Shunt

by Tom Rubython

It was not until he returned to England that Hunt realised what a fool he had been. It suddenly dawned on him just how favorably Mosley had treated him and just how stupid he himself had been in his public criticism of the team. But he was still bitter and didn’t help himself with a sarky press release written with Chris Marshall’s help. Hunt said in the release: “It was only the climax of a situation which had existed all year, and it stemmed from a variety of problems caused basically by a lack of interest and enthusiasm. I made every effort to inject either interest or enthusiasm but without success. Thus I now feel that the interest of my career would be better served by racing on my own.” According to his biographer Gerald Donaldson, James told friends privately: “Ford Germany approached them with a bag of gold to put Mass in the car, so they fired me and snatched it.” In stark contrast to Hunt, Mosley simply said: “Our Monaco row was only a short affair, and it was soon all amicable and friendly again.”

  But then, Mosley perhaps could afford to be more magnanimous about the situation; the damage to Hunt was self inflicted, and it had left him dangerously exposed.

  And then the recriminations began. Hunt told Marshall the fiasco was all his fault. He had listened to his advice and it was now up to him to help him out of the hole into which he had fallen as a result. Marshall’s French driver was still suspended so he agreed Hunt could drive his March 713M at the next F3 race in Chimay in Belgium – but this was only while Marshall’s regular driver was suspended. Marshall had no real interest in helping Hunt beyond that. Like many in the paddock, he appeared to believe that Hunt had shot his bolt and was on his way out of motor racing. But Hunt believed Marshall owed him because of the self-evidently poor advice he had given him in Monaco. He felt betrayed by his friend’s indifference to his plight. But the one-off race offer was all he had, so he hid his true feelings.

  Chris Marshall had always been a minor league player in motor racing hoping to hit the big time. The highlight of his career had been in 1971, when he had effectively run the March works team. But he had failed to seize the opportunity. Now, he rented out his second-hand old cars to drivers who could pay.

  With his works drive gone, Hunt was forced to hang about with people like Marshall, desperate for even the crumbs from his table. It was the lowest point of his life, and Marshall wasn’t much help.

  The humiliation of being fired by Max Mosley only served to increase Hunt’s determination to succeed. An inner calling drove him on, and, as he was now so accustomed to setbacks, he told people he used them as inspiration to train his mind to turn every negative into a positive.

  In fact, insisting he had a negative psyche, Hunt explained it thus: “Whenever I think I’m going to achieve something, it turns out that I don’t. I always have to ‘negative think’ to get the best out of myself.” He added: “I’m a great fatalist.” He added the Hunt theory of reverse psychology was to turn negatives into positives. Indeed, many people believed he thrived on adversarial situations, and if they didn’t exist, he certainly seemed to go out of his way to create them.

  But after his altercation with Mosley at Monaco, there was no need to manufacture any adversity. It had risen and hit him square in the face. Hunt was no fool and he realised that he had to change. He confided in Ian Phillips, who advised him the best he could. As Phillips recalls: “There came a realisation in 1971 that ‘I’ve got to get my act together.’ But he couldn’t lose the ‘Hunt the Shunt’ tag, and the world was closing in a little bit.”

  Hunt was constantly wondering to himself why he was not able to get up and out of Formula 3 as had all his contemporaries. According to David Gray, a lifelong friend, he was hampered by his own attitude to life: “James never outwardly took his racing seriously. To the outside world, he gave a very casual impression of his craft and it appeared it didn’t bother him whether he succeeded or not. Of course, this wasn’t the case.”

  Hunt would admit that his approach to racing was not particularly deep. In an interview with Autosport’s Nigel Roebuck, he revealed that he believed his approach to be both “good and bad.” He readily admitted he did not take the Ayrton Senna or Alain Prost approach to motor racing to “think himself ” into a Grand Prix, and he “was never one to allow distractions to get to him.”

  He also thought it was a fault, as he said: “In bad times, some drivers will get stuck into the root of the problem and regenerate enthusiasm in the team. I was never the man to do that.”

  Hunt also believed he was an instinctive racer and that this hampered his career by making other people believe he was not serious: “I was never much of a worker, never that much involved with my racing outside of when I got in the car and started to drive it. It’s the same with squash, but put me on a court and I give everything. I turn on in a competitive situation.”

  Hunt also realised he could not easily change; he was what he was. But for now, he was stuck, and looked to Chris Marshall to help him out.

  Always at the back of his mind during his row with Mosley was the assurance that Marshall would provide him with a drive if all else failed. He also believed that Marshall’s old March 713M was faster than the new March 723, which he regarded as a dog. Armed with the year old car, Hunt believed he could beat Jochen Mass and the works March, and that his performance would persuade someone with deep pockets to give him a Formula One drive.

  But when push came to shove, Marshall only offered soothing words. Marshall told him his regular driver would be returning, and that on this occasion, the money had to come first. As one close friend observed: “Chris couldn’t give James a regular drive, as he needed the money.”

  Marshall even had the audacity to suggest that Hunt give up his motor racing dream, retire and get a regular job. Hunt turned round and looked at Marshall as if he had gone out of his mind. The thick-skinned southerner quickly realised that the idea was a non-starter and wished he had never said it. It was not at all what Hunt wanted to hear at that moment, and their friendship, although they remained close, was never quite the same again.

  Marshall, of course, puts a different interpretation on it all. He has recounted his own version of events for Hunt’s various biographers and, interestingly and perhaps most tellingly, declined to speak to the author of this book about the matter.

  After Hunt died, Marshall effectively claimed he was his saviour during this period, maintaining it was he who helped dream up a plan to persuade Max Mosley to give Hunt a March F2 chassis as compensation for sacking him. However, a close member of the Hunt family remains sceptical: “Chris definitely inflated his role in James’ story.”

  But, to his credit, Marshall did admit Hunt was angry with him about the affair. He told Gerald Donaldson: “He jumped up and thumped my desk so hard I thought he was going to break his hand. He said: ‘No way, no way, no way. I’m not getting a job.’” Marshall says Hunt yelled at him at the top of his voice, and Marshall told Hunt: “Okay, fine, right. We’ll have to find a Plan ‘B’.”

  Now, the cheeky Marshall claims he was the architect of the Plan ‘B’ that emerged that day. It’s an interesting claim since, in reality, there was no Plan ‘B’. Hunt was down and out of Formula 3. No one wanted him, and no one cared about him enough to give him a drive.

  Only a miracle could save Hunt now, and that is exactly what happened.

  CHAPTER 13

  The turning point Meeting Bubbles and Alexander 1972

  Hunt’s career is saved from oblivion

  Caught in a bind, Hunt had no Plan ‘B’ and no get-out-of-jail-free card to play. He had already used up all his plan Bs earlier in his career and had already played all his cards. Make no mistake, James Hunt was down and out of motor racing midway through 1972. He had literally crashed his way out of the sport and, as one friend sagely observed, “James was down and out, and without a pot to piss in.”

  At this point, there can be no doubt that Hunt was finished; he had reached the point at which he had to give up on motor racing and find another job.


  After being sacked by March and temporarily driving for Chris Marshall’s team, Hunt seemed to have learnt nothing Along with Marshall, Hunt put out a press release with what appeared to be a veiled attack on his previous employers, saying: “I am delighted to be driving for a team with so much enthusiasm.” The implicit attack on the powerful March organisation was not only unjustified, but crazy at a time when Hunt had no hope.

  And then, somehow, Hunt was saved. Just at that moment , a miraculous and most fortuitous event occurred; one that was to save his career and eventually make him Formula One world champion just four and a half years later. As Gerald Donaldson sagely put it: “It was as if there was an act of god, and Alexander Hesketh was put down on earth in front of him.” Donaldson’s analysis was absolutely spot-on. The Plan ‘B’ Hunt didn’t have somehow materialised in the unlikely form of a makeshift toilet located in the middle of a Belgian field.

  Some months before the fateful meeting, a man called Lord Hesketh had set up a Formula 3 racing team for a friend called Anthony ‘Bubbles’ Horsley, whom he had met at a wedding. It was a coming together of people with like minds. Hesketh was a latent petrolhead and Horsley was a fully paid-up one.

  The Northamptonshire-based baron lived a mile away from Silverstone race track, and as soon as he could afford to indulge in motor racing, he did. He was under no illusions about his own ability. Although he could drive a road car extremely fast and skilfully, he was too rotund to fit in a race car. He weighed 245 pounds and, even if he could get in a car, the extra weight meant he would be seriously uncompetitive.

  He also had an early scare when he crashed his road car into a combine harvester. The expensive harvester was so severely damaged that he quickly realised how dangerous and embarrassing the endeavour could be. He also realised how very lucky he was to be alive, and Lord Hesketh very much enjoyed being alive.

  With a driving career out of the question, Hesketh chose the next best thing – owning his own race team, which was something he could easily afford to do at the time.

  Born Thomas Alexander, he was only the third Baron Hesketh. In 1955, when Thomas Alexander was just five years old, his father, the second baron, died, and his son succeeded to the peerage, but not to the fortune. The third Baron would have to wait another 16 years for that. In 1971, when he finally turned 21, he inherited a large part of the family fortune in cash along with the estate, called Easton Neston, near Towcester, in Northamptonshire. The estate was 9,000 acres of farmland and included the famous Towcester racecourse. The cash element was around US$3 million.

  Alexander Hesketh was a true English eccentric in the very best tradition. Always rebellious and unconventional, when he was 15 he ran away from Ampleforth College, in Yorkshire. After leaving school at the earliest opportunity, he sold used cars in Leicestershire and then went to Hong Kong to work as a shipbroker. He quickly moved to Los Angeles and trained as a banker.

  As soon as he got his hands on the family money, he splashed out. He took over management of the existing family-owned businesses and set up his own group of companies based in London. To embellish his image, he bought a diamond-encrusted gold Rolex and outfitted himself in monogrammed shirts, with the family crest specially embroidered beside his initials. He also bought a new Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, a lightweight Porsche Carrera RS, a Mercedes SSK and a telephone-equipped Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, each panel of which was outlined in a gold pinstripe. He smoked expensive cigars and drank Cristal champagne.

  It was an expensive lifestyle, but one he could well afford. But one character facet would prove very expensive over the years: he had a low boredom threshold.

  And that led to the racing team.

  The initial catalyst came when Hesketh met Horsley at a wedding in 1967, where they were both guests. Horsley was running his own used car business, wheeling and dealing in luxury motor cars. Realising who he was, Horsley tried to sell Hesketh a second-hand Rolls Royce he had in stock. But instead, Hesketh turned the tables and sold Horsley a Mercedes-Benz car he wanted to get rid of. Hesketh, who was a mere 17 at the time and with no money of his own, had sold Horsley his mother’s road car to raise himself some cash. When Horsley found out, he had to hand it back and retrieve his money from the young Lord – which wasn’t easy, as he had already spent it. A naturally furious Lady Hesketh packed her son off to America and hoped the time away would instill some sense into him.

  Somehow, through this ridiculous saga, the two men became close friends. It seemed that the manner in which Horsley had handled the difficult situation had left an impression on Lord Hesketh, which he was never to forget. He had impressed Hesketh by “understanding his dilemma” and showing forbearance, and it helped forge an incredible bond of loyalty between the two men.

  Hesketh proved a good judge of character, as Horsley was a very impressive young man. Born in Newmarket, Suffolk, in 1943, Horsley – like Hesketh – left school as soon as he could. His well-to-do family forced him into an estate management career, but he quickly realised it wasn’t for him and, in 1962, when he was 18, he moved to London to wait in restaurants and drive vans in order to make a living.

  He got a job in motor racing selling used race cars and fell in with the west London racing set, which included Frank Williams and Piers Courage, both then aspiring racing drivers. Williams and Courage were part of a group that also included Charlie Lucas, Jochen Rindt and Charles Creighton-Stewart, all of whom rented lock-up garages in old railway arches off London’s Goldhawk Road. Hesketh remembers: “They used to come and stay with me to go to Silverstone because it was handy.” And cheap.

  Like them, Horsley bought a second-hand Formula 3 car and went around Europe racing when he could afford it, sleeping in his van and living off the prize and appearance money the rest of the time.

  He eventually wrote off his car at the Nürburgring and, without any cash to repair it, retired. With his racing career seemingly over, he departed on a year-long excursion through India and Nepal on foot, earning money along the way.

  Returning home, he decided to resume his former career as a car dealer and, finding economic conditions more conducive, attracted enough backing from friends and family to set up a new company he called Horsley’s Horseless Carriages. Primarily, he sold secondhand vans and, amazingly, he decided to become an actor in his spare time. Proving quite good at it, he appeared in some lucrative television commercials.

  In 1971, when Hesketh returned from America, he renewed his acquaintance with Horsley and, when his inheritance was confirmed, he decided to go racing – with his friend doing the driving.

  They decided to run a two car team of Dastles, cars built by a young man called Geoff Rumble. The Dastle was hopelessly slow, but Horsley also suspected that part of the problem might be his lack of driving skills. A driver called Steve Thompson was hired to drive the car at the race supporting the Monaco Grand Prix and, against the odds, qualified for the race.

  Halfway through the first season of 1971, Bubbles Horsley found himself with a dilemma. The team had spent substantial sums to get set up and he knew he was wasting his friend’s money.

  He decided he needed a teammate to find out just how slow he was. Horsley had noticed James Hunt earlier in the season, when he was driving for March, but hadn’t dared speak to him. As Horsley admitted: “We were frankly a huge bloody joke as a Formula 3 team. I had stopped driving at the end of 1966 and had come back in, and that had proved a mistake.”

  By chance, Hunt and Horsley finally met at a most fortuitous time, at a French circuit called Chimay, in Belgium. Hunt was racing the March owned by Marshall, and Horsley was racing Hesketh’s Dastle.

  Hunt was about to leave the sport when he and Horsley set out from a different directions across a field in a French farm, which served as the circuit’s paddock. They suddenly came face-to-face in one of those moments of destiny that was to change both of their lives forever.

  Horsley told Hunt biographer Gerald Donaldson: “We met in the middle
of a field full of cowpats. We sort of found each other; we sort of needed each other. It was a marriage of convenience.” Horsley adds: “No other driver was exactly knocking on our door. Nobody was about to give him a drive either.”

  Horsley admits he was so naïve at the time that he based his opinion on how Hunt looked: “He looked right. You looked at him and you said to yourself: ‘Now that bloke ought to be quick.’ You couldn’t put your finger on it, it was just a feeling.”

  The two men found an instant rapport in that Belgian cow field. At first, Hunt didn’t want to let on how badly he needed a drive, as he admitted: “For once I kept quiet and let Bubbles talk.” But despite that, at the meeting, James Hunt became number one driver for Hesketh Racing, a post he was destined to hold for five years through a quick progression from Formula 3 to Formula One. It was the start of a remarkable journey.

  Although Horsley and Hunt quickly agreed terms, the next step was to introduce Hunt to Lord Hesketh, and the first opportunity came as the Lord was relieving himself in the paddock toilets, which consisted of a few buckets and an army surplus tent that had apparently been in service for both the first and second World Wars. Hunt joined him in the latrine and they had their first discussion. Whatever the exact truth of it, this was the venue for the meeting that would decide Hunt’s future. Horsley told Hesketh in the presence of Hunt: “I have hired a driver and become team manager.”

  Hesketh didn’t know who Hunt was, but he remembers his first impression of him as a “gangling, blond, long-haired, knock-kneed youth, smiling very nicely and obviously rather pleased with himself.”

  When they exited the tent, Chris Marshall joined the conversation and even managed to negotiate Hunt a miniscule salary for his driving services. Horsley was not quite sure what he had taken on: “James wasn’t your typical up-and-coming racing driver of that time. He was quite tricky and argumentative.”