Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (2 page)

John Watson, as ever, was my principal guide to James and Niki’s Formula One career from an insider’s perspective. He was there and doing it, and therefore his recollections are invaluable. Regardless of that, John knows what he’s about where motor racing is concerned. As anyone who knows him will attest, John has very particular and forthright views, and woe betide anyone who might disagree with them. Luckily, his view of things almost always coincided with my own, which made him a very good collaborator. John’s greatest contribution is the time he is prepared to give to journalists and authors and the effort he puts into answering our questions.

Max Mosley was also very close to James and Niki and has unique insights of those times in the early ’70s when both drivers were struggling newcomers.

Max, James, and Niki had the most unusual of relationships and shared good and bad times together on the way up the motor racing ladder. Now that Max has retired from his onerous duties, he can tell it like it was in a manner that he was not necessarily able to do in the past.

Peter Collins is an admirer of the achievements of both James Hunt and Niki Lauda, and no one can analyze a Formula One situation like Peter. People who know me will know that I value Peter’s opinion most highly.

People who may have read my other books will know this is my shortest yet. That is simply because it is the story of a year and is therefore very concentrated. It may be short, but the effort expended upon it was still great, and I cannot finish here without thanking my own people who worked on the original edition of this book.

David Peett and Mary Hynes, as always, took care of sales. Ania Grzesik designed the original edition, as she does all my books, and Kiran Toor, our chief sub-editor, took care of the words, as she always does.

Thanks also to John Blunsden, my personal guru, for his wise publishing counsel. A few words from John can be worth thousands of dollars in saved costs.

For this book, I chose to work with Rainer Schlegelmilch exclusively on the photographs. Rainer is Formula One’s top photographer and has been since David Phipps retired. In truth, it’s wrong to describe Rainer as a photographer, as he is a true artist. His photographs are really more akin to paintings, such is the care that goes into each one. Anyone who has examined his work will know that without being told. Thanks also to Stefano Luzzatto and Boris Schlegelmilch for handling the nuts and bolts of the photographic process.

The usual thanks to David Browne, Jo Buck, Ian Foyster, and Peter Milton at our UK printers. Printing a book properly so that it is a delight in a reader’s hands is no easy task, but they manage it so effortlessly and painlessly. They also made sure the UK edition arrived in the shops on time.

Martin Bilbie meticulously examined the appendices and removed any errors that may have been apparent—a thankless task.

Finally, my gracious thanks to our final proofreaders, Stephen Meakins and Vikki Brice, who are also my neighbors in the village of Castle Ashby. As always, they get the final manuscript only a few days before printing, and their responsibilities are onerous—i.e., making sure this book goes to the printers with as few errors as is humanly possible with hardly any time to do it in.

Thanks to you all for your unstinting efforts, but, as always, the words that follow—including any errors or omissions—are my responsibility alone.

Tom Rubython

Castle Ashby

Northamptonshire

October 20, 2011

P
REFACE

Heroic Rivals

T
he summer of 1976 is best remembered for the soaring heat that started around 1 May and lasted until 31 August. In many European countries, not a drop of rain fell for four months. It was the biggest heat wave in generations. In England, the roads melted and the ice cream ran out.

But the extraordinary weather, which has not been seen again since, was nothing compared to what was happening on the racetracks of Europe that summer.

No dramatist could have created a more riveting scenario or created two more heroic rivals to feature in the 1976 Formula One season. Niki Lauda, the reigning champion, led the world championship from the first race to the last race and until almost the very last lap of the season. But “almost” became the most important word in the Austrian’s dictionary. He led for 274 days (equating to 6,600 hours, or 395,999 minutes) of those ten months. It was not until the very final few minutes of that ten-month period that James Hunt moved ahead of him and won the world title by a single championship point.

To lose a championship in such a way was devastating for Lauda, especially given the circumstances of what happened to him in 1976. No man is psychologically equipped to deal with maintaining a lead for so long only to lose. To be bested in such circumstances was a scenario he could never have envisaged, and when he flew out of Tokyo at the end of October 1976, he was a broken man.

No Hollywood screenwriter could have scripted such an ending or described the human drama of such a dramatic season. Just like the extraordinary weather of that summer will likely never again be matched, there can never again be such a dramatic racing season as 1976.

Many people believe that Niki Lauda’s accident was the sole reason for the outcome, and most people believe that James Hunt was only champion because of it. But the cold facts don’t support that. Fortune and misfortune were doled out pretty evenly that season.

When the statistics are examined, they read as follows: Niki Lauda scored five Did Not Finish (DNF) results, and James Hunt also scored five DNFs.

So each had an equal number of times when he did not make it to the checkered flag for one reason or another.

So each had an equal number of “being there at the end” opportunities: the times he could have scored points—11 each in all—and that’s what counts in motor racing.

Over the whole season, both had their problems. Hunt had three races, for reasons that had nothing to do with him, in which his car rendered him absolutely uncompetitive. Lauda had three races where his physical well-being, again entirely beyond his control, rendered him absolutely uncompetitive.

And each had two races where other circumstances meant they could not take the checkered flag. Make no mistake; when everything was balanced out, this was a fight between equals. And when the final score came to be read out, the best man at that moment emerged the winner.

The 1976 racing season will be remembered for as long as people take to the tracks to race cars.

There can and will never be another season like it. It was a unique moment in time.

F
OREWORD

My Year with James and Niki

Thanks for the Memories

A
lthough it didn’t seem that obvious at the time, looking back, I can see how fortuitous it was to be a participant in the 1976 Grand Prix season—arguably one of the most remarkable years ever in Formula One.

For me it was very special, as it was my breakthrough season: the year I won my first Grand Prix and became a regular at the front end of the grid. No one who hasn’t been there can understand the relief of winning your first Grand Prix. It’s a mighty weight lifted from your shoulders.

I had much in common with James and Niki. We were all roughly the same age and born of the same generation. We were all on the way up the motor sport ladder at the same time and entered Formula One within a year or so of one another. Most of all, I counted myself lucky to consider them both as friends.

I first ran into James in 1971 when he was driving for Chris Marshall’s Formula 3 race team and Irishman Brendan McInerney was his teammate. I recollect first meeting James in a restaurant in the Kings Road in Chelsea. It was one of his favorite haunts, and he was eating there with his then-girlfriend, Taormina Rieck, along with Max Mosley and Robin Herd. I recall Max telling me I should be driving a March.

I first came across Niki the same year at a Formula 2 race at Mallory Park. In those days he drove a Porsche 911S, which at the time was my ultimate road car.

I was actually the last of the three of us to get into Grand Prix racing. My first event was at Silverstone on 14 July 1973. James was in the Hesketh-March and Niki in the works BRM. I had an older Brabham-Ford BT37 sponsored by Hexagon of Highgate, but I didn’t care—I was just glad to be there.

That day at Silverstone, we were all at the start of our careers and far from household names. In those days the performance of the car was in the hands of the driver, and that was visible on television as the cars really moved across the track and skill was at a premium. James was the master of Woodcote corner, and it’s fair to say he went through it quicker than any of us, which is why he was always so competitive at Silverstone, whatever car he was in. That day he was easily the best of the three of us and finished fourth in the race. I remember clearly that I retired on the 36th lap in my old Brabham.

In hindsight, James did remarkably well in his first season, scoring points with relative ease and impressing everyone. It took me another year to score my first championship point, in 1974 at Monte Carlo, and I managed to score five more that year. But the vagaries of Formula One became very apparent to me in 1975, when Niki leapfrogged both of us and romped to the world championship. James managed to win his Grand Prix, whereas I managed to go the whole season without scoring a single point.

For me 1975 was a year of poignancy with the death of Mark Donohue in his Penske-Ford, an event that gave me my chance of a competitive car for the first time.

As 1976 dawned, Niki was in a different world with a very well paid drive at Ferrari and a world championship already under his belt. James was in a totally different position, and just two months earlier, it looked as though he was out of Formula One altogether. He got lucky when Emerson Fittipaldi opted to leave a competitive McLaren and drive what he must have known would be an uncompetitive Copersucar car. It was the most emotional and irrational decision he ever made in his life, but it was the best piece of luck James Hunt ever had. Emerson’s inexplicable decision propelled James into a very competitive car.

All three of us witnessed the ups and downs of making it to the top and, then, surviving at the top. The difference between them and me, I guess, is that they had the good fortune (especially James) to be in the two top teams in 1976. I was with a good team, but it was new, and the car was not initially as good as the Ferrari or the McLaren.

Being toward the front of the grid that season gave me a bird’s-eye view of the battle for supremacy that developed between Niki and James. There is no doubt in my mind that Niki would have been world champion but for his accident. Niki’s Ferrari was incredibly reliable, and when he retired, it was a shock, as such events happened so rarely.

And then Niki’s accident changed everything. I came upon the scene 20 seconds after the cars of Arturo Merzario, Brett Lunger, and Guy Edwards.

Niki’s car had been on fire in the middle of the track, but the fire was out by the time I got there. Arturo had lifted Niki out of his car, and I found him lying down at the side of the track in a pool of fuel and oil. We helped him up and looked for somewhere clean and dry to lay him down. I found a clear area. He had been badly burned, but he was fully conscious, although he really didn’t know what was going on. He must have been in great pain.

Somehow his helmet had been wrenched off without killing him, and it was a miracle he survived. I was just glad Niki was conscious and we could talk. I rested his head on my thighs and cradled him as best I could.

He was talking away in English to me, and I remember he asked how his face looked. In truth, it didn’t look good, but I told him it was okay and not to worry.

After what seemed like a lifetime, an ambulance arrived, and Niki was on a stretcher and inside the vehicle within seconds. With that, I put my helmet on and drove back to the pits assuming that the race would be restarted.

At that stage, I had no doubt Niki would survive, as the internal injuries he had suffered were not obvious at that time. But it seemed clear he would be away from racing for a long time.

Following the accident, I indirectly helped Niki by competing as hard as I could against James in the following two races. I managed to win one of them and could have won both with better luck. Niki was delirious with joy when I beat James in Austria. The following Monday, my team manager and I called Niki in the hospital, and he thanked me for preventing James from winning another Grand Prix. I said I would do my best to repeat the performance in Holland at the next race, and I very nearly did.

But if you came up against James in the right mood—when he was ready to fight the world—he could work miracles, and I could not pull it off a second time. After a titanic battle with James for the lead, my gearbox broke and James romped to victory on his birthday—much as I tried to spoil his party.

I was, like everyone else, astonished when Niki reappeared at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix. His quick return to the cockpit from the horrible accident in Germany was the most heroic act ever witnessed in our sport.