me.”
In the gloom, the cars were pushed out to the starting grid. Lance Gibbs drilled holes in the visor of Hunt’s helmet to stop it fogging. He placed down a plank of wood on the tarmac so Hunt could walk to his car with dry shoes.
Once Hunt was in the cockpit, it felt damp, and he wiped water off his steering wheel. There was a warm-up lap, and straightaway Lauda had a fright as John Watson’s Penske-Ford car span out of control right alongside Lauda and tobogganed off into the grass runoff area, just missing ramming Lauda’s Ferrari.
Hunt started as favorite to win the race as the in-form driver with a high grid position. From the start he went straight into the lead and, with a clear track in front of him, sped away easily. Hunt had made the best start of his life, and his McLaren’s heavy spray covered everyone in his wake. The other drivers all had to contend with spray and fell farther back. As only he could see where he was going and the other 24 drivers were navigating blind, Hunt sought to maximize the advantage he had earned.
Lauda was losing positions on every lap and was clearly in some sort of trouble. As Caldwell had suspected, his eyes were not up to it. There was so much standing water on the track that Lauda could hardly control his Ferrari; he simply couldn’t see through his damaged eyelids. He couldn’t have continued even if he had wanted to. He said, “Everybody was skating and spinning; it was crazy. Looking at it this way, it seemed only sensible to drive into the pits and give up.”
After two laps, he stopped. He had been unable to see and couldn’t blink his eyes, which ruined his focus. It was too dangerous to continue. As he pulled to a halt, his four mechanics shielded the cockpit and he told them he had decided to retire from the race. Cuoghi said they could blame engine failure, but Lauda wanted none of it, and he’d tell the truth to whoever asked—but of course not the whole truth. Without making excuses or offering explanations, as he didn’t want the trouble with his eyes to stop him from racing in the future, Lauda said, “The rain has totally destroyed me.” He added, “I regard the men who allowed the race in Japan to proceed as absolute lunatics.”
The truth was that he should never have come back that season. His right eye was very poor and he was mentally unfit to compete, but he would never admit he was unable to cope with the conditions that prevailed at the start of the race. Later, as the track dried, he rapidly began to change his mind, but by then it was too late.
Lauda sat on the pit counter, cross-legged next to Daniele Audetto, watching events unfurl. As he remembered later: “It was a miracle; after 12 hours of solid downpour, the rain stopped, about a quarter of the way into the race. If I had only held out that long, driven slowly, and avoided being hit, there would have been no problem putting my foot down, which was necessary to clinch the title. As it turned out, fifth place would have been enough. Sadly, hanging on patiently was more that I could manage that day.”
Three other drivers—Emerson Fittipaldi, Carlos Pace, and Larry Perkins—also withdrew after a couple of laps.
As Hunt sped past the finish line for the third lap, he was shown the McLaren board, which read: NIKI OUT. Straightaway he knew why, but Hunt took no pleasure in his rival’s demise. Lauda’s behavior that season had earned his total respect.
Hunt maintained his lead, and surprisingly Vittorio Brambilla was now in second place in his March-Ford. On lap 22, Brambilla actually tried an overtaking maneuver on Hunt, but as he drew alongside, he inevitably lost control of his car and missed Hunt’s by a few millimeters. He went off the circuit in a shower of mud.
As Brambilla departed into retirement, the conditions started improving with every lap. By lap 23, the two McLaren-Fords led 1-2, with Mass tucked up in second place, guarding Hunt’s flank. The cloud cover was lifting, taking with it the rain, and a strong breeze was beginning to dry out the track. Speeds picked up accordingly, and the gaps between cars shrank appreciably.
Lauda was standing in the pits when the rain stopped and was astonished at the rapid change in the conditions. He said, “I don’t blame myself; it was the right decision. The rain stopping—unforeseeable—was my personal bad luck. I consider that I had bad luck not that I made a mistake.” He believed the organizers had been very wrong to start the race: “It could easily have been fatal in the first laps with dead and injured and the race abandoned. The possibility of catastrophe was just too great.”
Lauda now realized that if Hunt finished fourth or above, he would lose the championship. But it was not over yet.
The drying track meant the wet-weather tires were unsuitable for the new conditions and were starting to overheat. As the track dried, Caldwell kept out a permanent pit sign with COOL TYRES written on it. He needed Hunt to drive through the puddles to get the tires home. Jochen Mass immediately understood, and he began searching for the puddles to drive through.
Hunt was so focused and preoccupied with winning the grand prix that he failed to give any consideration to the state of his tires. He either ignored the sign or didn’t understand it. With remarkable candor, Caldwell told Hunt’s biographer Christopher Hilton: “James handled the race very badly. He disobeyed clear instructions. In previous races we’d suffered the same problem: You went from a wet track to a dry track, and the wet tires overheat. They’ve so much more rubber on them, and when they begin to slide around in the dry, the rubber boils and starts to rip off. The sign was to get the drivers to drive in puddles on the straight bits of the track. That kept the temperature down, and while you’d get less grip, the tires certainly lasted longer.
“We hung this out to James and Jochen, who were traveling in line astern. Jochen saw the sign and immediately turned right, nearly hitting the pit wall in a big cloud of spray. Then, lap after lap, they came down the straight together: James running clear and open in the dry, Jochen in the wet. In the end, we were waving this sign over the pit wall.”
Mass continually sought out the wet areas of the track to keep the tire temperatures down. As the pace of the race dropped dramatically, his tires kept in good condition. Mario Andretti was also searching out the puddles.
While all this was going on, Niki Lauda decided not to wait for the result of the race, and he left the circuit to go to the airport
. Win or lose the championship, he did not want to be part of the post-race hoopla, as he called it. He told Marlene he wanted to catch the earlier flight. When Mauro Forghieri realized what Lauda was doing, he said he would come as well. While Lauda walked away to get in the minibus that would take him, his eyes were glued to the track. But as the bus drew out of the circuit, he put it to the back of his mind, closed his eyes, and dreamed he was already home. On the car radio they listened to the Japanese commentator until they approached the terminal. As Lauda remembered: “A quarter of an hour later, the race result was announced, and at that very moment our car went into the underpass near the airport and we couldn’t hear.”
Meanwhile, Jochen Mass was getting frustrated because, having preserved his tires, he caught up with Hunt and could easily have passed him and won the race. But he knew he couldn’t win the world championship with what was at stake, although Hunt still could have been champion from second place. In the end, it didn’t matter; a frustrated Mass lost concentration on lap 35 and glanced a barrier, bending his front suspension and being forced to retire.
So by two-thirds of the race distance, Hunt was still the comfortable leader. But his tires were degrading fast and he was slowing. Patrick Depailler’s six-wheeled Tyrrell-Ford started to catch him up. The six-wheeler’s tires were coping well as Hunt’s rubber deteriorated rapidly. Depailler soon passed Hunt, and so did Andretti.
Andretti’s tires were in great shape, as the wily American kept them cool by driving through the standing water. Like Hunt, Depailler hadn’t done so, and his tires were worn out. Within two laps, his Tyrrell-Ford was forced into a pit stop for six new tires, and Andretti took the lead.
There was now a tricky decision to make, and the McLaren team decided to leave it to Hunt whether or not to pit for new tires. Depailler did pit, and that lifted Hunt to second and Andretti to leader, making his decision even trickier. As Caldwell recalled: “We had two signs for bringing drivers in. The first said IN and was compulsory. The second sign was an arrow offering the opportunity to come in if the driver wanted to. Both signs were well recognized; James knew them, so there was no doubt about what we were doing.”