Shunt

by Tom Rubython

The end finally came in a way she never could have imagined. Hunt returned from a Grand Prix that summer after allegedly having slept with seven different women during one weekend – and some of them were not particularly pleasant girls either. He just couldn’t help himself, and was full of remorse and disgust at his own behaviour.

  When he arrived home that Sunday evening, he burst into tears and confessed to Jane what had happened, telling her he could not live with himself any more. He said he was tormented by his sex addiction and that it would be best if they parted.

  Although Jane knew it was happening, the confession unnerved her. As she told Donaldson: “It was a pretty horrible time and I think I fell apart for a few days. But there was no acrimony and we were both very loving towards each other. We planned how to help each other through the transition. It was very bittersweet.”

  Once that was sorted out, Hunt started acting very bizarrely and planned visits to both their parents’ homes to inform them of the break up. He then told Jane he would like Bubbles Horsley to negotiate with her over the financial and logistical side of the split. That was a surprise to her because she had not expected there to be any financial or logistical side to it, save for her eventually moving out of the mews house.

  But Hunt insisted and, according to her, as recounted in Donaldson’s biography, she and Hunt and Horsley sat around the kitchen table at the London mews house drinking wine. Jane was amazed when Hunt offered her the house they were sitting in as a gift, and said he would give her UK£2,000 a month for six months as a transitional allowance. The house was by then worth as much as UK£200,000 and it was an extremely generous settlement he had no obligation to make. When he asked her what she would do, she told him it was her ambition to start a gym in the Kings Road. He then agreed to invest in that as a partner.

  Hunt quickly moved out into temporary accommodation and started looking for a new house of his own. Despite all this, the break up was not absolute; there was a brief reconciliation that lasted just over a month and, after that, Hunt left for good.

  He was now homeless and only owned his property in Spain. Jane agreed to house him while he searched for a home in the Wimbledon, Barnes, Twickenham and Richmond areas. He saw those areas as the ideal compromise between town and country..

  He eventually found what he wanted in a private road in Wimbledon. It was almost next door to the All England Club. It was a beautiful, but slightly tatty, house in Wimbledon, and the asking price was around UK£200,000. Built in the 1930s, the private lane sat on the edge of Wimbledon Common. It had a very large garden but needed urgent refurbishment. He decided to buy it when he saw the obvious joy Oscar was having in the garden as he viewed it for the second time.

  As soon as he closed on the deal, he set to work recreating all the rooms and facilities that a 30-something bachelor required, including a snooker room and a giant whirlpool bath in the garden.

  The purchase of the house and the obvious pleasure it gave him was the first sign of light at the end of his personal tunnel since he his retirement.

  By year-end, he had rid himself of the rich man’s appendages that he found he didn’t need. He was a confirmed bachelor again, with no ties to anyone and with a resolute determination to play the field; but this time with no feelings of guilt. But he grew increasingly disgusted with himself by the quality of women he was picking up for casual sex. While he knew the solution to that was another permanent relationship, he was far from ready for it.

  It was also a time of change in Formula One. The sport had been through a very bad patch with the advent of ground effect cars, which had sucked the life out of it. Formula One was missing its two stars and, that autumn, there were very serious moves afoot to bring back both Niki Lauda and James Hunt to the sport. Hunt was still only 34 and in his prime.

  Bernie Ecclestone tried to lure Hunt to drive for his Brabham team with a reported offer of US$5 million for one year’s work. Driver salary inflation had run riot in Formula One with the shortage of top drivers, and Ecclestone’s offer was 100 times what Hunt had been paid in 1976, only six years earlier. The size of the offer made him think very clearly about his future and everything he had been through. But he had been spooked by what had happened to Clay Regazzoni at Long Beach the year before. He had also not completely recovered from his skiing injury, to the extent that he had difficulties with the clutch in his Porsche. After much soul searching, he declined Ecclestone’s offer, but with a heavy heart. He had no idea if he was right to do so, especially when Ricardo Patrese, his nemesis, got the drive instead.

  He said at the time: “I gave it serious thought, but I have decided to carry on living the easy life. There is no point in risking your neck for money you don’t need. You can’t spend a fortune if you’re dead.” And at that time, he really did not need the money. The British economy was booming and, despite the losses in Munich and Marbella and Jane Birbeck’s settlement, he was still well ahead for the year. The last thing he needed then was money – he had plenty of it.

  Not so for Niki Lauda, who was desperately short of cash. He had spent the US$10 million fortune with which he had left the sport on his airline business, called Lauda Air, and the money had run out.

  Lauda was planning a comeback with Hunt’s old team, McLaren, and had received a similar offer. McLaren was now under new ownership, and a young entrepreneur called Ron Dennis had taken over the team. The takeover had been orchestrated by John Hogan, frustrated by the years of underperformance since Hunt had left. Teddy Mayer was effectively out and Alastair Caldwell had left to join Brabham. Gordon Coppuck had also left, and a new design team was installed with the brilliant John Barnard as technical director. Barnard also had a 15 per cent stake in the team, with Dennis owning the majority and Mayer retaining the rest.

  Bringing Lauda back was Dennis’ idea, not Hogan’s. Hogan was unsure about the wisdom of the decision, and consulted Hunt. Hunt’s Marlboro contract as a global ambassador was worth US$60,000 a year, and it now extended to giving others advice as a consultant.

  Part of the new brief was to advise Hogan on drivers, and he consulted him on Lauda. At that time, no retired driver had ever made a successful return to Formula One, and Hogan wasn’t sure it was even possible, as he says: “I asked James, and he was adamant that Lauda could do it. The only question in his mind was his motivation.” But Hunt told Hogan firmly that, if Lauda was motivated, he could be world champion again. Hogan went away and questioned Lauda carefully about his motivations, relaying his answers back to Hunt. When he heard the answers, Hunt was unequivocal, and advised Hogan to sign Lauda. Hogan admits it was Hunt’s advice that won Lauda the drive. Hogan was an enormous admirer of Hunt’s ability to, in his words, “read the game.” In fact, he thought there was no one better at it.

  After that, Hunt warmed to his role as a driver coach for Marlboro and started working closely with Peter Collins, who by then had bought the Lotus team from the late Colin Chapman’s family. Collins leaned heavily on Hunt’s advice about drivers. Another Marlboro-contracted driver, Mika Hakkinen, also owes his career to Hunt’s championing of him. Hunt was always in the Lotus pit talking to Collins’ young drivers, including Alex Zanardi, who was then making his Formula One debut.

  Hunt’s championing of those two drivers eventually resulted in a third world championship for Lauda in 1984 and two world championships for Hakkinen in 1998 and 1999. Just before he died, Hunt brokered a deal to take Hakkinen to McLaren as its test driver in 1993. He got particularly close to Hakkinen, mainly because both of them liked a drink, and they often socialised away from the track. Hakkinen recalls: “I liked him a lot and he was a very great help to me.”

  One driver he did not support or offer any advice to was his younger brother, David, who was 21 was trying to make it as a racing driver by following in his brother’s footsteps and racing in Formula Ford. But Hunt would give him no encouragement and certainly no money, for which he frequently asked. He simply didn’t want a brother in motor raci
ng. He was the only Hunt in the sport and was determined to have it stay that way. Ostensibly, he told him it was too dangerous and that if he supported him financially and anything happened, he would be wracked with guilt. So young David had to find his own way in the world.

  Hunt’s thinking was actually very sound, as the Warwick and Surtees families would eventually discover much later when they encouraged their younger members to take up motor racing.

  Despite the problems of the past few years, Hunt was a much more settled man at the end of 1981. He was installed in his Wimbledon home and living life to his own agenda. He had Jane Birbeck as a solid friend and confidante. He loved having his friends come over to Wimbledon to hang out. There were many riotous parties in the whirlpool bath over the next few years, and the neighbours were certainly entertained by the naked women cavorting in the garden, often in the freezing weather. Hunt was enjoying a year of freedom and guilt-free sex until the next time lightning struck – as surely it soon would.

  CHAPTER 40

  Meeting Sarah and Wedding number two

  Not a match made in heaven

  Sarah Lomax was just 24 when she met James Hunt in the first week of September 1982. One half of her character was her image as a glamorous, blond-haired, blue-eyed vivacious girl with a huge personality. She was very rarely seen without an open, friendly smile on her face. The other half was a chronic shyness when she was out of her natural environment.

  When she felt comfortable, she was hugely gregarious but sometimes not in a way that particularly attracted people, although it certainly didn’t put them off. She was no Suzy Miller or Jane Birbeck, but she made a huge impression on Hunt that afternoon in Spain.

  She was just an ordinary, albeit upper-class English girl on holiday with three girlfriends on the Costa del Sol. Hunt was also in Spain on one of his periodic visits to his house and, after the official split from Jane Birbeck, completely unattached.

  It was a fateful moment when he introduced himself to the four bubbly girls, three of whom had recognised him. They were all at a party on the beach. But Hunt had eyes for only one of them, initially probably because she didn’t know who he was. Lomax had no interested in motor racing.

  The holiday on the Costa del Sol was an end of summer fling with some girlfriends, and she was totally unprepared for her confrontation with James Hunt. As she remembered: “My friends said: ‘There’s James Hunt’, and I said: ‘Give me another clue.’”

  As she later recounted to Hunt biographer Christopher Hilton: “I had no idea who he was, no idea at all. I was at school when he was racing and he had retired when I met him.”

  Hunt thought it was funny that she didn’t know him and was amused by the contrast in her attitude to that of her friends, who were so obviously excited. He reassured her: “Why on earth should you have heard of me?” It added to the attraction between them, much to the chagrin of the other three girls, who were intensely jealous.

  When she discovered who he was, she was very flattered by the attention from the 35-year-old former world champion. So much so that she proceeded to tell him her life story: how she had lived a sheltered life and been brought up in a beautiful family home, an idyllic old rectory built in the very centre of the village of Chidham. It was an old and historic house built at the start of the eighteenth century near Baydon, where her parents had a training yard for horses. She told Hunt her parents had divorced in 1972 and that, at 14, she was very badly affected by it and had resented the end of her perfect childhood in a perfect environment. She admitted she was not academically gifted and left school early to take a secretarial course. She told him she was a good horsewoman like her mother. As a traditional debutante, she travelled abroad, working her way around the sun spots of Europe. But she had rejected the good life in Europe and returned home, saying: “All the time I was terribly homesick for the countryside and country life.”

  Whilst she was talking, she realised that she actually had heard of him before. She had been to a motor race when she was 16, as she remembered later: “I went because I fancied one of the boys taking us.” It had been eight years earlier, in 1974, at Brands Hatch for the British Grand Prix. Hunt was racing his Hesketh, as she later recalled: “I remember looking at the posters and thinking: ‘I want him to win, he’s good looking.’” But she didn’t register his name and said later: “They were handing out stickers of James, I took one and stuck it to the back of my cheque book.” Christopher Hilton said in his book: “When she got back to school, she wrote her name next to his and played one of those word games – loves, likes, hates, adores – using the letters of their names. It culminated in ‘I love James Hunt.’ It was no more than the sort of thing schoolgirls do, and that’s proved by the fact that she forgot him so completely.”

  That afternoon, Hunt found he was transfixed by this girl from Wiltshire. He was overcome as he listened to her story, intently fascinated by her and not quite understanding why. After that, all of them got very drunk and, at the end of the party, somehow managed to get themselves back to the hotel.

  After the holiday, and as the autumn set in, Lomax got a call from Hunt asking her out on a date. And so it began.

  They found they had a lot in common. There was an instant mutual attraction, and a particularly strong sexual attraction. For her, she had found a boyfriend who enjoyed sex as much as she did. Previously, she had been unable to find anyone who could keep up with her. Sarah told Gerald Donaldson years later that Hunt thought she was sex maniac.

  Both had a huge sexual appetite, and both had found an outlet with which to satisfy it. She also liked to drink and smoke. And, in that respect, they were the perfect couple. Lomax told Gerald Donaldson: “I was smitten, totally smitten, by James. I couldn’t believe he was interested in me. I remember somebody said: ‘He’s a celebrity and he’ll soon drop you.’ But he appeared to be incredibly keen.” So keen in fact that when she moved to the United States he followed her, the attraction was so strong.

  Lomax was working as an interior designer, and she was due to go the United States to gain experience later that year. After meeting Hunt, she was torn and didn’t want to go, believing it would mean the end of their relationship. But her mother insisted and advised her daughter that her suitor’s ardour would be all the more for the distance between them. Lomax had forgotten the old adage ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, and indeed so it turned out.

  After she left, Hunt missed her terribly and began visiting her at weekends in Washington DC, where she was based. It was very cold in Washington that winter, but they were heady times in the American capital. Ronald Reagan was in the second year of his first term as President, and Washington was alive again after the dour years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

  Lomax was in heaven, as she recalled: “When he came to see me in Washington, people would recognise him on the street. I remember how embarrassed he was. He’d be stopped and asked for autographs. He hated it, and when people asked: ‘Are you James Hunt?’ He’d say: ‘Guilty.’”

  Hunt was as besotted with Lomax as she was with him, and they began writing love letters to each other. She remembers: “He wrote me wonderful letters and I wrote him back.” Hunt bought her a bicycle so she could get around Washington more easily.

  On one of his Washington weekend stopovers, Hunt proposed to her and asked her when she would return to England. After the engagement, she decided to return home in the spring of 1983. He picked her up from the airport and took her straight back to his house at Wimbledon, and she never left. As soon as they officially got together, it was time for the madness to start. It was almost as if someone had said: ‘Let the party commence.’ And it wasn’t to stop for nigh on five years.

  On the surface, the two were very compatible. Hunt wanted to settle down and get married, and so did she. The age difference was only 11 years and they were from similar backgrounds. She told Donaldson: “All I wanted to do when I was a kid was to get married and look after my man. And this i
s what James thought he wanted, the normality of a family home.”

  Like her mother, she had gone to secretarial college and was well organised, practical and kept a very good home, as she said; “James thought I could give him security and stability. He loved the home I kept. He loved my cooking. I think he couldn’t believe his luck when he met me: a country girl who could keep a great home.”

  That combination was unusual at the time, and, if that was the script to which they had adhered, they would have lived happily ever after. But instead, they went on some wild, hedonistic non-stop parties in the quiet environs of Wimbledon. As she explained very vividly to Donaldson: “He wanted to party. I could party with him. I could be outrageous. We were both certainly outrageous. We were total soulmates. I was in love with him. We laughed and we had a really wonderful time.”

  They were enjoying themselves so much that they didn’t get around to getting married until just before Christmas that year, on Saturday 17th December 1983, in a registry office at Marlborough, in Wiltshire, near where her mother Rosemary lived.

  Not everyone was happy that he was marrying Sarah, and his parents were not overly keen. They thought their son should settle down with a more sober character. They were worried about their son’s increased consumption of alcohol and his drug taking. They had liked Jane Birbeck and would have much preferred it had he taken that direction.

  Many of his old friends declined his invitation to the wedding as a sort of invisible protest. They felt it was too soon after Jane and they were loyal to her. Some were also disgusted with how he had gone off the rails and acquired new friends they didn’t particularly care for.

  Hunt was desperate to have his old friends around him for the wedding. He was very annoyed when Ian Phillips told him he couldn’t make it. Phillips recalls: “I know he got peeved off because I didn’t go to his wedding. One of my friends was getting married the same weekend and I felt more loyalty to go to that.” But the truth was that Phillips didn’t want to go and didn’t like what his old friend was becoming.