Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (35 page)

Having Mario Andretti on pole was good for Ferrari. Andretti, who was half Italian, felt the need to tell journalists that—despite his origins—he was neutral and would do nothing to influence the outcome of the race either way. But he also pointed out: “Hunt’s got everything to lose. You don’t have to be a mathematician to work it out. Lauda just has to beat Hunt, but Hunt’s got to beat him—and all the rest of us. He’s got to win.” But Andretti’s comments were the least of Hunt’s problems. The poor weather forecast for Sunday was becoming one of his primary concerns.

Up until then, the weather had been relatively good and the only drama had been caused by the sheer number of journalists—print and broadcast—demanding interviews. Such was the interest in the Hunt-Lauda showdown that the media contingent was nearly eight times the normal number. Nearly 1,000 media personnel crowded into Mount Fuji, and everyone wanted to talk to Lauda and Hunt. They weren’t interested in any of the other drivers.

As predicted, race day brought dramatically different weather. It had been raining all night. As the drivers looked out of their hotel bedroom windows in Tokyo, it was hard to imagine a worse storm. The weather had closed in, and Mount Fuji was completely obscured by low clouds. The whole of the surrounding countryside was shrouded in thick drifting fog.

Niki Lauda immediately knew his car would perform badly in the prevailing weather conditions and that nature had handed James Hunt a big advantage.

The organizers responded by hiring dozens of laborers, whom they kitted out with cagoules (lightweight hooded, weatherproof jackets) and wide brooms. These men started sweeping water off the track all around its length. As the fog rolled in, no one could see the circuit sweepers in their gray-colored cagoules.

In the morning warm-up session, several cars crashed and one aquaplaned off the main straight. When Lauda took out his car, he knew he was in deep trouble. Not only was his car useless in the conditions, he was very worried about his eyes in the wet conditions and his reduced visibility. He said, “Rivers course down across the circuit. Doing no more than 20 miles per hour in a warm-up lap, you are simply flushed away at corners because the tires cannot cope with that volume of water.” For him the rain was an absolute disaster, and he knew it would probably cost him the world championship. He said, “In the wet you have to call on additional reserves of motivation and endurance. I have no such reserves. I am finished. The rain has totally destroyed me.”

But there was still a chance that the race would be canceled or postponed to the following day and to better weather conditions. Hunt was a member of the drivers’ safety committee with Lauda, and the two now joined forces to tell the organizers that there couldn’t be a Japanese Grand Prix, as it was far too dangerous for the drivers. With the exception of Brambilla and Regazzoni, all the drivers voted against racing.

But Hunt’s attitude incensed Alastair Caldwell. He was absolutely adamant that Hunt drive, saying to him, “James, don’t be an idiot. You can’t win the championship unless there is a race.” James simply responded by saying that safety came first and that he and Lauda would not race. Jochen Mass agreed with Hunt.

Hunt had become so friendly with Lauda after Canada that he was now in his camp where safety was concerned. In fact, Hunt was so adamant he would not race in the conditions that he said, “I would rather give Niki the title than race in these conditions.”

The team managers usually took little notice of the drivers, but this time they were worried. In normal circumstances, as the weather was so bad, the race almost certainly would have been abandoned. But these were not normal circumstances. The organizers had spent over $1 million to stage the event and would have to refund the spectators who had paid high ticket prices. The circuit was full of television crews from all over the world who had booked expensive satellite time to broadcast the race live. From a financial point of view, there had to be a race. There were nearly 80,000 people rammed into the circuit, and the world championship had to be decided. There had never been so much pressure to hold a sporting event to schedule.

As the day wore on, however, the race was not canceled, so Hunt told Lauda they should try to have the race postponed. However, postponement didn’t appear to be an option the organizers were willing to entertain. Slowly the drivers’ moods began to change, and Ronnie Peterson, Tom Pryce, Vittorio Brambilla, Clay Regazzoni, Alan Jones, and Hans Stuck all fancied their chances on a wet track and decided they should get on with it. When Hunt heard this, he knew he was fighting a lost cause; once a few drivers lined up on the grid, others would surely follow—especially as their team managers were threatening to fire them if they didn’t race.

Meanwhile, with the race still in doubt, Hunt was behaving very bizarrely. At one point he came out, jumped over the pit lane counter, dropped his overalls to his ankles, and proceeded to urinate in full view of the crowds in the grandstand. The spectators, many of whom had high-powered binoculars trained on him, applauded him after he finished. He waved back.

As the Formula One cars remained motionless, covered in tarpaulins in front of the pits, the team managers huddled with organizers and race officials in the first floor of the race control tower. It was plain to everyone that it was too dangerous to race. The time scheduled for the race start came and went. The pressure from the television crews was relentless.

The pressure on organizers was immense. They sought the opinions of both Hunt and Lauda, asking them if they wanted to race. Lauda didn’t want to race. Hunt was now ambivalent, although he still agreed with Lauda. Hunt had decided to defer to Lauda and told him that he personally felt they should wait and race the next day. But he told Lauda he would participate if the race was held, saying, “Everyone was still arguing and expressing their point of view. Mine was to not race, to have it another day or something like that. But you get a few weak people to break the strike and then everybody’s at it.”

After further discussions, Hunt changed his mind again and told Alastair Caldwell that he and Lauda were withdrawing from the race, whatever decision the organizers made.

Meanwhile, Bernie Ecclestone was frantic. He had sold the broadcast rights for large sums of money, and if there was no race, he faced having to give it all back. He was not sure where he stood if the race was postponed to Monday.

The grandstands, which ran the whole length of the main Fuji straight, were packed with fans sitting silently beneath a sea of umbrellas. The crowd sat motionless and in absolute quiet, a perfect demonstration of Japanese reserve. There was none of the Brands Hatch mayhem; it was a different world.

Caldwell thought them too quiet and, remembering what had happened at Brands Hatch, decided to get the crowd agitated. He got one of the McLaren mechanics, Lance Gibbs, to stand and blow his whistle to get them roused. Caldwell knew that most of the Japanese carried whistles. The gesture worked, and they all brought out their whistles and started blowing to put pressure on the organizers. With Gibbs’s encouragement, they also started shouting.

As the crowd became increasingly roused, the organizers became more and more nervous. Bernie Ecclestone also frightened the organizers by telling them they could have a riot on their hands if there was no race. Ecclestone, by now frantic with worry, told them, “You’ve got to hold the race. You’ll have a riot. They’ll tear down the stands.”

Caldwell believed that the fans and their increasing agitation, admittedly stirred up by him, was a strong factor in eventually getting the race started.

Lauda remembered: “We all refused to drive in the prevailing conditions. We sat in the race officials’ trailer and told him ‘no go.’ At that point the organizers had decided there would be no race. But they were being stalled from making an announcement by Bernie Ecclestone and others.”

At four o’clock in Fuji, it started to get really dark. Ecclestone told them, “The race must start.”

Caldwell had noticed Lauda’s demeanor and guessed there might be a problem with his eyes in the wet. He knew it was now or never, and if the race was canceled or abandoned, then McLaren might lose the title race by default. Caldwell literally grabbed Hunt by his overall lapels and told him that if the race was on, he would drive. A shocked Hunt agreed. Lauda was now in a difficult position, saying, “It was barely credible as it was now raining harder than ever.”

The race should have started an hour and a half earlier, and in another two or three hours, the Mount Fuji circuit would be in darkness. Finally a decision was made and announced over the loudspeakers; the Japanese Grand Prix would begin in five minutes. Vittorio Brambilla led the drivers out to their cars.

But James Hunt was missing. And at the precise moment the start was confirmed, he was elsewhere according to Patrick Head, then technical director of the Walter Wolf racing team. Head had accidentally walked into a pit garage that was empty—but not quite empty. He was surprised to find Hunt inside, with his racing overalls down around his ankles and a young Japanese girl kneeling in front of him with his penis in her mouth. Hunt laughed when he saw him, but Head hemmed and hawed and quickly left in a daze, not quite believing what he had seen. He was clearly disturbed by having witnessed such antics from a leading participant so near to the start of an important race. When Head recounted the story at dinner later in Tokyo, he found that no one was shocked at the story and said they had seen him do far worse before a race.

When Hunt emerged from the garage, he rushed to get into his car. Lauda, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Carlos Pace were all determined not to race and would do just a few laps to please their team owners. Lauda said, “We went to the start so that our respective teams could pick up their starting money, but then we would pack it in because nothing changed. Everything was just as dangerous as before, and the fact that it was getting dark could hardly help matters.”

The drivers went out and did some exploratory laps and then came back in to vote again. Another drivers’ meeting voted by a substantial majority that the circuit was too dangerous, but the organizers overruled them and decided to hold their motor race. But the new worry was the light and the deteriorating visibility.

They opened the pits, and the cars trickled out one by one to take up their positions on the grid. Hunt again told Caldwell that he wasn’t driving, and, again, Caldwell told him he was. Hunt said to Caldwell, “Alastair, fuck this, I’m getting out.” Caldwell retorted, “Get out of that car and I’ll break your fucking neck.” John Hogan witnessed this and remembers: “James replied, ‘Oh, all right.’ And that was it.” But Caldwell wasn’t completely reckless and did recognize the dangers. He told Hunt that if he wasn’t happy after the warm-up lap, he could come into the pits and retire without consequences, but he warned him that his championship bid would be over.

So the race officials took the decision away from the drivers, and the showdown in Japan finally got under way. Niki Lauda would start the race and see how conditions were. He said, “At the start, the feeling was absolutely unbearable. I was sitting there, panic-stricken, rain lashing down, seeing nothing, just hunched down in the cockpit, shoulders tense, waiting for someone to run into me.”

In the gloom, the cars were pushed out to the starting grid. Lance Gibbs drilled holes in the visor of Hunt’s helmet to stop it fogging. He placed down a plank of wood on the tarmac so Hunt could walk to his car with dry shoes.

Once Hunt was in the cockpit, it felt damp, and he wiped water off his steering wheel. There was a warm-up lap, and straightaway Lauda had a fright as John Watson’s Penske-Ford car span out of control right alongside Lauda and tobogganed off into the grass runoff area, just missing ramming Lauda’s Ferrari.

Hunt started as favorite to win the race as the in-form driver with a high grid position. From the start he went straight into the lead and, with a clear track in front of him, sped away easily. Hunt had made the best start of his life, and his McLaren’s heavy spray covered everyone in his wake. The other drivers all had to contend with spray and fell farther back. As only he could see where he was going and the other 24 drivers were navigating blind, Hunt sought to maximize the advantage he had earned.

Lauda was losing positions on every lap and was clearly in some sort of trouble. As Caldwell had suspected, his eyes were not up to it. There was so much standing water on the track that Lauda could hardly control his Ferrari; he simply couldn’t see through his damaged eyelids. He couldn’t have continued even if he had wanted to. He said, “Everybody was skating and spinning; it was crazy. Looking at it this way, it seemed only sensible to drive into the pits and give up.”

After two laps, he stopped. He had been unable to see and couldn’t blink his eyes, which ruined his focus. It was too dangerous to continue. As he pulled to a halt, his four mechanics shielded the cockpit and he told them he had decided to retire from the race. Cuoghi said they could blame engine failure, but Lauda wanted none of it, and he’d tell the truth to whoever asked—but of course not the whole truth. Without making excuses or offering explanations, as he didn’t want the trouble with his eyes to stop him from racing in the future, Lauda said, “The rain has totally destroyed me.” He added, “I regard the men who allowed the race in Japan to proceed as absolute lunatics.”

The truth was that he should never have come back that season. His right eye was very poor and he was mentally unfit to compete, but he would never admit he was unable to cope with the conditions that prevailed at the start of the race. Later, as the track dried, he rapidly began to change his mind, but by then it was too late.