Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (5 page)

Hunt was adopted by Hesketh, who was a petrolhead. He and Hesketh were of similar age and bonded together like brothers. Together they dabbled in Formula 3 until Hunt wrote off the team’s cars in spectacular crashes. Far from being discouraged, Hesketh then graduated to Formula 2 and bought a new car for Hunt to drive. After that he decided to go into Formula One. It was the break that Hunt had been looking for, and he seized it with both hands.

Lord Hesketh had enough money to build a Formula One team around Hunt. And he did just that, starting in 1973, when he bought a new March-Ford 731 car from Max Mosley for Hunt to drive.

The following season Hesketh invested a small fortune and built his very own car, the Hesketh-Ford. The first Hesketh, designed by Harvey Postlethwaite, was loosely based on the March, but faster.

For the next two years, Lord Hesketh backed Hunt all the way, and his little private team enjoyed spectacular success, with Hunt winning his first Grand Prix in Holland in 1975, beating Niki Lauda for the victory. But just as it scored its greatest success, the Hesketh team ran out of money, and Hunt found himself without a drive as 1976 dawned. By then it was too late to find another drive.

It was his own fault of course, as the writing had been on the wall at Hesketh Racing since the end of 1974, when Lord Hesketh had effectively stopped putting new money into the team. It had survived the 1975 season by using up funds left in the bank account, selling off assets, spending Hunt’s prize money, and renting out its spare car at races to drivers willing to pay.

Because of the success of the team, particularly after its first Grand Prix win, Hunt believed that a sponsor would be signed with relative ease for 1976. He said, “It didn’t worry us too much because we felt that we were in a very good position with the success we were getting. Bubbles particularly wanted to do that because, of course, it was his future. He knew there was going to be no long-term future with Alexander. He wouldn’t just pay forever.”

Hunt admitted as much to Nigel Roebuck years later: “From mid to late 1974, there was no more money really forthcoming from Alexander. He’d spent what he’d got for racing.”

Although what happened in the following two months seemed like a disaster, it eventually proved to be the making of him.

Suddenly, events transpired in James Hunt’s favor.

CHAPTER
2

Contrasting Fortunes

Lauda on Top of the World, Hunt Down and Out

December 1975

A
s Niki Lauda wrapped up his first world championship season on October 5, 1975, he was looking forward to an even more successful 1976 season. By contrast, James Hunt was down and out of Formula One.

Hunt was out of a drive as Lord Hesketh finally closed down his team after running out of money. Hunt was desperately grateful to Lord Hesketh and had hung on until it was finally confirmed that the team would close. It was an expensive gesture; by then it was too late for Hunt to get another competitive Formula One drive.

But Niki Lauda couldn’t have been better positioned. He was established at Ferrari, and its designer had a brand-new car, the Ferrari 312T2, on the drawing board. Lauda could sense that the new car would be a winner. He had also negotiated a contract that would see him earn over $300,000 if he won the championship again. Not only that, he had negotiated a personal sponsorship contract with Marlboro worth another $75,000. A year earlier he had been struggling to survive; now he was a very wealthy young man with the world at his feet. He was also in love.

But suddenly Lauda received a shock that threatened to knock him off his confident perch. Luca di Montezemolo, the young Italian manager who had been responsible for the Ferrari team’s renaissance, announced he was leaving the team to take a top job at the parent company, Fiat. Lauda was stunned and recalled, “The first hint of trouble came with the departure of my friend and ally Luca Montezemolo, who had to make a career for himself and couldn’t afford to stay on the lower rungs of the ladder as team chief indefinitely. Luca was promoted closer to the seat of power in the Fiat dynasty.” Suddenly Lauda knew that all bets were off and everything was to play for.

Montezemolo’s departure was the big break James Hunt needed, although he did not yet know it.

On November 14, 1975, it was finally confirmed that Hesketh was definitely closing. Hunt, not really believing that the day had finally come, wondered what he would do.

Although it seemed the end of the world at the time, it was eventually to prove to be Hunt’s salvation. If Hesketh had survived and continued, Hunt would have stayed with the team for the rest of his career and probably never won a world championship. The closedown was the catalyst for Hunt to move on to bigger and better things, although it certainly didn’t feel that way at the time.

Lord Hesketh was full of remorse and said, “I am deeply grateful to James for having stayed when the going got tough. The fact that he has not secured his future drive for next year is because he believed in a dream that we all believed in.”

But Hesketh’s deepest thanks could not secure Hunt a drive for 1976.

As it was, there were only two less-than-desirable drives available. The first was at the Lotus team, and that was far from definite. Lotus had suffered in the economic recession and had no money to pay its drivers. As a consequence, it expected number one, Ronnie Peterson, to leave. At the end of 1975, team manager Peter Warr, desperate for cash, had hawked Peterson’s Formula One contract around the Formula One paddock to the highest bidder. There were no takers for Peterson’s contract, and once he learned what Warr was doing, Peterson became disillusioned with the team. Sensing, but more likely hoping, that Peterson might leave, Warr opened negotiations with Hunt on the basis that he would agree to drive for nothing and be paid for each world championship point he scored.

But with no cash to develop the car, the Lotus would probably be uncompetitive. And added to that the fact that Hunt did not like Peter Warr and refused to work for nothing, it meant that there was no drive at all. In any case, it soon became apparent that Warr was determined not to have Hunt driving for Lotus and had only been going through the motions of offering him a drive to make himself look good. When Hunt realized what was happening and that he was being used, he called Warr a “pygmy.”

Hunt’s other offer was from the new, reconstituted Wolf-Williams team, owned by Walter Wolf and Frank Williams. Williams had bought the Hesketh 308C car that Hunt had driven in the last three races of 1975. Both Wolf and Williams were now keen to see Hunt drive their cars. But Hunt believed that the 308C was a terrible car, and he would only take the drive with Wolf-Williams as a last resort.

Hunt’s only other hope was Bernie Ecclestone, the Brabham team owner. For 1976 the Brabham team was contracted to run Alfa Romeo engines with the Italian carmaker paying the team’s bills with sponsorship from the Martini & Rossi beverages company. The cars would be driven by South Americans Carlos Pace and Carlos Reutemann.

Ecclestone sensed Hunt might be out of a drive and wanted to keep him in the sport. At the time, Ecclestone was just beginning to sell Formula One’s television broadcast rights, and he sensed that Hunt would be a vital part of that, especially in Britain. In the end, Ecclestone’s instincts proved right, and Hunt emerged as the key to unlocking Formula One’s true television potential.

Ecclestone put his formidable mind toward getting Hunt a drive. He proposed setting up a Brabham B-team, whereby Hunt would drive a last year’s Brabham car fitted with a Ford-Cosworth engine. But when Ecclestone asked the Italians for permission to run Hunt in a separate team, they refused point blank. They weren’t about to have their Brabham dream team upstaged by a British playboy driving last year’s car and, in all likelihood, beating them. In the end, even Ecclestone’s persuasiveness couldn’t make that deal happen.

Afterwards Hunt was deeply grateful and realized that Ecclestone had placed himself in a very difficult position on his behalf: “I think Bernie was only doing it as a matter of generosity to me.”

So Hunt stared unemployment in the face. And that might have been the end for Hunt in Formula One had it not been for John Hogan, who headed up motor sport for the Marlboro cigarette company, the biggest sponsors in Formula One.

By 1975 Hogan had become head of sponsorship with the task of using motor sport sponsorship to establish the Marlboro brand outside of North America. With a budget of $1 million a year to spend on Formula One, Marlboro was the title sponsor of the McLaren Formula One team, and Hogan had the two top drivers of the day, Emerson Fittipaldi and Niki Lauda, signed up to the brand.

Like Ecclestone, Hogan would have liked to give Hunt a drive. To that end, he decided to confide in Hunt some information that no one else knew. Hogan told Hunt that he had one glimmer of hope for 1976. He told him that although Emerson Fittipaldi had signed a contract for the 1976 season worth $250,000 a year to drive for the Marlboro-sponsored McLaren team, it was by no means certain he would honor it. Hogan said that there was a glitch in the paperwork that could allow Fittipaldi to walk away from McLaren.

Fittipaldi had a good reason for walking away. He had been offered $1 million a year, quadruple his existing salary, to drive for a Brazilian team sponsored by Copersucar, the Brazilian state-run sugar refiner. The team was run by his brother, Wilson Fittipaldi, which was another attraction. Fittipaldi pondered his choices. He could not be certain that the Copersucar car would be competitive, although he knew the McLaren would be.

But an extra $750,000 a year was an awful lot of money in the mid-’70s, and he was severely tempted.

Aware of the offer, Hogan and McLaren team principal, Teddy Mayer, were certain that Fittipaldi would turn it down. They were totally relaxed that Fittipaldi would drive for McLaren and put winning races before money.

But they were to be proved very wrong. Hogan, who had a reputation for infallibility where Formula One contracts were concerned, openly admitted he did not see Fittipaldi’s defection coming at all. As he said, “Teddy was convinced, we were convinced he was going to drive.”

It all came to a head on the evening of Saturday, November 22, when Mayer got a phone call from Fittipaldi, in São Paulo, telling him he had just signed a contract with Copersucar for 1976, and that meant he would not be driving a McLaren. He explained to Mayer that it had been his dream to drive for a Brazilian team.

Mayer could scarcely believe what he was hearing. When Fittipaldi had finished, Mayer told him bluntly that he had a contract to drive the Marlboro McLaren and that he would sue him if he didn’t. Fittipaldi politely pointed out that he had not signed his McLaren contract and was sure Marlboro would release him from its contract once they knew that. Fittipaldi had it all worked out. Mayer reflected later, “I can only say he has sold out for a bag of gold.”

Mayer was a brusque American, totally devoid of emotion and not one to dwell on the past. But he realized that Fittipaldi’s defection was a huge loss. In his two seasons with McLaren, Fittipaldi had finished first and second in the Formula One world championship. In fact, the realization that Fittipaldi would not be driving for McLaren in 1976 hit him like a thunderbolt. He knew it was too late to sign a replacement top-line driver. Mayer picked up the phone to Hogan and asked him what to do. Mayer knew Marlboro would be very disappointed with the news.

It was a cold night, and Hogan was at home with his wife, Anne, in Reading, Berkshire. Mayer didn’t waste time talking about Fittipaldi, as Hogan recalls: “Teddy rang me up and just said, ‘We need to find a driver.’”

Mayer’s idea was to promote Jochen Mass, a German who was McLaren’s number two, to be number one driver, and the search would be for a good number two to replace Mass. But unlike Mayer, Hogan did not believe that Mass was good enough to be number one.

Hogan knew he must find a star, a proper number one. In an ideal world, his first choice would have been to lure three-time world champion, the then 37-year-old Jackie Stewart out of retirement, but Hogan knew that wasn’t going to happen. As Hogan admits, as much as he may have liked it, “I couldn’t see Jackie sitting in the cockpit.”

Instead, as Hogan recalls, “I knew who to get instantly—James.”

Hogan decided to go after him, but he was immediately met with opposition from both Mayer and Alastair Caldwell, McLaren’s team manager; and he knew there would also be objections from his bosses at Marlboro headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Hogan said, “I knew I had to make it look good, because Marlboro and McLaren would have been just as happy with Jackie Ickx.” In fact, Belgian veteran Jackie Ickx was immediately the bookies’ favorite to get the drive. But Hogan knew what everyone else didn’t: that by then, Ickx was a has-been. He was determined that Ickx did not get the drive.

Hogan had always been very focused, and now all his focus was on Hunt. He instinctively knew there wasn’t a moment to lose. In his mind he could already envisage Ickx on a plane to Lausanne to sign a deal with his immediate boss, Marlboro’s European vice president of marketing, Pat Duffler. That terrible thought drove him on.

But first Hogan had to find Hunt. On that cold Saturday night in November, he had no idea where Hunt might be found. First he called his home in Marbella, and the person who answered was drunk. The drunkard told Hogan, “We think he’s in London.” Exasperated, Hogan put down the phone and continued searching. Eventually he tracked Hunt down at Lord Hesketh’s town house in London.