Shunt

by Tom Rubython

  Andretti’s tyres were in great shape as the wily American kept them cool by driving through the standing water. Like Hunt, Depailler hadn’t and his tyres were worn out. Within two laps, his Tyrrell-Ford was forced into a pit stop for six new tyres, and Andretti took the lead.

  There was now a tricky decision to make and the McLaren team decided to leave it to Hunt whether to pit or not for new tyres. 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 facility of coming in if the driver wanted to. Both signs were well recognised, James knew them, so there was no doubt about what we were doing.”

  Because of the changing conditions, the arrow was up from Lap 25 and the mechanics waited on full alert with four new tyres and the jacks primed and ready to lift the car. Mayer said: “Only James knew the true state of his tyres. We didn’t because we couldn’t.”

  Caldwell and Mayer felt Hunt should decide when to stop. Hunt thought the opposite and began gesticulating furiously each time he passed the McLaren pit.

  Inevitably, Hunt’s front left tyre wore through the canvas and began leaking air, slowly deflating. But still Hunt stayed out. A tyre change pit stop would cost at least 35 seconds, and Lauda would win the title by default if Hunt finished fourth or lower.

  The call for a tyre change could have been made much earlier by the pit crew but it was now too late.

  It was a very tricky situation for team principal Mayer and team manager Caldwell. Whatever they did, it could be the wrong decision. It seemed better not to tempt fate, so they didn’t make a decision at all.

  Hunt said afterwards: “The team had all the information about the rate of tyre wear. They’d seen what happened to other cars and they should have told me what to do. Instead, in response to my frantic requests for information they hung out the arrow, like a huge bloody question mark.”

  But fate was to prove kind to James Hunt that day, although he didn’t realise it at the time. On lap 68, as he came off the last corner, his left hand front tyre blew out the rubber that had finally worn through. It was the perfect position to have a blowout and Hunt simply turned his car into the pit lane, controlling it masterfully.

  The decision had been made for them. The McLaren team mechanics, who had been anxiously waiting lap after lap, were ready. When he stopped, Caldwell and a mechanic didn’t bother with a jack – they physically lifted up the car for the tyre change. Caldwell played it safe and put four new wet tyres on the car instead of slicks. The four new tyres went on in 27 seconds and Hunt spun his wheels and got back in the race. As Hunt drove down the pit lane, the Ferrari mechanics went wild believing he had lost the race. They waved their arms and cheered with undignified pleasure.

  During his stop, Clay Regazzoni passed Hunt to take second, Alan Jones passed to take third and Depailler passed to be fourth. But Regazzoni and Jones were on old worn tyres, and Depailler soon went past both of them to be second.

  In his head, Hunt knew his pit stop had been too long and that he had lost the championship. He would need a miracle to get the third place he needed. A red mist descended and, on fresh tyres and with nothing to lose, he drove for his life. From a man pacing himself to the finish, Hunt was now racing to win. He gave it everything he could: “I went out in mid field but of course everyone was on different laps, it was one of those confusing races. I had flown round the track at huge speeds as one would, as I was on a set of fresh wets and everybody else was on bald wets. And the track was dry so even those who had changed a few laps earlier were a lot slower because they were already overheating. The only thing I could do was shut my eyes and floor it, and pass as many cars as I could.”

  Under his helmet, he was silently cursing his tyres, his team, his general luck and, most of all, the weather.

  The McLaren pit board told him he had rejoined in sixth place. He needed to make up three places in eight laps. He flung caution to the wind and passed Regazzoni’s Ferrari and Jones’ Surtees-Ford easily.

  As neither had changed tyres, they were easy meat for him, just as they had been for Depailler. He swept down the short hill at the back of the pits and simply drove round the outside of both of them on the tight left-hander, the only slow corner on the track. Hunt thought he was fourth but didn’t realise that McLaren lap scorers had made a mistake: Hunt had been fifth when he left the pits. He was now third but didn’t know it. He then went after Depailler as fast as he could.

  The tension in the pits ened as the other teams were well aware he was third. To them, it seemed impossible that Hunt could have changed his tyres and been back in title contention again. McLaren finally worked it out and, on the penultimate lap, the mechanics hoisted the ‘P3’ sign over the pit counter.

  Mayer thought he had done it, but Caldwell still wasn’t sure. The last lap was a nail biter for both men.

  As the chequered flag came out, three cars flashed past – Andretti, Depailler and Hunt. Although Depailler and Hunt were both a lap down after their pit stops, it all added to the drama as, at the end, Hunt was 100 metres behind the Frenchman’s Tyrrell. Andretti had made it through on one set of tyres to win; he had preserved his tyres perfectly and proven what a fine driver he was.

  Hunt was livid as he drove the slowing down lap, believing he was fourth and that he had lost the championship by one point. He was furious that Mayer and Caldwell hadn’t pulled him in for an earlier pit stop for new tyres. He held them entirely responsible for losing the championship.

  Hunt came down the pit lane blipping the throttle, furious and ready to vent that fury. He climbed out of the car and made a grab for Mayer, planning to flatten him for his stupidity just as he had Dave Morgan all those years ago.

  Caldwell could see Hunt was angry, and disappeared back to the garage. He was fed up with Hunt and thought: “I’m not putting up with this crap. Why should I get abused?” In truth, Caldwell wasn’t sure whether Hunt had finished third or fourth and would wait for others to clarify it.

  Hunt vented on Mayer. Although Mayer could hear Hunt, Hunt still had on his helmet and his ears were blocked so he couldn’t hear Mayer. Knowing Hunt couldn’t hear, Mayer made three-finger gestures at his driver and smiled. Confused by the sight of a team owner who didn’t look like he’d just lost the championship, suddenly it dawned on Hunt he might be champion after all. Mayer stood there shouting: “You’re world champion.”

  Behind him, Colin Chapman and the Lotus mechanics were climbing over the pit wall onto the track to congratulate Andretti, who had snatched the lead ten laps from the end to win the race he had started from pole position. It was the teams’s first and only win that season.

  A confused Hunt held back any celebrations until it dawned on him that he had indeed finished third and was world champion. As Mayer told him what had happened, Hunt said: “I want proof.” Hunt would not allow himself to believe it until he had seen the lap charts and had confirmation from the officials that there were no protests on hand.

  By this time, Hunt was engulfed by well-wishers and no one could see him or his car as people pressed congratulations. But all he wanted was official confirmation that he was third, and kept shouting: “I want proof, I want proof.” His supporters lifted him onto their shoulders but then, in the chaos, promptly dropped him. As Hunt picked himself up from the floor, he demanded a drink and glared at Mayer whilst he drank it.

  Hunt was sick with worry after all the disappointments, protests, changes and disqualifications during the season. He said afterwards: “I was absolutely determined not to think that I was world champion and then get disappointed, because there were 300 good reasons why something should have gone wrong. It was only really when I checked the laps and when the organisers said I was third – and there were no protests in the wind – that I allowed myself to start half-believing it. ”

  In fact, later recalling
standing on the podium beside Andretti, he said: “I still didn’t feel that confident when they put me up on third place on the rostrum because I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to be dragged off there at the last minute, so the championship win came to me slowly.”

  Long afterwards, whilst reminiscing with journalist Nigel Roebuck, Hunt said: “The thing was that the pit signals I got were not consistent. Suddenly it said fourth, which wasn’t right because I had passed someone for third. But with their track record for handling things in a crisis and a panic, I wasn’t prepared to believe them because I had had too many disappointments already that year with things happening after the race. So I basically didn’t accept that I was world champion because everything happened so quickly.”

  As he got off the podium, Hunt went to the press room to chat with the print journalists. Later, as it was getting dark, he said: “When I came out it was pitch black to see that everybody had gone, organisers and everything; everybody had had enough. When I realised everybody had gone, I realised nobody was going to take it away from me because there was nobody there, nobody was interested. So then I believed it. I thought I must be world champion.”

  For Alastair Caldwell, it was a bittersweet ending to a magnificent season. He was furious with Hunt for what had happened in the closing laps. He was adamant it would not have happened had he obeyed instructions. Caldwell never understood why an intelligent driver like Hunt disobeyed him to his obvious disadvantage. He didn’t discuss it with Hunt at the time. With the championship won, it seemed churlish. Ten years afterwards, they had a short conversation in which Hunt dismissed his concerns.

  Caldwell later unloaded his frustrations on Christopher Hilton, a patient journalist who liked to listen and enjoyed a good relationship with Caldwell, saying: “I was irritated, because in books and the media, James said we didn’t bring him in for new tyres when we should have done – that we were idiots because we didn’t run the car properly, we always gave him the wrong pit board and so on. In fact, we gave him exactly the right information all the time. We could never have stopped the car for tyres and won the world championship, so it was up to him – and we told him that all the time.

  “My opinion is that we handled the race perfectly. There was nothing else we could have done.

  Regazzoni and Jones did the same thing as he’d done and stayed out, and both wore their tyres to the air. They came to a walking pace because of that, and James was able to pass them.”

  Afterwards, Hunt disagreed entirely with Caldwell: “I knew from well before half distance that there were going to be tyre problems later on, and I started asking the McLaren pit as best as I could without a wireless. I had seen plenty of people going in and out of the pits changing tyres, so they had all the information and, in a situation like that, you watch the other cars and see how quick they are going on fresh rubber as to hot rubber or wets. They have all that information and I didn’t have any. As it was, their response to my frantic request, which they did understand, was to hang me out a huge question mark and go: ‘What do we do?’ So the only thing I could do then was to stay out, and it very nearly cost me the championship because when I did come in I already had a blown front but I also had a slow puncture; two corners had a flat tyre and they couldn’t get the jacks under it. It was a huge panic to get me a new set of tyres.”

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Somehow, after all the drama, Hunt had won it and he wanted to get back to the Tokyo Hilton to really celebrate. But the narrow roads around the foot of Mount Fuji, some 60 miles from Tokyo, meant that the traffic was jammed solid after the race, so the 300-odd members of the Formula One circus stayed put at the track and begun the celebrations with Hunt in a room rented by Marlboro.

  John Hogan was exhausted by what he had witnessed. He couldn’t believe the lad he had met barely five years earlier had become world champion. Hogan’s judgement about Hunt had finally been vindicated.

  In the corridors of Philip Morris International in Lausanne, he was the hero. Hunt’s win had meant more exposure for the Marlboro brand than they could ever have dreamed. It was Marlboro’s most successful marketing campaign ever, and Hunt was responsible for it all. From Lausanne came the message to Hogan that he was not to stint on the celebrating. He would pick up all the bills for the parties that started that night in Fuji and continued on into Tokyo.

  But Hogan didn’t party as hard as he might have. He was just glad it was all over. He had had a very difficult first season with Hunt, as he later admitted: “It was a bit like having a dog; you think you have just trained it and it’s being good, and then it goes and craps on someone else’s living room carpet. And that’s what he did all the time. Every race there was something.”

  But it had all come good in the end.

  CHAPTER 28

  Reigning world champion 1976-1977

  Vast riches beckon the champion

  James Hunt’s championship year really started when he stepped onto the Japanese Airlines Flight 421 from Tokyo to London late on Monday evening. He caught the flight along with most of the rest of the Formula One community after 24 hours of non-stop partying following his world championship victory.

  After the flag had dropped and Hunt had done his media interviews, the partying got started – all arranged and paid for by Philip Morris’ John Hogan.

  Hogan was a winner no matter what the outcome in Mount Fuji that day. Obviously, he preferred Hunt and his own Marlboro-sponsored McLaren team to win, but, if not, it would not have been a complete disaster. Niki Lauda was a Marlboro-sponsored driver so the cigarette company would still have had reason to celebrate – just with a different driver and a different team.

  Hogan had arranged it so.

  And he also had some celebrating of his own to do. After nearly five years at Philip Morris, he had turned its Formula One sponsorship into a dominant one. And in turn, sales of Marlboro brand cigarettes were taking off across Europe and the rest of the world. The sponsorship was incredibly successful, and when Hunt won the world championship by one point and then straightaway lit up a Marlboro in the pit lane, it really couldn’t get much better – especially for a marketing man like Hogan.

  It all looked like a carefully crafted plan coming together, but Hogan knew it could all have been so different, and kept a detached reality intact around him that day. At least until the chequered flag dropped. When Hunt took third place that afternoon in Japan, Hogan knew that reality would go out of the window for the next few days.

  The parties came first. As well as a huge sponsorship budget, Hogan also commanded an equally big activation war chest. That budget covered everything outside the actual running of the team and paying the drivers. In the old days, when Marlboro had first come into the sport in 1972, the activation budget had exceeded the money spent on sponsorship by as much as 500 per cent.

  Now it was more modest, but there was plenty for the parties that were to follow Hunt’s victory. Hunt led the celebrations from the front. And if he flagged, another world champion, Barry Sheene, would take up the cudgels. Together, the two world champions celebrated like they never had before. Girls were falling at their feet, and it was the start of a magical 48 hours for both men.

  It started as dusk fell at the Fuji Lodge, a hotel adjacent to the circuit. Hogan had booked the hotel’s biggest function room to get things started that night and, although the celebration was principally for the McLaren team and Marlboro guests, everyone in the paddock was invited. There was unlimited liquor and the tables were laden with food.

  The festivities went on late into the night. Everyone then went back to the Tokyo Hilton, where another huge room had been booked for another party. Hunt grabbed four hours of sleep in between, but most carried on right through. For the next eight hours, people came and went and partied throughout the next day. At around 5pm, Hunt and the Marlboro and McLaren executives trooped off to the British embassy. Hunt could hardly stand up and Hogan just prayed they would get through it. Hunt was unsu
itably dressed to enter the British embassy and to be greeted by the ambassador, but the normal protocol was waived for the new champion.

  Then it was back to another room at the Tokyo Hilton for a very formal Philip Morris cocktail party, where all the top executives and staff of the far east subsidiaries had gathered to congratulate their champion, who looked as though he had just come in from a long day at the beach.

  Looking back, Hogan now simply says: “Dear me”, as if it might all have been a dream. He recalls: “We drank for two days solid.” And that is about the extent of his recollection.

  He does remember the Formula One mechanics loading up bottles of spirits to drink on the plane journey home the following morning. Hogan had specified an unlimited budget at both the Tokyo Hilton and the Fuji Lodge. And the mechanics took full advantage.

  The plane took off late on Monday night for an overnight flight to Heathrow. By the time they got on board, the drinking carried on, but it was a subdued flight as everyone needed to sleep. Most of the Formula One community was on that plane that evening, as it had been block booked by Bernie Ecclestone’s Foca Travel company.

  Hunt had been booked into economy but the airline upgraded him to first class, much to the chagrin of Teddy Mayer, who gave the impression he didn’t much like travelling with the hired help. And Mayer wasn’t very impressed with the commotion Hunt caused in the first class lounge either. Hunt was carrying a toy gorilla that Alastair Caldwell had given to him to celebrate the championship. The gorilla was called ‘Smiler’ and had cymbals attached to its paws, which Hunt kept bashing together.

  In the lounge, Hunt also got into an altercation with Pierre Ugeux, the new president of FISA, who was also on the flight along with some colleagues. Ugeux was concerned that Hunt wouldn’t attend the annual FIA prize giving in Paris to collect his world championship trophy. Hunt confirmed their worst fears and told Ugeux that he would not. He said: “I played them along, teasing them with my toy guerrilla, letting them think I wasn’t going to be there because of all the agro they had given me this season.” Ugeux knew Hunt was upset by FISA rulings at Brands Hatch and Monza, but appealed to his better nature to put the past behind him. Hunt said he would consider it, and Ugeux immediately sensed a change of mind in the offing and felt better. As the prize giving was specifically in honour of the world champion, it would have been pointless without Hunt’s presence, and the new president didn’t want his first year in office ruined by it. In the event, Hunt had no intention of not collecting his trophy. He was contractually bound by Philip Morris to do so, but Ugeux didn’t know that. So Hunt revelled in the president’s discomfort, as he later admitted: “What they didn’t know was that I was not going to let them down...they looked very glum for a while.”