Hunt v Lauda 1976: A Brat and ‘The Rat’

McLaren boss Teddy Mayer considered Formula 1 to be a science and his team to be in the business of winning. A lawyer by training, he preferred differences to be aired and settled in the right place at the right time.

Final practice for the Brazilian Grand Prix was neither of those things.

But he had no precedent for Hunt – apart from a bizarre blazing row over blazers during contractual negotiations. Everything else went through on the nod.

You couldn’t tie the Bohemian Englishman down never mind put a tie on him. A smart mouth with a posh accent, he played a mean trumpet and possessed a mean right hook. He was eligible hunk meets scruffy punk.

Fit to burst – Mayer was implacable and infuriating – Hunt squeezed into his M23 and grabbed pole position.

And Mayer admitted that a McLaren had never been driven faster.

This wasn’t going to be boring.

While Hunt was lighting a bonfire under McLaren, reigning world champion Niki Lauda continued to keep self-destructive Ferrari’s wilder fires in check.

He desired boring.

His 1976 began with a win. Followed by another in South Africa. Plus two more in Belgium and Monaco. And when he wasn’t winning, he was finishing second.

Unemotional, efficient and logical, he was nicknamed ‘The Computer’.

Hunt was nicknamed ‘The Shunt’ because he crashed a lot.

One would eventually fly Jumbos, the other breed budgies.

Yet they were mates. Good ones. And briefly London flat-mates, too.

They saw past their nicknames and recognised much of themselves in each other: disapproving conservative parents, flunked expensive educations – barring an A in Self-belief – and underwhelming careers through the junior ranks.

Charismatic Hunt, round-shouldered, blond and handsome, was the leader of their gang – unless bike star ‘Hollywood’ Hailwood was in town to teach them how to party – but skinny, shy, buck-toothed Lauda reached F1 first, albeit up to his neck in hock.

Hunt joined him in 1973 and both were on Ferrari’s radar for ’74.

Enzo was taken aback by their lack of deference – but at least he heard it directly from Lauda’s mouth, albeit through a nervous translator. To be told second-hand by a portly, bumptious English aristocrat that Hunt was not for sale was beyond the pale.

Lord Hesketh had rescued Hunt from the scrapheap and built a team around him. Without sponsors or care, it stirred things up with its silver spoon and succeeded thanks to a spine of steel.

In June 1975, after an early switch from wets to slicks – a strategy he all but invented – Hunt won the Dutch GP at Zandvoort. Lauda, eyes on a bigger prize, was second. Though pleased for his friend, he fretted that a genie had been let out of its bottle.

He knew how good Hunt was.

McLaren was unsure but had no choice due to incumbent Emerson Fittipaldi’s surprise late switch to brother Wilson’s unproven Copersucar outfit for 1976.

‘Emmo’ was everything Hunt was not: understated, polite, a stickler for convention, an enthusiastic and capable test driver – and a two-time world champion. The gentlemanly Brazilian and Mayer had sung from the same set-up sheet.

Ironically, however, that discordant shouting match in Brazil had shown McLaren how to get the best from its unconventional new man.

Hesketh used to invent problems to wind up this emotionally charged performer – but its supposedly footloose team manager ‘Bubbles’ Horsley, part headmaster, part housemaster, part taskmaster, kept Hunt on a tighter leash than McLaren ever would.

Consummate non-championship victories at Brands Hatch and Silverstone had convinced it that Hunt had more than just speed, that he wasn’t totally tally-ho.

And so the honeymoon began.

Hunt, meanwhile, was on the front pages because of his divorce from willowy Suzy Miller – in a million-dollar deal struck with Richard Burton. The press were all over it in a flashbulb and suddenly McLaren, not Ferrari, was the sexiest team in the paddock.

Lauda in contrast married Marlene, former girlfriend to actor Curd Jürgens – Germany’s ‘Burton’ – in secret. Nothing was to upset his applecart.

Until he rolled a tractor at home and broke some ribs. When Hunt dived ruthlessly by him for the lead of the Spanish GP, it felt like a knife going in.

Their relationship was heating up.

It came to the boil in a British heatwave.

Hunt’s followers scented blood and howled when it was announced that their ‘fighter pilot’ hero would be denied a dogfight with the Germanic ace in the red machine under a Kentish blue sky.

It was as fundamental as that.

Fearing a riot, organisers allowed Hunt to take the restart in his original, repaired car. He won and the crowd, pent emotion spent, went home happy.

Lauda sensed the momentum shift and promptly browbeat a new contract from Enzo. One week later he was fighting for his life.

Lauda’s crash at the Nürburgring put the political bickering – the disqualified Hunt had had his Spanish GP win returned the day after his victory in France – into context.

Hunt, in command at the ‘Ring, felt helpless and hopeless when on Monday he discovered the seriousness of his friend’s plight. The message he sent was light in tone but written with a heavy heart.

He needed Niki.

And, oddly, it was harder without him.

The rest stepped up and Hunt, now expected to win, drove like Lauda: fourth despite a damaged front wing in Austria followed by a brilliant defensive drive to victory in Holland despite a flapping front-brake cooling duct.

Watching on TV, the recovering Lauda saw the bigger picture. Ferrari, absent from Austria, had turned in on itself and was lagging in several key areas. He vowed to return in time for October’s Canadian GP.

When he heard that it had signed Carlos Reutemann – bloody Reutemann! – as his replacement, he brought it forward to Monza in September.

Dead man driving.

Just 39 days after his accident, wearing large sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low against the glare of public scrutiny, Lauda drove like Hunt. Sick with fear and making every excuse not to get in his car, he rebooted after the first day to qualify fifth – the fastest of the three Ferraris – and finish fourth.

His rival, meanwhile, felt Italy’s wrath. McLaren was incorrectly gonged for illegal fuel during practice and an unsettled Hunt was booed and spat at after beaching in the gravel early in the race.

Despite his bad-boy image he was a terrible baddie.

Both men were relieved to leave Monza. The worst was over.

Hunt shrugged when he was informed that Lauda, head bandaged, had been handed the British GP victory by the FIA’s Court of Appeal. The Englishman was playing squash in Canada at the time.

Different courts, different mindsets.

Hunt’s view was that he had beaten Lauda fair and square and was confident that he could do so again. Besides, having nothing to lose suited his mood and MO.

His M23, with its six-speed gearbox and onboard pneumatic starter to obviate the need for a heavy battery, had gained an edge over the nimbler 312T2.

McLaren was flirting with aerodynamic side skirts, negative underbody pressures and Kevlar body panels, while Ferrari wasted time with old-hat de Dion rear suspension – tested extensively but raced never – when it should have been berating Goodyear for supplying rubber better suited to its larger rival.

As Lauda feared, Hunt ran away with it in Canada, driving like an angel despite a devil of a hangover. Lauda finished eighth, his suspension broken. Given what had happened in Germany, it was a wonder he carried on.

When he knocked, fully kitted out, helmet and all, on Hunt’s hotel room in America to announce to its half-asleep occupant, ‘Today, I will become world champion’, it was a joke made in hope rather than expectation.

Hunt won. Lauda was third, more than a minute behind.

They had shaken hands after Canada. Lauda, though not as needy as Hunt, realised that they would forever be intertwined in history. And that one more race lay between them and the rest of their lives.

It almost didn’t happen. Mount Fuji was shrouded in mist – a bad omen – and Hunt agreed that conditions were too dangerous, before adding that he would drive only as hard as Lauda forced him to.

His Ferrari feeling like “a paper boat in a storm”, eyes unblinking because of their fried lids, Lauda disembarked after two laps. He had won a personal battle at Monza, not the war.

He had the skill but not the will. ‘The Computer’ was human and his adrenalin had run dry.

Barry Sheene, on hand to give Hunt moral and immoral support, knew in an instant: physical recovery was the easy part.

To stop was a decision braver than that to race in Italy.

Speaking of decisions why didn’t McLaren call Hunt in?

And why wasn’t he driving through puddles to keep his wet tyres intact on a drying track?

Truth be told, nobody wanted to make the decision. So close to the title that they could taste it, they could also smell the fear.

The prearranged signal’s jist was, ‘We’re ready when you are’. But, mind racing in a bad way, Hunt needed a command not a recommendation.

Bloody ‘Bubbles’ would have given one.

When he did pit, it was too late – two punctures forcing mechanics to heave the car onto the jacks – and he exited in a fury, unsure of his position, and drove in anger.

He was still fuming at the race’s end. And Mayer’s smug little mug didn’t help. So he let him have it. Both barrels.

As he had at Interlagos 10 months before, Teddy stood his ground. He held up three fingers and shouted: “Third place! You’ve done it, James!”

By a point.

No argument there.