by Tom Rubython
The team had high hopes for a podium at Zolder but it didn’t materialise, with Hunt chasing around in the middle of the field whilst Jody Scheckter was grinding out a victory in his Ferrari. Hunt drove a fine race for 40 laps, enjoying himself for the first time in a race that season, but suddenly it all came to an abrupt stop as the Wolf lurched sideways and went off the track, hitting a steel barrier very hard. The car bounced back into the middle of the track and Hunt survived yet another accident in one piece. While a good result at Zolder might have meant he wavered from his decision, the accident reinforced his resolve to retire. Hunt told a journalist afterwards: “I don’t know what caused it, but I think it might have been a tyre. For some time the steering had been getting heavier and heavier.” He no longer actually cared;
Hunt received his first payment from Wolf a week later, and the Monaco Grand Prix would be his last race.
Walter Wolf was a strange animal and his actions could never be predicted. Hunt told people he was about as far from Alexander Hesketh as one could imagine, although he admitted the two did share some characteristics. Whilst he loved Alexander Hesketh, he felt nothing for Walter Wolf and he didn’t feel he owed Wolf anything.
The Monaco Grand Prix on 27th May marked Hunt’s seventh race on the streets of Monte Carlo in a Formula One car. It seemed an age since he had been scared to death at the wheel of his March-Ford 731 in 1973. A lot had happened in the interim, and he had achieved all he set out to in Formula One.
At night, as he hopped from one yacht to another moored alongside John F. Kennedy Plaza, the memories of the Hesketh days came flooding back to him. Those days were long gone but the memories were fresh. With a deep longing for the past, he confronted the reality that not only were those days gone forever, but that soon he too would be gone from Formula One.
He qualified tenth and shared the fifth row of the grid with Alan Jones’ nimble Williams-Ford FW06. His performance convinced him he was still competitive. There was no doubt he could be on pole position, he thought, if all the drivers were equipped with the dreadful Wolf WR8.
Jody Scheckter was rampant in his home town and scored a rare pole position and then won the race in his Ferrari. Clay Regazzoni showed how far Williams had come by finishing second. For Hunt, his second to last Formula One race ended after four laps when he broke down outside the Tip-Top bar, where he would be celebrating with Jane later. Another drive shaft broke and put him out, making it an astonishing seven retirements in eight races for Wolf. It was a damning indictment of the team, and Hunt felt nothing about leaving it midway through the season. As he walked through Monaco to get back to the pits, he wondered which poor sod would replace him in the team, a misery he would not wish on any other driver. As he said: “It was over and I knew this was my last race, and I hated that car, anyway. I felt no sadness at all, just immense relief.” He retired a few months short of his 32nd birthday.
But Hunt had one more commitment to fulfil: driving in a nonchampionship event, effectively a time trial, at Donington Park on 3rd June on behalf of circuit owner Tom Wheatcroft. It would be his last competitive drive in a Formula One car and, with that completed, he could retire.
The race was originally intended to be a full non-championship race, but the FIA would not grant the new circuit the appropriate licence and all but five teams withdrew from the event, with only Hunt, Mario Andretti, Nelson Piquet, Alan Jones and Rupert Keegan competing. The event was designed to showcase Donington’s capacity to run Formula One cars on the track, which had been re-opened by Wheatcroft. Without an FIA licence, it became a time trial. Wheatcroft was staging the event to benefit the Gunnar Nilsson Memorial Fund, for which Hunt had been a prime mover. Hunt set the second fastest time in the trial after Alan Jones, with Mario Andretti third.
With that over, Hunt walked away from Formula One and from the 20,000 British fans in attendance who had no idea that they would be the last to see Hunt in action in a Formula One car.
That same evening, Hunt rang Peter Warr to tell him he was finished and that he would need to find a new driver. Warr didn’t try to dissuade him. Upon putting down the phone, Hunt then rang Postlethwaite. Postlethwaite told him he wasn’t surprised, and actually apologised for the terrible performance of the team and the cars.
Five days later, on Friday 8th June, Hunt finally announced his retirement in London to a very crowded press conference. His eight-year Formula One career, relatively short in modern terms, had brought him ten wins in 92 Grand Prix races, and was now over.
There was silence as the journalists took in the news. He had been one of the luckiest drivers, having turned his performances, which were by no means outstanding, into a Formula One world championship. All his victories were won in a three-year period, and he might easily have been world champion again in 1977 had he enjoyed the same kind of luck he had in 1976. But many drivers with better performance records had failed to become champion, including Stirling Moss with 16 wins and Carlos Reutemann with 12. He was the first world champion to retire in mid-season.
At the press conference, Hunt said was full of regrets: “I wanted to have a really good final year. It wasn’t a matter of thinking about the Championship or anything. I wanted a good, competitive car with which to win some races. I was never the type to get pleasure from simply being a racing driver.”
Then, in a comment which would make Peter Warr and Harvey Postlethwaite wince when they read it, he said: “It’s become clear to me that our car will never get there. “ Perhaps realising he was on dangerous ground, he added: “It’s nobody’s fault in particular, just one of those things. And if you haven’t got an absolutely competitive car these days, you can forget it. Quite frankly, it’s not worth the risk to life and limb to continue under those circumstances.”
However he dressed it up, it was a damning indictment of the Wolf team. The comments made Frank Williams and Patrick Head smile. They were about to unleash the Williams FW07 on Formula One, which was what the Wolf car might have been if Walter Wolf hadn’t been so stupid and sacked them. Both Williams and Head were quite candid later in their concession that they never would have left Wolf if they had not been fired.
In the next morning’s newspapers, there was some debate about how much money Hunt had made in his career, and whether it would be enough to see him through to the end of his life. By walking away, he was turning his back on US$80,000 from Marlboro and US$500,000 from Walter Wolf. He had perhaps earned around US$3 million in his entire career and had managed to keep hold of most of it after moving to tax exile. He was certain it was enough: “I have made plenty of money out of racing. But it’s not material achievement that’s so important. What matters is achieving the way of life that suits you so you’re happy. I think happiness is the really important thing.” The sentiment was genuine, as money had never been really important to him. If it had been, he would have slogged his way around the rest of the season in the Wolf: “My ultimate goal, since I was 18, was to make a happy, well-balanced life for myself. Racing has always been a means to an end for me – the chance for me to find material freedom in life. And that is what I look forward to now.”
When asked what he would do immediately, he was very honest and said: “It comes as a great relief to stop racing, and I look forward to just relaxing for a while. Then again, as with anything in life, the pleasures and relaxations are short-lived because they’re soon replaced by a rush of other worries and problems. There are highs and lows and dreads and fears however you live your life, whether you’re a racing driver or a clerk in an office. But I look forward to life after racing. I’m now taking the big step into a world that is unknown to me.”
For the past 13 years, his life had been nothing but motor racing and he was a fully paid-up petrol head, but he said: “I feel no sadness at all, just immense relief. That’s over now and I’m not sentimental. I don’t dwell on the past. My goal is to make a mellow, well-balanced life. I need and am stimulated by ambition, but at the moment I�
�m happy marking time – just keeping busy chasing my tail.”
John Hogan believed it was a mistake for Hunt to retire and told him so. He thought his lack of success on the race tracks had overpowered his sense of reason and he was making a hasty decision. There was little question that the sheer boredom of the 1979 season had played its part. It cannot be overemphasised how much the advent of ground effects sucked the spirit out of Formula one.
But it was Bubbles Horsley who probably came up with the best analysis, saying of Hunt that the “damaging effects of self-indulgence were being compounded by fear.” Horsley confirms that Hunt had become frightened by Formula One, and he didn’t want to kill himself whilst unsuccessful. According to Horsley, Hunt knew his career was in decline, that he wasn’t in the right team, that he wasn’t succeeding and that his talent hadn’t yet declined. Horsley told Hunt’s biographer Gerald Donaldson: “It’s rather like a film star who’s suddenly getting bum scripts, but he needs to do it because that’s what he does. He needs the money, and therefore he does it. But in the end, the scripts got so bad...”
Harvey Postlethwaite wasn’t surprised by his friend’s retirement, as he said at the time: “If anything, I think the decision came too late. If it had happened earlier we’d all have been able to get out of it better.”
The season rolled on after Hunt retired, and the young Finn Keke Rosberg replaced him in the Wolf team. Rosberg was the best available driver without a drive after he had walked out on the uncompetitive ATS team at the end of 1978.
The team was relieved to have a more cooperative driver. They had become fed up with Hunt and were glad to see him go. When he left, there were a few tears shed as well as some rubbishing of the former world champion behind his back, as the team began a PR offensive to repair its damaged image. Back home in Spain, Hunt couldn’t care a damn what Warr and Postlethwaite were saying. He knew the record spoke for itself. Postlethwaite said: “Formula One doesn’t pardon anyone. Everybody exits Formula One out of the back door; you never exit out of the front. It doesn’t happen. Everyone exits from the back door because it’s that sort of business.” He added: “My own reaction is that it’s best forgotten. I prefer to remember him in the Hesketh days rather than subsequently.”
In his first race at the French Grand Prix, Rosberg qualified 16th and brought the car home ninth. It was no better or worse than Hunt would have achieved in the car.
The race itself marked the first win for a turbo charged car in the modern era as Jean-Pierre Jabouille won his home Grand Prix from pole position. And Hunt missed a true racing spectacle. The race marked the fiercest ever battle fought for second place between Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari and René Arnoux in a Renault Turbo, both shod with Michelin radials. During the final laps, they touched wheels and frequently swapped positions. Villeneuve eventually took the chequered flag less than a quarter of a second ahead of Arnoux. Villeneuve said it was his “best memory of Grand Prix racing.”
The British Grand Prix at Silverstone went ahead for the first time in seven years without James Hunt and, inevitably, the crowd was smaller and Easton Neston quieter. For the second race in succession, there was a new winning team on the top step of the podium. A new era was beginning, as Alan Jones took pole position in the new Williams-Ford FW07. That domination continued in the race until Jones retired. His teammate Clay Regazzoni went on to score Williams’ first ever win.
Peter Warr and Walter Wolf were stunned by the Williams’ success. It was only two years earlier that they had shown Frank Williams and Patrick Head the door.
Meanwhile, Keke Rosberg had realised the Wolf WR8 was a dog, and he struggled all weekend to do anything decent with the car.
After the fiasco of Niki Lauda’s accident at the Nürburgring in 1976, the German Grand Prix was now firmly established at Hockenheim. The new era was confirmed as Jones and Regazzoni scored a Williams 1-2. But Jody Scheckter was piling on points, getting fourth place, and was seemingly the world championship favourite as the success of Williams made it unlikely that anyone else could get enough points to beat him. Alan Jones had left his challenge too late and was not a threat.
It was proving a terrible year for the established teams. Hunt’s old team, McLaren, with John Watson and Patrick Tambay driving were struggling almost as badly as Wolf. Brabham and Lotus were also experiencing the doldrums, with Williams, Liger, Arrows and Renault in the ascendance.
On 12th August, Alan Jones won the Austrian Grand Prix at Österreichring, marking a third consecutive victory for the Williams team. The ground effect Williams FW07 was an outstanding car, every bit as good and destined to be every bit as pivotal as the Lotus 72, McLaren M23 and the Ferrari 312T had been earlier in the decade.
Rosberg in the Wolf WR8 just kept sinking, and the Finn wished he was elsewhere. Like Hunt before him, now Rosberg was thinking of quitting and was worried about his career prospects from continuing to drive the Wolf.
On 26th August, at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, Alan Jones won his third consecutive race and the Williams team’s fourth race in a row. Jody Scheckter rowed his Ferrari up to fourth as he edged closer to being crowned world champion. In any other year, Jones would easily have been world champion, but his poor performance in the first half of the season had made that impossible. Even though he had only won twice after Holland, Scheckter merely needed four more points to ensure the driver’s title.
Italy closed ranks for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on 9th September, and Scheckter and Villeneuve scored a Ferrari 1-2 to give Scheckter the world championship title. It was the end of the European season, and the Italian fans went wild with the perfect result.
The Canadian Grand Prix on 30th September was held for the first time at a street and park circuit in Montreal. Mosport had lost the rights to stage the race after Bernie Ecclestone had rowed with its owners. Significantly, Niki Lauda walked away from Grand Prix racing halfway through the weekend. Lauda had become disillusioned with Formula One circulating in an uncompetitive Brabham-Alfa Romeo. Feeling very much like Hunt, he said: “My heart was not in it anymore.”
The Lauda-Hunt rivalry since 1976 had transformed Formula One from a secondary sport into a primary one, and the two drivers were to be bitterly missed. Both would receive huge financial offers to return to the sport in the years ahead. By 1979, however, Lauda had started an airline business called Lauda Air and had bought himself a US$18 million Boeing 737 airliner. It seemed his heart was now in flying rather than racing.
Ironically, his decision to leave coincided with the debut of a brand new Brabham-Ford. Brabham ditched the Alfa Romeo and appeared with new Cosworth-engined cars. It appeared that Lauda had made his decision too soon as the car was instantly competitive, with Nelson Piquet qualifying it fourth on its debut.
With its two biggest stars gone within a few months, Formula One was in a spiral. There were only two world champions left in Formula One, Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi. Fittipaldi was now a footnote in the sport after three seasons at the back of the grid, and Andretti was fading fast in an uncompetitive Lotus.
Alan Jones easily won the race on the new circuit from pole position. In a seriously low point for the Wolf team, Keke Rosberg could not even qualify his car. When James Hunt learned of it, he was glad he had retired; it could easily have been him humiliated in the penultimate race of the season.
He said: “The common theory that I’d lost interest driving the Wolf in 1979 was immediately completely destroyed by the fact that Keke Rosberg, a young man with a lot to prove and everywhere to go, was put in the car and was very substantially slower than I had been in it, in the same car.” Hunt felt vindicated after Wolf ’s fiasco in Montreal and said: “I always delivered in the car and…I tried my best.”
By this time, Rosberg was seriously looking for an exit from the Wolf team, as it had become dreadful.
The Formula One circus packed up its crates and headed to New York for the final race of the season at Watkins Glen on
7th October. From pole position, Alan Jones in the Williams was totally dominant and would have won but for a rain-affected race that saw his team botch a pit stop to change tyres and force him out of the race with a damaged wheel. Gilles Villeneuve gave a virtuoso performance in the wet to win the race.
But there was a triumph of sorts for Keke Rosberg in the Wolf. He qualified 12th and managed to manhandle the Wolf-Ford up to a podium-challenging place. But it all ended with an accident on lap 20 when he tried to challenge Didier Pironi’s Tyrrell for the pace and cocked it up, sliding wide and almost taking Pironi out as well. The world championship was won by Jody Scheckter, with Villeneuve second. It was Ferrari’s swansong as it began its own long period of decline; one that would end 21 years later.
At the end of 1979, Teddy Mayer realised that McLaren was in serious trouble. John Hogan would have yanked Marlboro’s money away from the team if he could have found anywhere better to put it. Mayer made a desperate bid to recapture past successes and tried to lure James Hunt back into the team. Mayer, with Hogan’s approval, offered Hunt US$1.5 million to return. It would have made him the highest-paid driver by far. But Hunt was enjoying his retirement and declined. Although he did say that if the sport was made safer, he would reconsider; and that “no” was not definitely “no.”
Jackie Stewart was commentating for ABC Television in the United States during 1979, and Hunt’s retirement was big news across the Atlantic. Stewart found the words to make the most intelligent and incisive analysis of why Hunt had retired: “You would have likened James’ rise to that of someone in the pop music industry rather than in sport. It was a very sudden rise to adulation and big money and the good life. It’s hopelessly intoxicating and very confusing. Your entire world is fantasy and candy floss. There’s no substance to it, and unless you’re very careful you get carried along on this magic carpet ride. But there’s a side to this business which I think has gotten to James – driving a racing car endlessly, testing chassis, developing tyres, sitting in searing heat for an unacceptable number of hours, presentations, cocktail parties and dinners with people you don’t want to be with – I think all this has troubled James, along with the pressures on his private life. He wants to do things his way, but unfortunately you can’t. If you’re going to stay in the sport, you have to compromise. Or you can do what James [did], which is to retire…I don’t believe he thinks it’s worth all the compromise, and I think he’s making the right decision.”