A weekend in Monaco with James Hunt

“I do,” I said. “James Hunt is a bit of a pop star, long hair, a maverick, with a big female following, and Lord Hesketh is paying for it all, running his own team from his estate in Northamptonshire, good story.”

“OK, fine,” the editor seemed vaguely interested, “we’ve had an offer to go to the Monaco race with the team, their transporter leaves tonight, you’d better go with them, we’ll get a local crew to meet you. Get some film back for the programme next Monday.”

I am already on my feet. All I know is that I have to get to Portsmouth, for the overnight ferry to France, and I will find the truck because it’s white with a large teddy bear on the side. All I have to do is find James Hunt in Monte Carlo and get him to talk to me. Sounds simple, but James could be very charming, or very grumpy, in equal measure.

The truckie is a friendly and helpful fellow. We stayed up late into the night swapping stories with the gang from Lotus and Graham Hill’s Embassy team. “Race you there,” they said, “winner gets the best place in the paddock.” This was important because in those days the F1 paddock was across the harbour from the pits area, not on the quay close by as it is today.

So, down through France we went in convoy, not racing, but not hanging about. North of Lyon we all stopped for the night, Lotus, Hill and Hesketh never far apart on the road. Early start tomorrow, flat chat down to Monte Carlo harbour.

Having bagged a prime spot in the paddock it was time to head for the Automobile Club de Monaco for the necessary media credentials. Hesketh’s motor launch whisked me across the water.

The place is a bit of a zoo in race week, a zoo with very well-heeled animals, but still a challenge for those with work to do. Fortunately Lord Hesketh had his yacht, the Nefertiti, berthed near the pits, making communications with the team a whole lot easier.

Practice starts on a Thursday in Monaco which allows an extra day for getting the job done. But things didn’t start too well. James was often very edgy before going out on track, not exactly nervous, but certainly tense, jiggering around as he sat in Harvey Postlethwaite’s Hesketh 308. There were 28 cars entered with only 25 places on the grid which meant the tension was ratcheted up even before that first practice session. Predictably, team manager Bubbles Horsley advised waiting until Friday or Saturday for an interview with his driver. Into Friday then and plenty of time to do some filming. Backdrops and atmosphere are not hard to find here, especially as in those days you could walk the entire track behind the barrier. The tunnel was darker then but still the noise… An all-consuming assault on the whole body, not the rather tame tune of the hybrids. Inches from the cars you could hear the ‘squeak’ of tyres kissing the armco.

Into the evening and it was ‘Welcome Aboard’ from His Lordship, dressed in a white linen suit. “Thought you might use a drink,” he says, producing ice cold champagne. “James will talk to you tomorrow,” he promises, “I will make sure he does.”

And he did, after qualifying, which went well, seventh fastest despite a gearbox glitch. Stepping aboard the Nefertiti, James was asking for a cigarette. I offered him my packet, ensuring I had his attention.

“OK, so…”, he exhales a cloud of smoke, strips to the waist, swigs water from a bottle, “the car is pretty good here, could have gone faster, something broke in the gearbox, but we’ll fix it for tomorrow. The car takes a hammering here, you touch the barriers, it goes light over the bumps, you spin the wheels, tough on the gearbox too. What else?”. He eyes up a girl on the quay.

“This team is different, some people don’t take us seriously. We don’t have unlimited money, it’s our first year with our own car, we can score points. People may think we’re here to party, we are not, this is Formula 1, we are here to race. We’re not going to win the championship but we’ll be up there and anything can happen around these streets. There’s no room to make a mistake, you need big balls in the fast bits, no time to relax.”

In the race James was hit from behind by Hans Stuck at Casino Square just four laps in but continued on his way, running strongly in the top ten, until retiring after 27 laps.

He didn’t have much to say as he stomped back to the yacht. “Bloody driveshaft broke”. Time to get going then, get our film back. Taxi to Nice? Lord Hesketh would have none of that, offering us his helicopter straight to the airport, an offer I was not going to refuse. Flown by an ex-US Army pilot who’d served in Vietnam, we skimmed along the coast at high speed, landing not far from the plane to London.

The film made the ITN News on the Monday. Job done, and Hunt went on to score three podiums that year, eighth in the standings. Two years later he would be World Champion.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.