Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (14 page)

Jane was the daughter of a military man, a brigadier, named Nigel Birbeck. The family was well off, and she was educated at a boarding school in Kent. Nigel Birbeck was renowned as a former deputy fortress commander of Gibraltar, where the family had lived for a long period. She spent her teenage years on the Costa del Sol. When the family moved back to Britain, they took up residence in Buckinghamshire and she started to spend a lot of time in London. She worked as an au pair
for a while before taking a secretarial course.

From the end of 1975, Hunt and Birbeck were seeing each other regularly when Hunt was in London. She avoided Spain, as Hunt was publicly still married to Suzy Miller and was living with her at the Spanish house. The last thing she wanted was to be known as the girl who broke up his marriage.

But when Suzy got together publicly with Richard Burton in early 1976, there was no further need for secrecy, and the two of them became an item and began being photographed together. At first no one knew who Birbeck was, and Hunt wasn’t in a rush to enlighten the paparazzi.

But the relationship was soon serious and passionate. She also had a very fierce independent streak, which Hunt adored as an antidote to Suzy’s neediness. He always felt the failure of his marriage was primarily because he could not cater to Suzy’s need for constant attention. Jane Birbeck required none of that and was a total opposite to Suzy. Although she lacked Suzy’s poise and ethereal presence, Hunt liked Jane’s bohemian style and her undeniable sex appeal. He said of her: “She has a strong personality, the strongest one I’ve ever met and the only one who could stand up to my strength, which is why we have such a good balance. I’ve never wanted to use or abuse women, but if you have a stronger personality, you can’t help but be the dominant one. And the moment that happens, you have no relationship. I don’t want someone to live for me.”

And so it was that the two drivers, both very happy for entirely different reasons, got down to the serious business of fighting for the Formula One world championship with new partners and settled love lives.

CHAPTER
8

Three in a Row for Ferrari

Angry Man Loses the Plot

Long Beach: March 26–28, 1976

J
ames Hunt flew back to London from Johannesburg to compete in the Race of Champions non-championship race at Brands Hatch in England. From Heathrow Airport, he went straight to his parents’ house in the county of Surrey, not far from the Brands Hatch circuit.

His parents’ house was a safe refuge from journalists enquiring about the state of his crumbling marriage.

Lauda and Hunt squared up to each other at Brands, and both were eager to use the race for a test session for the British Grand Prix that was due to be held at the same circuit later in the year.

Surprisingly, neither Hunt nor Lauda dominated qualifying, and Jody Scheckter vanquished both of them in his Tyrrell-Ford. Lauda had to be content with second, and Hunt could only manage fifth. In the race, however, they dominated; Hunt beat Niki Lauda fair and square in a straight fight for the first time, although Lauda eventually retired after 17 laps with brake problems.

Afterwards, Hunt helicoptered straight to London’s Heathrow Airport and flew to New York to meet his wife, Suzy, to discuss a divorce. It was there that he also met Richard Burton for the first time. From New York he flew to Los Angeles, and a Marlboro minibus picked him up from LAX and took him straight to the small town of Long Beach, where the first ever United States Grand Prix West was due to be staged on a converted street circuit.

Hunt had a very nasty flight across America and had taken too many painkillers for a headache likely caused by a heavy drinking session with Burton before his departure. He had severe stomach pains and as a result was in poor shape by the time he reached his hotel bedroom in Long Beach. Luckily he had a few days to recover.

The US Grand Prix West was a brand-new event, a second race in America at a circuit carved out of public streets in the little-known Los Angeles suburb of Long Beach. Long Beach was billed as an American version of the Monaco Grand Prix. In truth, the two locations shared only a proximity to water. The harbor was filthy and the surrounding buildings decrepit. Downtown Long Beach consisted of run-down motels, dirty apartment blocks, and old warehouses, some of which had been converted into cinemas showing pornographic movies. The circuit was worn-out tarmac bordered by concrete walls and vertical catch fencing. Long Beach turned out to be a seedy low-rent resort, nothing at all like Monaco. The town was best known as the retirement home of the ex-Cunard cruise liner, the
Queen Mary,
which had been converted into a hotel.

The race had been the improbable dream of an improbable character named Chris Pook. Pook was a gray-bearded expatriate Englishman. He was an opportunist who was perennially short of cash but had somehow raised the funds from the Long Beach local authority to accede to the demands of Bernie Ecclestone of FOCA to pay out $500,000 to host the event. It made his vision of a world championship Grand Prix around the streets into a reality.

The Long Beach local council was keen to promote the town’s tourism, and they had watched as Pook tested the concept at a smaller race the year before.

Despite Pook’s best efforts, however, right up to the few hours before the weekend began, there were doubts that the track could be made safe enough around its 2-mile length. But that applied to all street circuits.

Niki Lauda and the Ferrari team had high hopes for success in Long Beach. The 312T’s shorter wheelbase chassis was ideal for a tight street circuit, and Lauda’s driving skill was proven on tighter tracks. Conversely, James Hunt and the McLaren team did not expect to do well in Long Beach on its tight twisty track with the guardrails inches from the action. The McLaren-Ford M23 was ill suited to slow twisty tracks and, with its long wheelbase, had primarily been designed for the fast-sweeping tracks of Europe. Not only that, but Hunt hated street tracks, and despite three previous attempts, he had never managed to finish the Monaco Grand Prix.

So when qualifying was over, Hunt was very surprised when he found he had qualified third behind Regazzoni’s Ferrari and Patrick Depailler’s Tyrrell-Ford and, most surprisingly, found that he had also beaten Niki Lauda’s time.

Niki Lauda had a very troubled time throughout qualifying. For the first time in many races, he was not a force and had to settle for a place alongside Hunt on the second row of the grid. In the end, only three-tenths of a second covered the first three cars. As Hunt said, “It was one of those sessions where everyone was getting quicker all the time, and we were as good as anybody. The four of us had been fast, swapping times, and there was really nothing to choose between us.” Lauda simply said, “I hit a lot of snags.”

Lauda was under a lot of pressure in Long Beach. The laid-back Californian fans expected more of the drivers at this event than at any other. Lauda refused to take part in organized autograph sessions, and he upset Chris Pook. He demanded a huge sum of money to participate, to which Pook refused. Lauda said, “I have to force myself to go to an autograph session. That’s real hard labor, and I admit I put a high price on it.” He added, “That’s one of the primitive laws of business life: that you take note of your market value. After all, people wouldn’t pay me so much if I wasn’t worth it to them.”

But there were deeper political dramas playing out at the Ferrari team other than arguments about autograph sessions. Astonishingly, Daniele Audetto took Lauda to one side in California and told him that he had “won enough” races and that it was now his teammate Clay Regazzoni’s “turn” to take the checkered flag. He told him that Regazzoni “must be allowed to win.”

Lauda was completely shocked and said to Audetto, “Are you mad? These points will be needed to win the world championship.”

Audetto inferred that the world championship was already in the bag, but Lauda told him to put such ideas out of his head, insisting he did not understand the vagaries of Formula One.

Lauda refused to let Regazzoni win, and the two men did not part as friends. The situation remained unresolved. As it was, Audetto’s wish came true by accident rather than by design, as Clay Regazzoni dominated qualifying and easily took pole position on the grid.

With the pressure off, James Hunt made an uncharacteristic good start in the race after Regazzoni led off, followed by Patrick Depailler, then Hunt, with Lauda fourth.

Almost straightaway, Hunt passed Depailler’s Tyrrell-Ford and set off after Regazzoni. But there was a vapor lock in the fuel system, and his Ford-Cosworth engine started spluttering, which enabled Depailler to get past again. The engine soon cleared, but Hunt’s efforts came to naught on the third lap when, as he was attempting to overtake Depailler’s Tyrrell for the second time, the Frenchman suddenly moved after appearing to clip a barrier and inadvertently pushed Hunt’s McLaren off the track. His car was shunted headfirst into the wall. It had been at slow speed, so there was little damage.

Everyone expected Hunt to dust himself off and drive on, but Hunt didn’t move off again. What the spectators didn’t know was that a red mist had descended over Hunt’s helmet visor and he had decided to stay put, seething inside the cockpit. It transpired that Hunt was determined to play the victim that day and so temporarily lost the capacity for reasonable thought.

Eventually a furious Hunt undid his seat belts and leapt from his car. He ran to the middle of the track and just stood there, more or less on the racing line, and started a tirade of fist shaking and abuse directed at Depailler. Hunt continued this for three laps before he was dragged off the track by burly American marshals. It was a ludicrous display of truculence and observed by all the drivers, including Lauda, who was snickering under his visor at his rival’s stupidity.

Lauda inherited second place, and it stayed that way for the rest of the race, with Regazzoni leading him home. There was a chance that Lauda could have pushed and overtaken Regazzoni, but 15 laps before the finish, the Ferrari’s gearbox started making peculiar noises, which prompted Lauda to ease off. He slowed his lap times by as much as three seconds as Regazzoni pulled away.

In the event, Regazzoni and Lauda cruised to victory, scoring a 1-2 for Ferrari, with Depailler, who kept going, third. Lauda admitted he had been lucky and said, “I just about managed to finish.”

But the best action was still to come for both drivers. As Lauda and Regazzoni celebrated the first Ferrari 1-2 of the year, Daniele Audetto strutted his stuff down the pit lane alongside his elegant wife, Delphine. Lauda mocked them, saying, “He was naturally enormously pleased and walked about more proudly than ever.”

As for Hunt, he had not calmed down in the intervening two hours. If anything, he had grown more enraged. He shoved security men aside and stormed into the post-race press conference. In front of the world’s media, he grabbed a startled Patrick Depailler and asked him what he thought he had been playing at. Enraged further by Depailler’s initial response, Hunt shouted at him: “It was just flagrant stupidity. I came alongside you and you saw me, but you just moved over and squeezed me out. You made a complete cock-up of that corner, and the first thing you should do when you make a cock-up is to look where all the others are. The first thing you must do is to bloody well learn to drive.”

Depailler said, “Look, James, I am desolate at what has happened. I am so sorry.” Hunt said, “I am bloody well sorry too. Just watch it in future.” With that, he stormed off. Outside, Hunt told journalists that Depailler was a “crazy frog driver” who had robbed him of a certain second place.

In the end, though, most people took Depailler’s side, and James Hunt received very bad press in the following week. Even his close friend Jody Scheckter was quoted as describing his antics that day as “very foolish.”

But the final denouncement came from Hunt’s own team. When the McLaren mechanics brought Hunt’s car back to the pits, the only damage they could find was a crumpled nose; they reported to Alastair Caldwell that the car was perfectly drivable. It was clear that Hunt could have continued in the race if his anger and sheer petulance had not overpowered his sense of reason.

As dusk fell and Hunt continued making his case to journalists, he eventually admitted he had made a mistake trying to pass Depailler at that corner, but he still blamed him for the accident.

But Alastair Caldwell and Teddy Mayer were furious with him for prematurely retiring his car. All the previous goodwill he had earned with the team’s management evaporated.

His world championship hopes were also evaporating, as Lauda left America with 24 points and Hunt only had 6. Hunt wasn’t even second or third in the world championship rankings; he was not even fourth. Outwardly it was a desperate situation, and he was by now eager to win a Grand Prix for McLaren. As he said, “I need a victory to make Niki sweat, and I need one to know I can do it.”

It was a still very angry James Hunt who flew back to Britain to take part in the non-championship International Trophy Formula One race at Silverstone. Niki Lauda did not appear, and Ferrari sent a single car for its reserve driver. Free from any pressure, Hunt duly won it in style. In a display of driving perfection, he completely dominated the race in front of 75,000 almost out of control, screaming fans.