by Tom Rubython
While the Egyptians had successfully attacked across the Suez Canal in Sinai, in the north the Syrians had attacked the Golan s. But within a week, upon recovering from the initial surprise, the Israeli army launched a counterattack into Syria. The Israelis also counterattacked the Egyptian armies and crossed the Suez Canal, advancing south and east. Israel encircled Egypt’s Third Army and, by the end of the fighting, Israeli forces were 40 kilometres from Damascus and 101 kilometres from Cairo.
As the Arab nations began losing the war, the oil weapon planned by President Sadat and King Faisal was brought into play on 8th October. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) suddenly informed western oil companies that it wanted to revise the 1971 Tehran Price Agreement. The announcement was intended as a warning, but the United States responded with a massive airlift of arms to Israel on 16th October. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar unilaterally raised the price of a barrel of oil to US$3.65 per barrel. It was an increase of 17 per cent overnight. They also announced cuts in production.
The United States refused to be intimidated and, on 19th October, President Nixon offered US$2.2 billion in emergency aid to Israel. That prompted OPEC to announce a complete oil embargo to the United States and other western countries. Oil prices now doubled and then trebled as western countries began bidding sky-high for any oil that had already left the gulf and was being held in storage.
On 26th October, the Arab-Israeli war was ended, with Israel winning. But the economic war waged on as the oil embargoes intensified. The situation escalated dramatically on 5th November when OPEC announced it was cutting overall production by a quarter on top of previous cuts.
By late November, the western world was in a panic, and petrol rationing began in most countries. In January 1974, OPEC cut production by another five per cent.
By this time, the Saudi oil minister Sheikh Yamani had become effective head of OPEC and its chief negotiator. He was a moderate and, on 17th March, the oil embargo was ended and production returned to normal. By then, however, oil prices had spiked to as much as US$14 a barrel; some six times what they had been a year earlier. The Israelis may have won the battle, but the Arab nations had won the economic war. And there was little doubt whose was the greater victory.
The price spike and shortage had caused all the western economies to collapse into recession, and the stock market fell by as much as 70 per cent in several countries. The stock market did not begin to recover until December 1974.
Initially, none of this seemed to trouble Lord Hesketh. Thinking things would quickly return to normal, he carried on with his plans for the Formula One team as if nothing had happened.
On the first working day after the New Year, in January 1974, the new Hesketh 308 emerged from the Easton Neston stable block and the world’s press were called into witness it. Postlethwaite presided over the launch of the new car. The Hesketh 308 also had a new colour scheme. White, with thick red and blue stripes on its flanks, the car was described by Hunt as “beautiful”, a descriptor usually reserved for his women.
Bizarrely, Hesketh declared that the car’s designation, 308, stood for the number of litres (three) and the ‘08’ for the number of cylinders (eight).
Although the car was all-new and had been designed from the ground up by Postlethwaite, it was clearly an adaptation of the March 712. Postlethwaite had designed the new car and then ordered in all the components, including the aluminium monocoque chassis, from outside suppliers. Virtually the entire car was made by small factories in and around Northamptonshire, the area later known as Motorsport Valley. In effect, the Hesketh mechanics took delivery of parts and then assembled them. Provided the original designs were correct, and there was money available to pay and motivate the suppliers to deliver on time, it was not a particularly difficult job. The larger components such as the engine came from Cosworth and the gearbox from a supplier called Hewland.
The plan was to test the new car and then quickly to air freight it to Argentina for the first race. The old March 731 had already been sent on the special FOCA chartered Boeing 747 jumbo jet with the plan for it to act as a spare car if anything went wrong with the new one. FOCA, the Formula One Constructors Association organised by Bernie Ecclestone, chartered special planes on which all Formula One freight travelled to races outside Europe.
Although Lord Hesketh was confined to his bed with the flu at the time, he did make an appearance to watch the new car being wheeled out of the Easton Neston stable block. Quickly forgetting his sniffles, he expounded to the press his philosophy for Formula One. Telling the assembled journalists how inspiring the setting of Easton Neston had been for Postlethwaite and the mechanics, he revealed that he had converted a farmhouse on his estate into residential flats for the mechanics, who had been working long hours.
Calling his team “rule-breakers”, Hesketh continued: “We’ve managed to break many of the unwritten rules of Formula One.” He then listed a series of negatives, although they turned out to be rules that no Formula One insider had ever heard of. But the Lord, his mind numbed with medicinal whisky, couldn’t resist the sound of his own voice that day. He pontificated about Formula One and praised Bubbles Horsley profusely: “For me, Bubbles is the man who has made Hesketh Racing what it is. He is the guy who revs James up; he’s the guy who stops the doctor from falling asleep as he is prone to do, thinking about wings and ride s and things.”
He went on to praise Hesketh Racing’s “esprit de corps”, noting that it didn’t exist in any other team. “If you look at it like a football team, all the other teams have played so many games that they have a certain amount of staleness, whereas we’re still filled with a childish enthusiasm. And I think one of the essential ingredients of our team is that we have to keep it funny.”
The speech was mostly nonsense and “rot” as one journalist called it, but Hesketh clearly enjoyed delivering it.
The Hesketh mechanics, who by then numbered as many as 12, looked on with bleary eyes. This small group of people had produced a miracle getting the new car assembled in time.
Hesketh went on to proclaim that he had adopted a yellow teddy bear as the team’s mascot. Having seen a teddy bear illustration on a postcard in an airport, he gave the bear a helmet with a Union Jack flag on the front and the logo ‘Super Bear’. The plan was to launch a campaign called ‘Back British Bears.’ He did later erect a big poster in central London featuring the bear and the words: “Hesketh Racing, the biggest little racing team in the world – racing for Britain and racing for you.” Hesketh talked more about the new logo than he did the car itself.
Explaining that he was trying to “sell Britain”, Hesketh added: “We want to give the public, to whom the Hesketh Team seems very important, the opportunity to participate and identify their support, both at home and abroad.”
The hyperbole continued all morning and, to go with the launch of the new car that day, Bubbles Horsley had had a book printed, entitled The Heavily Censored History of Hesketh Racing, which he intended to sell to fans. In it, Lord Hesketh had written: “When I first entered motor sport, most people thought me a buffoon with a lot of money and astonishingly little sense. However, this theory is now totally demolished, not so much through the heroic efforts of a man with a long history of attempted suicide by means of thumping into Armco [steel guardrails] called Hunt, nor by a figure sought by Interpol in every country where loons do speed, known as Bubbles, nor by the invention of the madman Postlethwaite, but by the fact that I have persuaded you to unload 1s/6d [7.5p] for this nonsensical publication. Nothing has given me greater faith in the future of Hesketh Racing than this selfless act of extravagance on your part which indicates that Bears are destined to breed at a rate hitherto unknown in British history.”
There has never been a Formula One launch like it before, nor indeed since. It was said by some who witnessed it to have been the most extraordinary product launch they had ever attended.
After
the photographs and the speeches, the Hesketh mechanics loaded the new 308 into the transporter and took it to Silverstone for its first run. Hesketh declined to accompany the transporter and returned to his bed fortified with a few more whiskies, evidently very pleased with himself. The following morning, upon reading the newspapers’ almost verbatim account of what he had said at the launch, even Hesketh had to admit that much of it had been sheer nonsense.
At Silverstone, Hunt got in the car and did 12 laps in the wet. Although the fact that it ran was in itself a huge achievement, it was immediately obvious that the car was far from race ready, and an immediate decision was made to use the old March-Ford 731 at the first two races in Argentina and Brazil and to save the new car for the European season. It was a sensible decision and immediately took the pressure off Postlethwaite. The new car was shipped to São Paulo a few weeks later to act as an emergency spare car and to participate in a test session planned after the Brazilian Grand Prix as well as in a non-championship race, but the team would not risk it in a Grand Prix.
The Formula One circus gathered in Buenos Aires for the Argentinian Grand Prix on 13th January. There were plenty of team and driver changes but the big news was that Fittipaldi had moved from Lotus to McLaren and that Jacky Ickx had replaced him at Lotus. Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni were the new drivers at Ferrari after its new boss, the youthful 26-year-old Luca di Montezemolo, had ejected many of the old staff – including the drivers – and begun the task of rebuilding the team. After Jackie Stewart’s retirement and the death of François Cevert, Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler were also a new pairing at Tyrrell.
Hunt was in top form in the March, and some members of the team had already begun to ask themselves why it had gone to all the expense of building a new car if the March was so competitive. But much of the competitiveness was due to the fact that it was one of the few cars still racing on Firestone tyres. Firestone was winding down its involvement in Formula One and most teams had moved on to Goodyear tyres in anticipation of it. But the old Firestone tyre construction was as good as ever and the alchemists back in the United States who mixed the secret rubber solutions that made the tyres work were still in place and determined to leave the sport in a blaze of glory. Combined with the inevitable complacency of Goodyear, which shod all the top teams and was going to win come what may, Hunt’s car was left with an incredible one-off advantage to exploit.
Hunt recorded the fastest lap on the Friday qualifying session and ended up fifth on the grid. He even out-qualified the new Ferrari being driven by Lauda, who could only manage eighth. In truth, it was all down to the Firestone tyres which were working superbly on the March chassis; the tyres were perfectly suited to both man and machine. But, amazingly, no one realised this at the time. Everybody credited Postlethwaite’s skill for keeping the old March competitive over the winter. But in truth, he had not touched it and it was in exactly the same specification with which it had ended the season a few moths earlier in America.
Ronnie Peterson took pole in his Lotus Ford, with Regazzoni’s Ferrari coming in second on the grid and Fittipaldi’s McLaren third. Peter Revson’s Shadow-Ford came in fourth, with Hunt alongside it.
At the start, Peterson got the lead and Hunt was quickly up to second place. Hunt then passed Peterson halfway round the first lap, but Peterson let him go ahead. He thought Hunt was driving wildly, and he was right. Almost as soon as he had passed, Hunt went off the track and the Swede re-took his lead. Hunt was forced to the pit with superficial damage but had to retire ten laps later as the radiator had been damaged when he had gone off the track. In reality, Hunt had been astonished to be leading the Grand Prix and to find himself so much quicker than Peterson.
Horsley however was enraged, telling journalists that Hunt had “lost his head” and thrown away his chances on the first lap of 53. Indeed he had. Hunt’s tyre advantage was so pronounced he could have walked it that day.
When Hunt retired, Horsley marched the sheepish looking driver off to an empty office and, as he would later put it, “bawled him out.” Denny Hulme went on to win the race for McLaren, eclipsing his new teammate, while Lauda debuted for Ferrari in second and Regazzoni third.
Hunt realised he had got it wrong in a big way, and admitted as much later: “I arrived at the hairpin in the lead and unexpectedly clutchless. Quite frankly, it freaked me into a mistake. I got confused and overshot the hairpin. I looked down for a moment and off I went. It was a mistake of inexperience. I was over-excited at being in the lead. I had never led a Grand Prix before and I was taken by surprise when the clutch went.”
Overall, however, the team was pleased with the competitiveness of the car. The Hesketh team celebrated and enjoyed themselves lavishly, as Hesketh continued to allocate far more cash to what Horsley now called the “leisure division” than to the race team. Around US$16,000 was spent on entertainment in a week in South America, as Horsley remembers: “We were actually very, very serious about the racing, but the leisure division – the party division – was run by the Lord.” The team was high on its success at the opening race of the year.
Once the partying subsided, the serious racing took over. And it didn’t get more serious than when Lord Hesketh arrived at the Interlagos circuit in his chauffeur-driven Rolls, which had been rented for the weekend. Ordering the chauffeur to stop the car, Hesketh got out to inspect one of the flagpoles at the entrance to the circuit. What he saw infuriated him – the British Union Jack flag was flying upside down. He marched up to the organiser’s office and demanded to see the circuit manager. After a dressing down from the Lord, the hapless man shouted out something to his minions and immediately the flag was taken down. Hesketh then went into the paddock, gathered up his team of mechanics and, as they stood at the bottom of the flagpole, they raised the flag again; the correct way up. They all saluted. It was a perfectly earnest moment.
Unfortunately, the fortunes of the team were not to be helped by the flag being the right way up. The weather was incredibly hot and the March 731 handled badly on the sticky Interlagos tarmac. The Firestone tyres were useless at the higher temperature levels, which is when the Goodyears really came into their own. The stickier Goodyear tyres reigned supreme on this occasion, and Hunt only qualified 18th and managed to limp home in ninth place. The race was won by Fittipaldi in his McLaren-Ford, with Regazzoni second. Ickx pleased Lotus by finishing third.
It was a necessary wakeup call, although the team still had no idea why it had been so successful in Buenos Aires and so awful at Interlagos.
After the race, the Hesketh team stayed on to test the new 308 car, which had been specially shipped in from England. The weather in England was so poor that any meaningful testing was proving impossible.
It turned out to be a stunning debut. Hunt’s best lap in the new car was four seconds faster than his best time in the March a few days earlier. He even beat Fittipaldi’s pole position time for the Grand Prix. There were a few other teams also testing that day and they were stunned. The new car easily topped the test times. Horsley recalls: “It was very special when our new car was so quick right out of the box.” But it flattered to deceive. The temperature had dropped dramatically after the race and the harder Firestones were brilliant, while the stickier, softer Goodyears were much less effective in the cooler temperatures.
The telephone lines buzzed red hot with reports of the new car’s speed, and the news reverberated around the motor sport community in England that night. Horsley would say later that the São Paulo test session was the most satisfying moment in his entire time in the sport.
Unusually, a non-championship race had been arranged for the following weekend at a new 5.5-kilometre circuit in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. The non-championship race was called the Presidente Medici Grand Prix and was scheduled for 3rd February. The plan was to race the new car, but it was thwarted by a leaking fuel tank that couldn’t be fixed so Hunt raced his March instead. He started on the last row of the grid
and retired after four laps when his gearbox broke. Fittipaldi won the race; much to the delight of local fans. Although the Brasilia race turned out to be a total disaster, the team did earn decent money for turning up.
The new car was shipped back to England with high hopes. The next race was a month away and there was plenty of time to get it ready for the South African Grand Prix on 30th March. There were, however, plenty of doubts about whether the South African Grand Prix would indeed go ahead. The oil crisis peaked at the end of March and South Africa was suffering more than most from the rise in price; the result being an electricity shortage in a country which relied almost exclusively on oil-fired electricity-generating stations.
As soon as Hunt and the new car were back in London, serious testing began at Silverstone. Hunt hated testing, but he knew it was his big chance. The new car had obvious potential.
The South African Grand Prix did go ahead, although the Hesketh team was soon wishing it hadn’t. The new car bombed. Hunt admitted later that its speed was totally dependent on how well the Firestones worked at any given circuit. And in very hot temperatures, they didn’t. But the team were simply unaware of this at the time. No one had any idea the Firestone tyres were responsible for Hunt being so fast one weekend and so slow the next.
At Kyalami, the 308 had a bad vibration problem all weekend and the team was ill-equipped to sort it out. As a result, Hunt qualified 14th and retired when the car shook the gearbox to bits and it broke. The race marked Lauda’s first pole position for Ferrari, while the race was won by Carlos Reutemann’s Brabham-Ford.