Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  Hunt’s victory was a disaster for Lauda; there would be no more whooping and hollering or congratulatory phone calls. Regazzoni’s failure to overtake Hunt was telling, and Enzo Ferrari was said to have decided on the basis of that performance alone to sack the Swiss driver as soon as he found a replacement. The championship score now read: Lauda 58, Hunt 56.

  As Hunt began to win more and more races, he also became more and more disgusted with the amount of money McLaren was paying him. He was actually earning much less than he had at Hesketh the year before, when the team had been on the breadline. At Hesketh, he had been paid extra by sponsors for every promotional day. But at McLaren, they were all gratis as part of his retainer. He had picked up around US$70,000 from such promotional outings in 1975 but hardly anything in 1976. With his share of prize money, he looked set to earn US$100,000; exactly the same as he had at Hesketh.

  Hunt decided to have it out with Mayer straight after the podium celebrations. They had a brief but furious row, with Mayer telling Hunt to “fuck off” and Hunt saying: “I might just do that.” Of course, neither men meant it, but Mayer was sticking to his contract. As Alastair Caldwell remembers: “James and Teddy were always on about money. It got to the stage where James decided we weren’t paying him enough, although he’d been only too happy to come and drive for us for nothing at the beginning of the year. By now, of course, he’d decided he was a superstar who needed paying a lot of money. That became a constant source of friction.”

  With his friends waiting outside to celebrate his birthday, Hunt decided he couldn’t be bothered with it. John Hugenholz, the Zandvoort circuit manager, presented Hunt with a giant birthday cake in the shape of the track. It was meant as a token to mark his birthday and as a celebration of his win the year before, but it now became an ever more poignant and appropriate symbol of all he had achieved.

  His mother and younger brother David had journeyed to Holland for James’ birthday and had been watching the race from the grandstands. Anxiety gave way to relief and delight when they belatedly realised he had won the race.

  Afterwards, Hunt and his English friends built a huge camp fire in the sand dunes of Zandvoort. They were joined by his family and they celebrated into the night and passed out on the sand, incoherent with drink. His need to celebrate his birthday along with the anniversary of his first win combined with his latest victory all inevitably took their toll.

  The following morning, Hunt returned to London and caught a plane for Toronto and travelled to Quebec for a Formula Atlantic race in the quaint town of Trois-Rivières. He had been offered US$10,000 to race in the Formula Atlantic series, which was the North American equivalent of Formula Two. Three fellow Formula One drivers, Patrick Depailler, Vittorio Brambilla and Alan Jones, also made the trip.

  The Formula One drivers found themselves facing a young Canadian called Gilles Villeneuve. Villeneuve had sold his house to fund his racing and had become the leading Canadian driver at the age of 26. Hunt was Villeneuve’s teammate in the Ecurie Canada March team. The Canadian was desperate to make his mark in front of the Formula One stars. Despite struggling with an unfamiliar car with peculiar handling characteristics, he qualified on pole; five places ahead of Hunt.

  But in the actual race, Hunt gained confidence with every lap and finished third. Alan Jones was second behind the young Villeneuve, whose pace impressed everybody from Europe.

  So much so that, after the race, Hunt called Teddy Mayer and John Hogan in England and recommended they sign him before anyone else did. Mayer eventually did sign Villeneuve, but after one race lost him to Ferrari.

  John Hogan remembers it well: “As soon as he came back, he said to me: ‘Hogie, I promise you, that bloke is the dog’s bollocks. He blew me off fair and square.’ So on James’ word, we did a deal with Villeneuve to hold him.”

  After his Formula Atlantic experience, Hunt travelled south to the Michigan International Speedway to take part in an IROC saloon car race on the oval and earn himself another US$10,000 for his trouble.

  The IROC series used identical, modified Chevrolet Camaros that were regularly raced by top American drivers in something akin to a celebrity series. Hunt managed to qualify his Camaro on pole at an average speed of nearly 150 miles per hour. It was his first experience of driving on an oval, and he found he was good at it. Oval driving is all about courage and nerve, and Hunt possessed those two talents in abundance. But he found that driving on an oval on his own and racing against 20 others cars whilst doing so were entirely different propositions.

  Unable to manage, and trying too hard, he crashed into a concrete wall at 150 miles per hour. He had a very narrow escape from serious injury when a piece of metal guard rail pierced the cockpit of his car. The car was badly damaged, and Hunt told the organisers exactly what he thought of IROC’s safety standards.

  Hunt was shaken and surprised at his inability to race other cars on an oval track. He said: “I got in the race and didn’t have a clue because of all the high-speed drafting. I was right out of my depth. To tell you the truth, I was scared shitless.” However, that didn’t stop him from accepting another US$10,000 offer to race later in the year.

  After his brief American sojourn, Hunt returned to Europe to compete in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Whilst Hunt had been away, stories appeared in Italian newspapers speculating that the Texaco fuel used by McLaren-Ford was illegal. Texaco took precautions and double checked that its fuel was within the regulations. The maximum octane allowance was 102. However, the rules were vague and allowed teams to use the octane rating of the best available fuel in their country of origin plus one octane. The best available in Britain was 101 octane, which meant 102 octane would be the maximum allowed. But Ferrari was subject to other measurements prevailing in Italy, as were Ligier in France. In those countries, the top grade of fuel available was only 100 octane so Ferrari was limited to 101 octane. Hunt said: “The rules are very complicated and they are difficult to understand, but they state that you can use the top grade of commercially available fuel in the team’s country of origin plus a tolerance of one octane.”

  Those complicated rules would almost cost Hunt the world championship.

  And there was other news overshadowing the arguments about the strength of the petrol – as Niki Lauda came back from the dead.

  CHAPTER 25

  Back from the dead

  Niki Lauda returns at Monza

  On Wednesday 8th September, Niki Lauda’s close friend David Benson flew into Salzburg airport. He was there to meet Lauda and to travel with him on his private plane to Milan airport and onto Monza circuit for the Italian Grand Prix. Lauda was accompanied by his wife, Marlene, and Willy Dungl, his fitness trainer.

  Benson got an exclusive interview with Lauda on the flight and scooped the rest of the world’s press. How he did it no one knows to this day, but it was an amazing coup for the Daily Express newspaper, and the first and last time Lauda talked intimately about the accident and his recovery.

  He told Benson during that flight: “A lot of people have said that they think I am crazy to go back to racing so quickly. They say that a man with a face that is not like that of a human being but like a dead man’s skull should want to give up immediately. People who think like that are those who would probably be very happy to be ill and stay at home and not have to go out to work. This is not my attitude to life.

  “I do not enjoy life unless I am active and have something to do and look forward to. I must work. If I have an accident in my work then my aim must be to recover as soon as possible with all the help of modern medicine. Once I had decided to go on, then I had to make a comeback as quickly as possible. That is why I am here at Monza.

  “Let’s go back to the beginning – on Sunday 1st August at Nürburgring. I can’t remember the race from the moment I left the pits after making a tyre change at the end of the first lap. I drove about ten kilometres before the crash, but I can’t recall them.

  “The first
thing I remember is the sound of the helicopter engine starting up. I asked the pilot where we were and where we were going, and he told me we were leaving Adenau Hospital near the track to fly to Ludwigshafen Hospital about 45 minutes away, where they had a special burns unit. This must have been about 35 to 40 minutes after the accident.

  “Daniele Audetto, the Ferrari team manager, told me that at Adenau Hospital I was not unconscious and that I told him in detail where my road car was parked in the paddock, that Marlene, my wife, was coming in my plane to Cologne and that he should telephone her and say that I was alright and ask her to find me a good hospital – the best.

  “Audetto told me that together we agreed to Ludwigshafen but I don’t remember anything about it. My memory only really starts with the hospital and the helicopter. Now, up to the accident I would say I was unlucky. I didn’t like the Nürburgring, the conditions that day were bad and there had been all the problems about whether we should race there or not. Then, finally, came the accident.

  “From that moment, all the bad luck turned to good luck. First the four drivers pulled me out of the car and then, at Adenau Hospital, they said I was too critical for them to touch. So they sent me to the best hospital in Germany. Remember, that it was a Sunday afternoon but when I got to Ludwigshafen burns unit, the boss of the whole place just happened to be there at the time.

  He took one look at me and immediately decided that the burns on my face were secondary to the burns in the lungs. So he sent me to the intensive care unit in Mannheim. There, my luck was still good. The youngest professor in Germany, a man who will take over the big Munich hospital on 1st November, just happened to be working that Sunday. His name is Professor Peter and I owe him my life. He did everything absolutely right and never made a wrong move.

  “You must realise that the medical knowledge about treating lung damage is not as great as in some other areas. If, for example, I had been given oxygen – which would seem logical for someone with damaged lungs – I would have been dead immediately.

  “They showed me my face in a mirror. I looked at myself and I could not believe it. I looked like some grotesque animal because my whole head and neck were swollen to three times the normal size. You would not believe it could be a human being. I’m told that his is because I had been in 800 degrees of heat in the fire and the body had pumped excessive liquid to the burned areas. I was swelling up even as I looked in the mirror and then my eyes closed and I was blind for five days. Everything was a big mass of nothing.

  “The lungs were in bad condition, and when they X-rayed me on the Tuesday, they were getting worse. The thing they were worried about most was the oxygen count in my blood, which was below the life maintaining level of a figure of eight. It went down to a figure of 6.8 – so in theory there was no more life.

  “The doctors said and told my wife that there was no hope that I would survive. On the Sunday night, they put a tube down my throat into the lungs and connected it to a vacuum pump to drain off the liquid and the infections.

  “This was critical because if the pump was used too much, it would destroy the lungs. From the Sunday night, my brain was always functioning but I felt that my body was giving up. I could just hear voices very far away and a little out of reach. I concentrated on these voices to stop myself becoming completely unconscious.

  “I wanted to keep my mind awake to start the body working again. I knew that if I gave up mentally then I would be dead. My life was also saved because I was very fit before the accident. And as I have never smoked in my life, my lungs had maybe an extra per cent capacity which helped me work against the infection.

  “All the time I was listening to the doctors and trying to cooperate as much as possible – no matter what personal pain it would cost. For example, they could only use the vacuum pump to my lungs for about an hour at a time. But when I felt the lungs filling up, then I called for them to switch it on, even though the pain was enormous. The doctors told me that it was the first time that anyone had asked for the pump to be switched on themselves. But I knew that I could only survive if I followed every instruction of the doctors.

  “My wife Marlene was marvellous. It was very shocking for her but never once did I feel what she was going through when she was with me at the hospital. She would hold my hand and keep on telling me that I was going to get well again. She must have been terrified by my face but she only made me feel that I was a great man and gave me the will to get well. So many women would have cried or have become hysterical. I discovered that there was a much greater depth to Marlene than even I had realised.

  “I do not believe in a personal God, but I believe that there is something more than this life. And I live by the rules. My strength to live after the accident came from this, from my own mind. And from my wife.

  “At one point, I was asked if I wanted to see a priest. So I said: ‘OK.’ He came in and gave me the last rites, crossed my shoulder and said: ‘Goodbye my friend.’

  “I nearly had a heart attack! I wanted someone to help me to live in this world, not pass into the next. So I clung on to the voices and to my wife’s strength. I would not let myself become unconscious, because I was afraid that I would die.

  “Three days after the accident, the lungs began to get better. My blood count though was still bad, with the oxygen at the 6.8 level. This stayed the same for a week.

  Nobody knew if my system would start working again and produce enough oxygen for the blood. If it didn’t re-start, then they could have changed my blood every so often but they knew that I would then only have one or two years in which to live. So they put new blood into me and waited to see the reactions.

  “After four days, it slowly improved and they changed the blood again. But now my system is working and I’m back to normal with the right amount of oxygen in my blood. They do not have to change it any more. My lungs and my physical fitness have been certified as being 100 per cent. In fact, I feel better now than I was before. My training programme is entirely up to me and to my own willpower. That was when I took the decision to go to Monza. I’ve been running day and night and have been taking physical exercises for 12 hours a day.

  “Fortunately, I have with me 24 hours a day Willy Dungl, who is a world expert on the treatment of athletes and rebuilding of their bodies after they are broken. He has brought me on with massage and exercise every day, until we have built my body up to a point where I can complete a full 65 minutes’ physical training session. He is a practical expert who works with a doctor and looks after every detail of my day including my times of rest, the kind of food that I eat and how much exercise I can stand.

  “The doctors checked me yesterday and said that I was in perfect condition. I have tried my Ferrari and my attitude to racing has not changed. I like being back in the car, I love driving it. And I feel very happy. I love my sport and I love my job. The accident was bad thing to have happened, but now I just look forward to getting back into racing again.

  “Motor racing is dangerous, we all know that – and when my accident happened, I was not that surprised it should have happened to me. This may surprise people who don’t understand racing, but it is true. In the kind of job I have, it is the risk I must take.

  “The problem I have had to face since the accident is whether I would enjoy my motor racing again and what effect it would have on me. No one can discover this until they have been through an experience like mine. I have found that I love the positive side of motor racing. So why should I give it up?

  “I have not raced for over a month and when I climb into my car there will be enormous pressure on me because it is Italy, and Ferrari is the ‘king’ and we have three cars entered for the race. But I will not let this pressure affect me. I may only finish in 15th place, but now I know that I am ahead of my programmes and when we go to Canada and North America, I’ll be in a position to win and to keep my world championship.”

  The interview appeared almost verbatim in the Daily Express of Fri
day 10th September, the day Niki Lauda reappeared at the Monza track; it had been less than five weeks since he had crashed out of the German Grand Prix and been airlifted to hospital. His return to the paddock at Monza was only thirty-three days after the accident. He had missed two races and ceded 12 world championship points of his lead over Hunt.

  Statistically, the two rivals were now even as both drivers had now completed exactly the same number of races during the season. Lauda and Hunt were within two points of each other in the championship table.

  Willy Dungl had got Lauda’s body back in shape, and Lauda wanted to return to Formula One as soon as he could properly hold a wheel. He believed that lying in bed thinking about the accident was counter-productive. He said: “I wanted to get back to work as soon as I possibly could.”

  Lauda admits it was a difficult decision to come back so quickly, as he said: “Many people would have thought it fitting for me to spend the first few months after Nürburgring 1976 in a darkened room surrounded by peace and quiet.” He was right, and they had. Lauda’s arrival was greeted with pure amazement.

  His return was highly courageous, and it could not have been lost on him that donning a racing helmet so soon after the accident would make the scars on his face ultimately much worse and more visible for the rest of his life. Lauda said: “My matter-of-factness in automatically resuming my career as soon as all systems were go was disconcerting; some thought it betrayed a lack of dignity, others found it downright unappetising.”

  Hunt found it all rather unconvincing, saying: “I know that little fucker. Only Niki could take the last rites and come back at the Italian Grand Prix.” John Hogan, a sponsor of both Hunt and Lauda, agreed, saying: “Niki, who’d never been to a church in his life, wouldn’t know what the last rites were if they hit him in the head.”