Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (31 page)

The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association safety committee, led by Lauda, remonstrated with the organizers over the condition of the track. Finding no satisfaction, a meeting was scheduled to discuss it. When he was asked by Lauda to attend the circuit safety meeting, Hunt apparently shouted at him, reportedly saying, “To hell with safety. All I want to do is race.”

It was the last thing Hunt wanted to say to the injured Lauda, but his reaction was the fallout from the British Grand Prix appeal and what had happened at Monza. Lauda understood and remained reasonably philosophical about it: “We have been friends, but James broke the rules in England. If you break the rules, you are out. No argument. Now he shouts at me. This is not right. He should respect me as a driver. We have a job to do. Bad feeling only makes it more difficult.”

Hunt didn’t attend the official safety committee meeting and made his excuses. His absence severely weakened the drivers’ position. The other drivers were furious, and some questioned Hunt’s motives. The truth was that there was a real danger of the race being canceled, which was not in Hunt’s interests at all. With one less race, he had no chance of winning the championship. Alastair Caldwell probably advised him not to go, but of course Hunt wasn’t about to admit that. Drivers always maintain that safety is paramount. But on this occasion, as far as James Hunt was concerned, it wasn’t.

His behavior completely disrupted the post-Monza harmony between the two drivers. Much later, Hunt admitted that for tactical reasons he had been keen to inflame the situation rather than cool it down: “I was deliberately trying to make Niki think that I was freaked out by what was happening so he would steer clear of me on the track. It was purely a professional piece of gamesmanship. If you can psych out another driver and make him frightened of you, then he’s much easier to pass. I certainly wasn’t about to shove him off the track, but I wanted him to think I was in that frame of mind.”

Tossing aside their ethics, journalists also began to fuel the anger between the two drivers. Hunt, thinking that Lauda had tried to psyche him out earlier in the year by revealing that he had had the last rites administered to make him think he was out of the title race altogether, retaliated. Realizing he could intimidate Lauda to the point where he would let him pass on the track rather than risk a confrontation that might put both of them out, he added: “I had cultivated the idea with Niki that I was worked up and, without ever saying it, made him think that.”

The feud was intense, and everyone knew what was happening. John Hogan, whose Marlboro cigarette brand sponsored both drivers, felt it more than most. He described one incident when he arrived: “I’d just got off the plane in Toronto, and I walked into the huge dining room at Mosport. Niki was sitting over there with the Ferrari guys, and James was sitting over there with the McLaren guys. And I walk in and Niki says, ‘Hogan, come sit here.’ Then James shouts, ‘Hogie, over here.’ So I started with McLaren, then moved over to Ferrari.” Hogan, who was close to both drivers and could take an objective view, mostly blamed Lauda for the trouble and believed he was guilty of exploiting his injuries to get an advantage. The disputes, he maintained, were not of Hunt’s making: “Niki was being a little bit the Austrian brat. Throughout that year, James had had sort of a testy relationship with Niki.”

Hunt was walking around the motel like a bear with a sore head. On the following night he got into a furious row with Daniele Audetto in the restaurant. Teddy Mayer stood by while it raged on. It had all started when Audetto, a courteous man, attempted to convey his apologies to Hunt about losing the appeal. Hunt replied with two words: “Get lost.” Or at least these were the words reported in the Canadian newspapers. Audetto told him he was only doing his job. The fuse was lit, and Ferrari and McLaren personnel joined in until Hunt got bored and went to bed. He said the next day: “I thought Audetto’s apology was slightly gross. He didn’t have to apologize because he need not have protested my win at Brands Hatch in the first place. So I explained to him in a rather terse way that I wasn’t interested in his apologies.”

It was Ferrari’s turn to be at a disadvantage, and the following day Audetto got a shock when the Canadian scrutineers told him that the Ferrari gearbox oil cooler was mounted in an illegal position, and it transpired that it had been in this position ever since the Spanish Grand Prix. As soon as it was pointed out, there was no arguing. Audetto could see it was illegal.

Ferrari hadn’t been trying to cheat, as there was no performance advantage, but it was a mistake and it had not been spotted until Canada. The team simply had not understood the rulebook properly, nor had eight sets of previous scrutineers.

Audetto was hugely embarrassed, and the team quickly repositioned the coolers. It left Teddy Mayer and Alastair Caldwell with a huge decision to make—whether or not to appeal the results that were clearly achieved with an illegal car. After a great deal of discussion, they decided not to protest. If they had, arguably Ferrari could have been disqualified from every race since Spain.

When all the drama died down, the action on the track began.

Ferrari brought 312T2 chassis numbers 26 and 27 for Lauda and Regazzoni, and chassis number 28, which was brand new, was kept under covers in reserve. The car had been built for Carlos Reutemann, but Lauda had enforced the terms of his contract and Reutemann was out in the cold. Audetto and Enzo Ferrari had wanted to replace Regazzoni with Reutemann, but Lauda had blocked that as well. He just didn’t like the man. The new Ferrari engine design was now sorted out, and the power advantage, especially at the lower end, was very noticeable.

As soon as the race weekend got started, most of the differences between the drivers were forgotten. For the first time, it was apparent that Niki Lauda’s face was badly damaged by the burns he had suffered in the accident. Hunt was deeply sorry about Lauda’s disfigurement, which caused anguish to everybody in the Formula One paddock. Hunt knew life would never be the same for Lauda, and he could not help but confront the thoughts of his own mortality when confronted with Lauda’s visible injuries every day. Everyone seemed bothered except Lauda himself. The change in his appearance didn’t seem to bother Lauda at all. And if it did, he would never admit it. It did bother him that others were disturbed, but he realized he could do nothing about that and simply got on with his life with the cards that he had been dealt.

McLaren had given up with its new M26 car, and Jochen Mass would not have to drive it again in 1976. Officially Caldwell told people that the team did not want to bring two sets of spares to the flyaway races. The trio of M23s sufficed, and Hunt had to use the spare car when his engine blew on the first day of qualifying. For both days, Hunt was easily the fastest man on the track, and he was never seriously challenged by Lauda or Regazzoni, despite their powerful engines. Qualifying was fought out between Hunt and Ronnie Peterson’s resurgent March-Ford. Peterson was now back on top form. But he wasn’t strong enough to stop Hunt taking pole position four-tenths of a second clear: a huge margin. Vittorio Brambilla, also in a March-Ford, and Patrick Depailler’s Tyrrell-Ford were on the second row. Lauda was only sixth fastest alongside an increasingly in-form Mario Andretti in his Lotus-Ford. No one could explain Lauda’s tardiness, but as Regazzoni could only manage 12th, it was assumed the car was not suited to the circuit’s characteristics.

For Ferrari it was its worst overall qualifying performance of the year, and Lauda had no chance of winning the race. If Regazzoni had not been so slow, people would have blamed Lauda’s injuries. Lauda had a technical explanation of his own: “Cold weather brought out one of Ferrari’s weaknesses. When the camber of a wheel changes dramatically as it raises or droops on its suspension, it causes heat in the tires; and the ideal temperature of a racing car tire is a little over 100 degrees centigrade. The cars of most of the teams have suspensions that do a lot of the work, while the play in our cars is almost nil. In consequence, when the days were hot, we had the advantage. But at Mosport, it worked against us.”

As had become, for him, depressingly normal, James Hunt made a very poor start to his race and was left behind on the grid by Ronnie Peterson. For eight laps he trailed the Swede before his superior speed got him past. A few laps later, Depailler in the six-wheeled Tyrrell nosed through into second place and moved closer to the McLaren. Hunt scythed through the back markers majestically. As he recalled: “They all gave way to me beautifully.” His tactics, intended to intimidate Lauda, had clearly worked on everyone else as well.

The grand prix had been enlivened by the duel between Hunt and Depailler, who was a very strong challenger. But in the closing laps, Depailler began to drop back inexplicably, and there were six seconds between them at the finish as Hunt took the checkered flag to win, with Mario Andretti finishing third.

Niki Lauda, who had had a very poor start, could not even finish in the points and came home a lowly eighth: easily his worst race performance of the year.

He said later, by way of excuse, “A rear suspension component snapped and threw me right back.” Teammate Regazzoni beat him in the end to get a single point. Regazzoni could not move over and give Lauda the point, because Carlos Pace’s Brabham-Alfa Romeo was between them. Lauda simply could not get past him. Lauda had fought an ill-handling car with a rear suspension problem for the entire race. He had scored no points: a disaster for him.

Afterwards, the Ferrari mechanics discovered that a rear suspension mounting had failed. At the time Lauda said, “About halfway, it started to oversteer very badly. I don’t know why.”

Patrick Depailler was bemused as he stood on the podium; he believed he could have won the race. But it turned out that petrol fumes had been leaking into his Tyrrell cockpit, leaving Depailler feeling intoxicated in the last few laps. He said he felt as though he had drunk a bottle of whisky. When he removed his helmet, the padded lining was wet with fuel. Second place had become his specialty; he was to finish second five times in 1976.

Hunt admitted that his victory had not been a formality: “Depailler was really giving me a hard time, keeping the pressure on, and if he had got past, he was probably capable of running a bit quicker than I was. But he wasn’t quite quick enough to attack me. My main worries in Canada were the back markers trailing the field when we came through to lap them, because you only need to do that wrong once and the guy trailing you is through and gone. The back marker moves the wrong way at the wrong moment, you have to brake and there is a big gap on the other side of the road. So I took great precautions not to let that situation arise. I started playing the back markers against Patrick. I’d cruise, as it were, between groups of back markers because I obviously wasn’t going to get away from him, so there was no hurry. Then, when we got near the back markers, I’d put on a real spurt to get as much air between him and me and to give myself a bit of maneuvering room. Soon I was timing my arrival with the back markers so that I was ready to pass them at the right part of the circuit. I was giving it real thought and I was managing to get through better than he was, but you need a bit of luck there as well.”

Hunt was ecstatic when he passed the finish line. He had done what he had come to Canada to do. All thoughts of the Brands Hatch disqualification disappointment were banished from his mind. After the race, Hunt and Lauda got together to resolve their differences. Hunt consciously may have been playing up the much-publicized rift between himself and Lauda to his advantage, but there comes a point in any psychological confrontation when it is difficult to isolate the truth from the tactics. Hunt realized that this point had come and that the so-called feud needed to be laid to rest permanently.

Hunt was tired of what had happened in Italy and Canada and wanted a fair fight to the finish in an atmosphere of good sportsmanship. He genuinely didn’t want to win in a state of gladiatorial confrontation with Lauda, especially after the Nürburgring accident.

After Canada, with two races to go, the points gap had opened up to eight.

CHAPTER
26

Fate Intervenes in New York

Hunt Victory Takes Championship to the Wire

Watkins Glen: October 8–10, 1976

A
week after scoring no points in Canada, Niki Lauda took the short trip to New York fully expecting to wrap up the world championship.

He had scheduled a major facial reconstruction operation for the following week and did not even intend to travel to Japan for the final race of the season—when Carlos Reutemann, who he now accepted would be his new teammate in 1977, would stand in. But those plans were soon to change when fate intervened at Watkins Glen.

Watkins Glen is a small tourist town situated on Seneca Lake in New York State, around 120 miles from the Canadian border. No one would know about it were it not for the race circuit that had hosted the US Grand Prix ever since it was inaugurated in 1961. The focus of the Formula One circus was the intimate Glen Motor Inn hotel. Almost all of the Formula One drivers stayed at the Glen Motor Inn, with the mechanics staying at the nearby Seneca Lodge.

The Franzese family managed the Glen Motor Inn at the time and were familiar with all the Formula One drivers. The Franzeses gave the race a real family feel, and the drivers loved it. So the Glen Motor Inn was an ideal venue for a rapprochement between Niki Lauda and James Hunt. A rapprochement sorely needed after the bitter disputes in Canada that had broken out over Ferrari’s Brands Hatch appeal and the safety issues at the Mosport circuit.