Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (32 page)

In order to talk through their differences, the two men sat down for dinner in a quiet corner of the Glen’s dining room, surrounded by the giant picture windows overlooking the lakes. The scene could not have been more tranquil. At any one time, the whole of the Formula One community could be sitting down for a meal in the restaurant. They both realized it would be better if they discussed their differences before things got completely out of hand. Lauda insisted that he had never said the things he’d been quoted as saying after the announcement from Paris. He also said his derogatory remarks about Hunt at Mosport were a case of “flagrant misreporting” by a “vicious journalist.”

Hunt also denied the quotes about Lauda that had been attributed to him. He was adamant his anti-Lauda comments had been instances of fabrication and misquotation. After they had talked, the two shook hands and the feud was buried forever. The meal had broken the ice, and the two drivers subsequently spent a lot of time together smoothing over their differences and renewing their friendship, which had been fractured temporarily by the events in Canada.

Hunt said afterwards, “The press was winding up both of us badly, and we got a bit irritated. For a few hours we hated each other, but after we got it sorted out, our good relationship continued.”

After that, they arranged to move to adjoining hotel rooms, where they kept their doors open and socialized together as much as possible. At the time,
Fawlty Towers
was Europe’s top comedy TV show, so Lauda used to wake Hunt in the morning with practical jokes and hilarious
Fawlty Towers
–type John Cleese impressions.

But others do not remember the relationship being anywhere near so congenial—especially not John Hogan, who was secretly working behind the scenes to get Lauda to leave Ferrari and join McLaren to create a dream team for 1977. Hogan had sensed his chance after Lauda’s accident and Reutemann’s recruitment to Ferrari. Hunt was all for it, but Hogan says that Lauda balked at the idea of being Hunt’s teammate. As he remembered: “James had no problem at all. He said, ‘You gotta look at it this way,’ thinking about the game again, ‘you gotta put the competitors somewhere, so it might as well be in the same car.’ But Niki was: ‘ooooough.’”

On track, qualifying was mostly uneventful round the 3.3-mile circuit save for the weather, which kept interfering. The first half of Friday was written off by torrential rain, but it cleared up in the afternoon. There was a very nasty incident when the air bottle that was used to pneumatically start the car fell off Hunt’s McLaren and was run over by Patrick Depailler and Emerson Fittipaldi’s cars. There was major damage to Depailler’s Tyrrell-Ford and some damage to Fittipaldi’s Copersucar. It was an extremely worrying moment.

Friday afternoon was to prove the only dry period of the two qualifying days, when the fastest times were set.

The weather seemed a minor irritation for Hunt, who, for the eighth time in the season, seized pole position. This time he had Jody Scheckter alongside him in the six-wheel Tyrrell-Ford, which was proving very effective in its debut season. Scheckter was improving race by race. But he had no future with the Tyrrell team after the Zandvoort incident. It was announced he was leaving Tyrrell to drive for Walter Wolf’s team. Wolf had paid him $250,000 just as a signing-on fee to persuade him to make the move.

But Scheckter’s new turn of speed was not Hunt’s problem; his problem was Lauda’s performance. He realized that the odds were on Lauda retaining his title and said, “I hadn’t given up completely because where there’s life, there’s hope. I could only knuckle down and go after each race as it came and try to win it. If I couldn’t win, I had to finish as high as I could.”

Hunt was aided by another indifferent qualifying performance by Lauda. He could only manage fifth, and the critics would have been all over him but for the fact that his teammate Regazzoni was way back in 14th place, beaten even by rookie driver Larry Perkins in the second Brabham-Alfa Romeo. Something had happened to the Ferrari’s speed at a crucial point in the season, but no one knew what. Lauda kept insisting it was the cold weather, but this was a concept Mauro Forghieri could not understand.

Saturday’s qualifying day was completely written off by torrential rain virtually all day. At one point the circuit was flooded, threatening the race.

During qualifying, Hunt aggravated an inflamed nerve in his left elbow, and the pain became worse overnight. A doctor was called, and he was given painkilling injections before he got in the car.

The race-day weather dawned bright and sunny, with no rain threatened at all. Hunt may have been on pole eight times during 1976, but he had only led one first lap, and this day would prove no exception.

This time Hunt made a good start, but it was still not good enough to prevent Jody Scheckter from taking the lead. And that is how it stayed for many laps, with Hunt in station some three seconds behind Scheckter. Behind them was third-place man, Niki Lauda, five seconds back. But Hunt knew he had to win and started focusing hard on the physical act of driving the car, something which he confessed afterwards he did not do often. It usually all came so naturally to him, and that was often good enough. But that day, it wasn’t. His McLaren-Ford was oversteering alarmingly round Watkins Glen’s many corners. He remembered he spent 20 laps concentrating and working out a technique to go faster. He called it a “self-administered driving lesson.”

He admitted afterwards that the exercise had given him huge personal satisfaction: “I got myself together. It is very important in all walks of life to be able to catch yourself when you’re doing something badly and to make sure you improve.” That day he was able to do it. Hunt gritted his teeth, gripped the McLaren’s steering wheel more firmly, and zeroed his mind in on Scheckter, who stood between him and the victory. Hunt was determined to get him. As he bore down on Scheckter, leaving Lauda farther and farther behind, he planned ahead, looking for likely passing places and opportunities to outmaneuver the leader.

On lap 36 Scheckter was delayed by another car slowing for a tight corner, and Hunt tucked his McLaren in behind the Tyrrell’s rear wing. As they accelerated down the straight, Hunt darted out of Scheckter’s slipstream and took the lead.

But four laps later, Scheckter got in front again as they were lapping back markers. Hunt was furious with himself, losing the lead after all that work. As he said afterwards: “Jody blasted past me on the straight. I really thought I’d blown it.”

Hunt’s adrenaline level was high and he pressed on, determined to win. Adrenaline levels were always a Hunt problem. As Alastair Caldwell recalled: “He put a tremendous amount of effort into racing, and he had the biggest adrenalin pump of any racing driver I’ve ever known. He was so excited in the car before a race that if you sat on the side of it, you’d think the motor was running.”

One advantage was that Niki Lauda was trailing around a few places behind. He was not even on for a podium finish, and all the action was at the front between Scheckter and Hunt.

Within a lap, Hunt was again within striking range. For several laps he waited to pounce, testing Scheckter’s reaction when he moved to the left and right sides of the track behind him. Finally, with 12 laps to go, Hunt forced his way alongside the Tyrrell coming into a slow corner. The two cars went round the bend side by side, and on the straight, Hunt got past. This time he drove like a demon to put air between him and Scheckter, who he realized was a master at negotiating slower back markers.

Hunt reeled off a succession of quick laps and eventually smashed the record with a lap that was an astonishing one second faster than his pole position. That sort of performance is rarely achieved in Formula One, and spectators that day got a master class in fast driving.

Hunt went across the line eight seconds ahead of Scheckter, and Lauda came in a minute behind in third. He got out of his car, exhausted and soaked in sweat from an outstanding drive. Hunt had closed the gap to within three points of Lauda, and there was one race remaining. On the podium he downed a bottle of cold Miller beer instead of the traditional champagne.

As Hunt stood on the podium, he told journalists, “It was as tough a race as I ever had to drive. For the first 20 laps, I drove like an old grandmother and just couldn’t adapt to my car. Both Jody and I were making mistakes in those opening laps. Then I got it together and I chased Jody and passed him fairly easily. I missed my gear change and got a fistful of neutrals, and by the time I had found a gear, Jody was past again. But I was quicker on the straight and hauled him in.”

The victory sent the whole circuit wild as they sensed the historic moment and the showdown to come in Japan. Hunt was cheered in the pressroom by the normally cynical journalists. He left the pressroom in company with David Benson, and the two men were mobbed as they walked to the Goodyear hospitality marquee for a champagne-fueled post-race party. Benson recalls: “It was an intoxicating, exciting scene. At that moment, I really believed that James was at last going to win the world championship. I wanted him to win. My emotions told me that he deserved to win.”

Between gulping down champagne, Hunt said, “This was the most important race of my life. I simply had to win. Thank God, Jody was second. That puts Niki only three points in front of me for Japan. If I win there and he comes second, I could still win the championship. We would have equal points, but I would have more grand prix wins.”

A disappointed Niki Lauda had genuinely expected to clinch the championship at Watkins Glen but was left empty-handed save for the four points earned by coming third. Lauda said of his race: “It was okay at the beginning. After all, I had 44 gallons of fuel aboard, putting a useful extra load on the tires. But the lighter my car became, the more critical the tire adhesion, as they just never reached their optimum working temperature. I had to be pleased that I came third.”

After the race he went directly by helicopter from the circuit to the airport for his home in Salzburg. When he got there, he discussed with his surgeons whether he could delay his facial operation. The skin grafts around his brow and cheeks were so tight that he couldn’t close his right eye properly, and it was becoming inflamed. An immediate eye operation was deemed necessary, but Lauda insisted it could not happen until after the Japanese Grand Prix. He had no choice but to travel to Tokyo without having had the operation. Fate had marked Niki Lauda’s card.

Hunt had no such worries, and later that evening he partied like never before at the Glen Motor Inn. Going back past a construction site, he stole a road worker’s yellow hard hat with a flashing orange light on it. In the bar, with the flashing hat perched on his head, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and a beer in one hand, he cavorted with the many adoring girls in the bar that night. Also at that party were Caldwell, Mayer, and John Hogan. And it was there, in that bar, that these three men conversed, plotted, and came up with a plan that would make James Hunt world champion. The plan would be decisive over the course of the next two weeks.

Before the Canadian Grand Prix, Hunt had only been five points behind Lauda, which meant that he had only to take six points from the final three grand prix races without Lauda scoring to be champion. But his disqualification from Brands Hatch had turned that into a 17-point deficit. Somehow he had now reduced that to three and the score was Lauda 68, Hunt 65, with one race left.

The math was relatively simple: To be champion, Hunt needed to finish first outright, and he would be world champion no matter what Lauda did. If he was second, Lauda needed to be fourth or lower for him to win. If he was third, he needed Lauda to be sixth or lower. If he was fourth or under, then Lauda would be champion.

And Lauda was not the only one with medical problems. The next day, Hunt went for an examination of his left arm. He had been suffering from inflamed ligaments and had had cortisone injections earlier that week. A cure before Tokyo was vital.

A showdown loomed in Japan at the eponymous Mount Fuji track.

CHAPTER
27

Caldwell Outsmarts Audetto

Hunt Drives 12 Vital Laps

Tokyo: October 11–16

B
y any measure, Niki Lauda should have been crowned world champion in North America. In that event, Ferrari would have traveled to Japan and entered cars for Carlos Reutemann and Clay Regazzoni. Lauda had no intention of going to Japan, nor would he have needed to.

As it was, Daniele Audetto accepted the situation, and Ferrari packed up its cars as usual, ready to put them on the Formula One charter jumbo jet to Japan. He telephoned Reutemann, who was in Italy, and told him his services would not be required until the following season. Audetto’s sense of sangfroid
was astonishing, and despite having been thoroughly trounced at Watkins Glen, Ferrari’s complacency after the race defied explanation. Audetto made no attempt to change his plans or do anything special to prepare for the last race on which the championship would depend.

By comparison, on the evening of Sunday, October 10, 1976, Teddy Mayer, Alastair Caldwell, and John Hogan sat quietly in the lounge of the Glen Motor Inn contemplating their next move. Caldwell and Hogan were staying in America and flying straight onto Japan, while Mayer was returning to London.

Before that, Mayer, Caldwell, and Hogan joined in a deadly serious conversation. They were in a place in time they had never expected to be. With one race left, McLaren could win the Formula One world championship. James Hunt’s victory that day, and Niki Lauda’s fourth place, meant there were only three points between them. It was suddenly all up for grabs in Japan. As usual, Hogan summed up the situation succinctly: “James knew it was just there, and he was kind of standing on Niki’s throat.”