Burning Rubber: The Extraordinary Story of Formula One

by Charles Jennings

  And which was entirely necessary, given that Niki Lauda – determined, highly competent, not an easy person to get to know – was the man to beat. Lauda, at the end of 1975, was world champion – aged twenty-six, eighteen months Hunt’s junior – and had been ensconced at Ferrari for two productive years. The ageing Commendatore himself didn’t impress Lauda that much (‘He would scratch himself in the most unlikely places, and hawk and spit for minutes on end, with obvious relish, into a gigantic handkerchief’), but the team, after years of humiliation at the hands of the garagistas, had pulled itself back together, had a brace of highly competitive drivers in Lauda and Regazzoni, and was now answering to the brilliant engineer Mauro Forghieri. Forghieri had designed the terrific 312B of 1970, with which Ferrari won the Constructors’ Championship, and, with Lauda’s help, produced the even more effective 312T for 1975.

  Lauda himself was unquestionably a formidable driver: five wins in 1975, with nine pole positions. He was also, despite an ostensibly tricky personal manner, well liked. Nelson Piquet described him as ‘a very straightforward person. He has nothing to hide. He never talks about you behind your back. He has a very good character.’ Alain Prost called him ‘a delightful person, once you get to know him, with a great sense of humour and a real lust for life.’ Hunt liked him, too. Mauro Forghieri was somewhat in two minds: he and Lauda could often be seen yelling at each other in the pit lane and around the Ferrari garage, debating the pros and cons of the car and its driver. ‘When the Ferrari went well,’ said Lauda, ‘he [Forghieri] considered me a very good driver, perhaps the best. When things went wrong, I was an idiot.’ Still. The car was powerful and reliable; and the whole package was going to be better yet, in 1976.

  McLaren, by way of contrast, were still consolidating their position as major league constructors; and had just signed a driver who spent much of his time barefoot and pissed, and who gave a good deal of his deepest thought (as ever) to the question of sex. ‘I don’t usually have sex before a race,’ he said, earnestly, ‘because I am very definitely concentrating.’ On the other hand, ‘If I have an hour or so to spare before dinner on the night before a race then I can enjoy the physical release. But I will only do it with someone who is fully understanding.’ Just to make sure everyone understood his priorities, he actually took to having his electronic sex toys serviced by the McLaren mechanics. On paper, therefore, the gulf between Lauda and Hunt could not have been greater; and the need for strenuous application could not have been more marked.

  The 1976 season certainly started off unpropitiously for Hunt and McLaren. Ferrari took five out of the first six races – four to Lauda, one to Regazzoni – even though Hunt won a disputed Spanish GP, and later added the French GP to his tally. But then there was the British Grand Prix, in July.

  This was a shambles. A record crowd of 80,000 had turned up at Brands Hatch, wildly keen to see the new British hero close the gap on his arch-rival. And yes, he was on the front row of the grid, with Lauda on pole. Unfortunately, Regazzoni, just behind, went mildly berserk at the start, monstered Lauda on the first corner and caused a vast pile-up. Cars went everywhere. Hunt’s and Lauda’s machines were both damaged. As the debris was cleared away, Hunt, Regazzoni and Jacques Laffite (in a Ligier) scurried off to get their spare mounts. ‘Then,’ according to press reports, ‘pandemonium broke out when it was announced that the race stewards had declared that no replacement cars would be allowed to start the race.’ Outraged fans started to hurl rubbish on to the track, jeering and baying, in a fine British frenzy. ‘At this point the RAC came closer than they have ever been of losing control of their own race.’ In the chaos, meanwhile, the McLaren mechanics were bolting a new front suspension onto Hunt’s car and struggling to get the thing back on the track before Brands Hatch turned into a battlefield. The organisers caved in. The race began with Hunt reinstated.

  And what do you know, it was quite a thriller, with Lauda holding off Hunt until lap forty-five, when his gearbox turned sour, and Hunt breezed off to win. ‘I was worried about the handling of the car,’ he said afterwards, ‘then it seemed to improve as things went on.’ The sun shone, the crowd went nuts, and Ferrari lodged a protest. That, as it turned out, was the end of James Hunt’s British Grand Prix. Lauda was handed the win, and all the detestation that so marks latterday relationships between McLaren and Ferrari was given a firm base from which to flourish. ‘It seems these days that no Grand Prix would be quite right without a court of enquiry of some sort,’ sighed The Times.

  What happened next, though, put all the bickering into perspective.

  The following Grand Prix was in Germany, at the Nürburgring. There was rain, on and off. Qualifying was a bit of a mess. There was more rain at the start of the race, but it looked as if it might clear up. Lauda started on wet tyres, came in to change to dry after one lap and dashed out again. Halfway round the circuit, he went hurtling through the left-hander at the Bergwerk, at which point his suspension collapsed, and he smashed into the banking on the right-hand side of the circuit, shooting back onto the track, his car in flames. Guy Edwards (in a Hesketh) managed to avoid him. Harald Ertl and Brett Lunger ploughed into him, one after the other. To their endless credit, Edwards, Lunger and Ertl, joined by Arturo Merzario, leaped out of their cars – doubtless mindful of the terrible Williamson crash – to try and rescue Lauda, trapped in the fireball. According to Edwards, ‘Lauda was basically sitting in the middle of a fire and I would guess it would be about a minute before we managed to get the belts undone.’ As Harald Ertl aimed a fire extinguisher at the centre of the cockpit to try and keep the flames under control, ‘Lauda was conscious most of the time and was saying, “Get me out.”’

  A minute spent trapped in a petrol blaze, is a very, very, very long time. At last Lauda was extricated, helicoptered out, hospitalised in the trauma unit at Ludwigshaven. There were terrible exterior burns, especially to his face; but it was the damage to his lungs – those hideously toxic plastics, paints, mouldings, fabrications, at the heart of a Formula One car – which really threatened to kill him. He was given the last rites: on his way to becoming another casualty of the sport.

  The ridiculous thing was that Lauda himself had for some time been trying to get a drivers’ boycott of the ‘Ring – what he called a ‘Stone Age Circuit’ – arguing that every driver there ‘was taking his life in his hands to the most ludicrous degree’. As he said with unnerving prescience, a week before the crash, ‘My personal opinion is that the Nürburgring is too dangerous to drive on nowadays.’ When he looked at other circuits, ‘Where the safety facilities provide much easier, much safer driving, and I compare them to the Nürburgring with 160 mph jumping – only God saves you.’ At the ‘Ring, ‘If you have any failure on the car, one hundred per cent death! We’re not talking if I make a mistake, but if I have a failure on the car. If I make a mistake and kill myself, then tough shit.’ There was nothing timid about Lauda: he has gone into the record books as the only driver ever to lap the full circuit in under seven minutes, in 1975. But he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t want to die. And he really didn’t want to race at the Nürburgring.

  Chris Amon gave a typically thoughtful assessment at around this time: ‘In its old form,’ he said of the ‘Ring, ‘it was the supreme test of driving ability, the one course which separated the men from the boys. It was also very dangerous, but the one thing went with the other. But since the major changes in 1970, when some of the bumps were taken out and the track was made straighter, obeying the racing line a bit more, ‘it has become much faster, yet in my opinion it no longer calls for the same supreme standards of driving skill that it did. Bravery, yes, but that is something different. I believe that the great dangers are no longer justifiable today because the track has lost its former unique qualities.’ Jackie Stewart, who had unquestionably proved his credentials by winning there three times, also said, with discernible anguish, ‘A circuit which can extend a driver’s feeling so much has to be unique and theref
ore must not be allowed to die. Then I think of the terrible hazards and I can only have the utmost sympathy for all those who say it must be changed or abandoned. It is a terrible dilemma.’

  The race itself? Hunt, impressively enough, managed to stamp his mark all over it by taking pole position and then, after the restart forced by Lauda’s crash, keeping his head and winning convincingly, nearly half a minute ahead of Scheckter in the Tyrrell. It was a fantastically valuable win, sorely tainted by Lauda’s terrible injuries.

  About the only piece of good news that anyone would ultimately retrieve from the accident was the knowledge that Lauda had blotted the trauma out of his memory. ‘Returning to the spot where it all took place,’ he claimed, subsequently, ‘stirs no emotions in me at all.’ Chris Amon, on the other hand, was so demoralised by the experience that he never made the restart and retired from Grand Prix racing the moment the race was over. For him, the odds had just shortened too much.

  Meanwhile, Hunt’s season went on, in an increasing tangle of complexities. Ambivalent about the stroke of fortune which had taken his closest rival out of the contest, he was also staggering through the break-up of his first marriage. Suzy Hunt, the ultra-chic ex-model whom he had married in 1974, was now with film legend Richard Burton. She wanted to leave Hunt and marry Burton. The actual break-up probably didn’t bother Hunt that greatly. When he spoke to Burton over the phone, the two got on unsurprisingly well. After all, two heavy-smoking, skirt-chasing, hard-drinking manic depressives would tend to see the world in much the same way, regarding women as amusing temporary possessions to be swapped about until their charm faded. But the publicity was a distraction he could have lived without.

  Showing great sense of purpose, though, he took the Dutch, Canadian and US Grands Prix (the Canadian while suffering from tennis elbow), while Niki Lauda, having been brought back to life, disfigured and in appalling discomfort, staggered the world by getting back into the driving seat and scoring consistently from Monza onwards. It was a superhuman performance. And you don’t have to have a very long memory to recall that Lauda and Hunt went into the final race – the Japanese GP at the Fuji Speedway, October, 1976 – separated by three points only. Hunt let it be known that, all things being equal, he would consider it fitting to share the World Championship with Lauda. Lauda just wanted to win.

  Practice and qualifying took place as usual. The drivers lined up on the grid. And then the rain poured down, flooding the track. There was a long moment of appalled discussion as to whether the race should actually start. Eventually the organisers let it carry on, in unspeakable conditions. Lauda, partly casting his mind back to what had happened the last time he raced in the wet, and partly unable to see because he had no eyelids with which to blink properly, came in after one lap and retired. ‘I could not see a thing … Sometimes I did not know in which direction the car was travelling. For me there is something which is more important than winning the world championship.’ Mario Andretti, the winner, said, ‘I have done a lot of twenty-four-hour races, but this was the longest race of my career. I thought it would go on for ever.’ Hunt, when he staggered out of the McLaren at the end, was so disorientated and hysterical that Teddy Mayer had difficulty expressing to him the idea that, in coming third, he had secured just enough points to give him the title. A cigarette and a couple of drinks later, and he could more calmly aver, ‘It was not so bad for me. I was in front most of the way. The cars behind were getting the wheel spray.’ He then crawled away to celebrate properly.

  Time passed. Suzy Hunt became Mrs Richard Burton. Hunt celebrated a bit more. In February, 1977, he was awarded the Tarmac Trophy by HRH The Duke of Kent. He turned up at the Europa Hotel, London, for the presentation, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a windcheater. There was nothing anyone could do about it. Many hoped that, by the time he won his second title, he would have been to see a tailor.

  Crazy Master James! You had to laugh!

  No one could have known that they would have to wait another sixteen years before a Brit would be world champion again.

  THE AGE OF BRAINS 1977–93

  16

  TURBOS, SIDE-SKIRTS AND ACTIVE SUSPENSION: TECHNOLOGY TRIUMPHANT

  When James Hunt retired from racing after failing to finish at the ’79 Monaco Grand Prix, one reason he gave for his decision was the overweening part played by technology – the need for the kind of research skills (and the money to pay for them) which seemed to be taking over the sport, leaving less and less for the driver to do except climb into an increasingly alien technological otherworld, hang on, and pray.

  Plainly, having the best car had always been an indispensable part of taking a Championship. When Jim Clark pummelled the opposition in 1963 and 1965, or when Lauda did the business for Ferrari in 1975 and 1977, it was because the victorious drivers were driving cars which had the technical edge over the rest of the field. But the cars on the grid at least looked much the same, notionally obeying the same laws of physics and engineering. And that was a comfort to those who had come to see men race against other men, in the approved way.

  At the same time, a false sense of security had crept in, thanks to the ubiquity of the Ford-Cosworth 3-litre V8. This powered most of the teams (Matra, BRM and Ferrari still holding out for twelve cylinders) and did create a certain consistency, even though Tyrrell’s cutting-edge Ford-Cosworths were inevitably a bit gutsier than, say, Bellasi’s, or Politoys’. It all helped to maintain the fiction that the cars weren’t that far apart in sheer design terms, and that the driver was always at the heart of any team’s success.

  Then Renault won the French Grand Prix in July 1979 and changed everything.

  With true Gallic indifference to perceived wisdom, the French car maker had started work in the late 1970s on a turbocharged 1½-litre V6, as allowed under regulations which had been drawn up in the cheerful expectation that no one would actually take advantage of them. Well, the Americans had been using turbochargers at Indianapolis since the 1950s. Porsche had had great success with their turbocharged 917s in the Can-Am series in the early 1970s. The idea was not new. Nor was the size of the engine (in and of itself) entirely insane – think of Maserati and Ferrari, at the start of the 1950s, with their beautiful and effective little 1½-litre V12s. What was different about the Renault challenge, what made it really problematic, was applying it to the incredibly varied circuits and intolerably challenging conditions of modern Formula One. That would be the hard nut to crack.

  So for two seasons, the custard-yellow Renault RS01 squealed around the tracks, running its engine nearly up to 11,000 rpm (2,000 rpm more than the Cosworths), going like a bat, before invariably blowing up and settling at the side of the circuit in a pall of steam and smoke. It became a millstone round Renault’s neck – they’d committed so much to it, they couldn’t afford to back out. But they couldn’t make it work, either. The other teams called the RS01 the ‘Yellow Teapot’ and jeered openly.

  It took the arrival of the Renault RS10 in mid-1979 for the jeering to stop. This unnervingly potent device took pole position at the French GP and on race day stormed off into the distance with Jean-Pierre Jabouille at the wheel, winning handsomely, fifteen seconds ahead of Gilles Villeneuve in a Ferrari, and René Arnoux, driving the other RS10. It could not have been a more asssertive demonstration of La Gloire de France: it was the first time ever that the French Grand Prix had been won by a French driver, in a French car, with a French engine, using French tyres (Michelin) and French fuel (ELF). It was the first win for a turbo in F1. And the car was using the latest ground-effect techniques to keep the wheels stuck to the track. In fact, everything about it was deeply horrible, if you were a mainstream, garagiste-ethos British team with a mainstream British chassis and an off-the-shelf Cosworth V8 to play with. The Renault RS10 was the kind of car that could only have been produced by an outfit with industrial levels of commitment, finance and expertise behind it, and as such, was an evolutionary step up, even for a team as savvy as McLaren or
Lotus.

  FISA, the sport’s governing body, and FOCA, the Constructors’ trades union, were so frightened by the arrival of properly working turbos that they convened a special meeting in November 1979 to try to find a way to deal with the situation. Because, after all, if turbos were the way forward, then everyone would have to have one. But they were shatteringly complex in comparison with the Cosworth DFVs, and needed very serious money to develop. Renault could afford it; Ferrari, backed by Fiat’s millions, were also starting work on a turbo, despite the Commendatore’s disapproval of such things (as he said, darkly, not long after, ‘A normally aspirated engine is an expression of the the total engineering efforts of all those who are responsible for the engine design, whereas with turbos you are in the hands of the turbo suppliers’). But if Renault and Ferrari were prepared to tip a fortune into turbochargers, where would that leave the garagistas?

  And if the turbos weren’t enough, what about all the other things the F1 manufacturers were having to spend a fortune on? Such as ground-effect, indeed – the creation of an area of low pressure beneath the car, using a mixture of airflow-management tunnels and side-skirts, to stick the car to the track.

  Lotus (Chapman’s genius, again) had got this working brilliantly in the 78 and 79, but it was difficult and expensive to get right, as well as being extremely alienating for many drivers, who had no choice but to scream through corners at insanely high speeds, hoping passionately that nothing would upset the workings of the airflow under the car. In these conditions, ‘cornering’, according to Niki Lauda, became ‘a rape practised on the driver’, in which ‘something really terrible, unnatural and unpredictable’ could happen at any moment.