Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry (8 page)

Hunt was genuinely surprised to find that, in so many ways, McLaren was inferior to the Hesketh team and that the Hesketh team manager, Anthony (Bubbles) Horsley, was a superior manager to Caldwell. Hunt explained: “With Hesketh, we used to spend a lot of time examining ourselves. Bubbles used to exercise tremendous discipline.”

In fact, Hunt was scathing about McLaren’s approach to team discipline, as he had expected a much harsher regime. He explained: “McLaren don’t give me any discipline at all. They let me do exactly what I want to do, and they don’t take any notice of me.”

Hunt was particularly upset about McLaren’s casual attitude to debriefs. As he said, “The debriefing sessions we have at McLaren aren’t the same sort of thing at all. We discuss something if we feel like it. But [here] if nobody wants to talk, we don’t … I would actually get into trouble with Bubbles if I talked to anybody else after a practice, and before I had sat down, he would have wrung the truth from me and we would all have had a big postmortem.”

Mayer and Caldwell were forced to defend themselves against Hunt’s accusations, and they blamed his attitude for the problems.

Mayer said, “Possibly, James’s initial shortcomings were that he didn’t like taking decisions. He had been in a team where all the decisions were taken for him; where Bubbles Horsley told him exactly what to do all the time. I think that it’s better for a driver to learn to take his own decisions because he has more information available to him, and this is where a more mature driver will ultimately do better.” Caldwell added, “As team manager, I want to be able to contribute to the choice of tire or choice of settings on the car, but ultimately the driver has got the say, and I think initially James wanted us to do that.”

Hunt complained to John Hogan of Marlboro about what was going on. He was so angry that he informed Hogan he wanted to leave McLaren and cancel his contract. Hogan sympathized and was also angry with Mayer. Marlboro’s budget was generous by the standards of the day—the biggest in the paddock—and Marlboro expected the money to be spent making the car as competitive as possible. Hogan wasn’t at all enamored with the penny-pinching he was witnessing.

But after a meeting with Mayer, Hogan was told that all the team’s cash had been spent on developing the new car, the M26. Mayer told Hogan that he had never expected Hunt to have to race the M23. Mayer finally admitted that the new M26 had proved to be substantially slower than the M23 in testing and needed a redesign.

When Hunt learned of this, he was apoplectic and shouted at Mayer for not telling him the truth of the situation. Hunt famously told Mayer, “I’ll tell you Teddy, and I’ve told you before, you don’t know anything about motor racing whatsoever. Go and buy a new briefcase.”

As soon as Caldwell had realized that the new M26 was a dog, he had embarked on a crash course to improve the M23. It was too late to build a new chassis, so Caldwell modified the existing cars. Caldwell made three principal changes to start the season. He managed to knock a staggering 40 kilos off the weight of the car, principally by redesigning the bodywork using the latest materials. He tweaked the rear suspension by reverting to the previously used lower wishbone design instead of parallel links. But his masterstroke was the introduction for the first time in Formula One of a six-speed version of the Hewland FGA box, which he had intended to debut in the new M26. The car certainly looked faster, as John Hogan had repainted the cars in Day-Glo red to make them stand out on television.

But there had been no time to test any of the modifications. So when qualifying started on Friday, January 23, Hunt immediately found that the steering was very heavy and the new bodywork cramped. On his first time out, he found himself wrestling with the steering and his hand continually hitting the cockpit sides. As a result, he badly blistered his thumb in only a few laps. He drove back into the pits, waving his blistered thumb furiously at Mayer.

Hunt went public straightaway on McLaren’s unpreparedness and readily spoke his mind to journalists. John Hogan of Marlboro was on hand and advised him to quiet down. Hogan warned Hunt that he risked being fired if he carried on and that he had no other place to go if McLaren rejected him. But it was too late; the damage had been done.

Predictably, when Mayer learned what Hunt had been saying about his team, there was a furious row. For Hunt it was a pivotal moment—he could either walk away from the team at the first race, or Mayer could begin listening to him. That Friday evening, Caldwell intervened between the two men and set to work lightening the steering and modifying the cockpit to suit Hunt’s requirements. Despite the problems, Hunt managed to set the seventh quickest time in the first day, although his teammate Jochen Mass was fourth fastest.

Niki Lauda had had an entirely different first day of qualifying. Ferrari had a new car under development that was still six months away from being completed. In the meantime, it would rely on last year’s championship winning car, the 312T. Even though it had had minimal testing or development over the winter, it was fast straightaway. The only modification was slightly narrower track rear suspension that was supposed to lift the top speed. As a result, Lauda simply carried on where he had left off in 1975. He was fastest of all at the end of the first day, and Ferrari underlined its supremacy with Regazzoni coming in second fastest. Hunt was also outqualified by Emerson Fittipaldi in his new Copersucar-Ford car.

Caldwell and the McLaren mechanics worked all night to modify Hunt’s car and presented it to him on Saturday morning with heavily modified steering and bodywork—as much as could be achieved thousands of miles away from the factory.

But Hunt’s luck was out and, as the final qualifying approached, his Ford-Cosworth engine blew up. In those days, engines could be changed in less than two hours provided everything went smoothly. But the engine change didn’t go as planned, and the final qualifying hour began with Hunt’s car still in bits.

Predictably, the tension rose in the McLaren pit, and Mayer and Hunt started arguing again. While he was waiting, Hunt ordered his mechanics to make some suspension setup changes. But Mayer immediately countermanded the instructions and told the mechanics to leave the suspension settings alone. A furious Hunt barged into Mayer, elbowing him in the ribs. Screaming at Mayer, he told him to get out of his way. Mayer stood his ground and told Hunt he would have to go out with the car in the same spec in which the last session had ended. Hunt recalled the situation that afternoon: “I was going out with 20 minutes left on a 5-mile track. I was guessing the settings, and Mayer told me, ‘You can’t do that.’ I told him I was driving the bloody thing. I wasn’t going to be pushed around when I knew what I wanted.”

The fierce arguing and physical altercation took place in front of the McLaren mechanics, who were astonished to hear their boss being shouted at. They had never seen anything like it before.

Hunt then threw Mayer’s briefcase to the back of the garage and threatened him further if he didn’t leave. At that point, Mayer retreated and the mechanics made the changes to the suspension that Hunt had requested.

But as soon as Mayer left, Hunt knew he was in trouble and likely to be fired if he qualified behind Mass. As he left the pit lane with 20 minutes to go, he couldn’t have been more motivated to succeed.

Indeed, Hunt had read the situation correctly. A shocked Mayer went to the back of the pits and sat down on an old oil drum. He opened his briefcase and started studying the minutia of the driving contract between the team and Hunt. He fully intended to dismiss Hunt from the team as soon as qualifying was over. He studied the fine print of the contract to see what the financial consequences would be.

As Hunt left the pit lane for his warm-up lap, he was not under any illusions about what awaited him on his return. He realized that he could not treat Mayer as he had and still expect to remain on the team. He knew that keeping his job depended on him grabbing pole position for the race.

Hunt gave it all he had, and he went fastest of all on his first flying lap. Lauda was pushed into second place on the grid with only 10 minutes of the session remaining.

Hunt’s time was 200th of a second better than Lauda’s best. Hunt rolled back into the pits gesticulating wildly at Mayer, who was sitting open-mouthed behind the fencing, not knowing whether to believe his own eyes.

Lauda was sitting on the Ferrari pit counter. He had not intended to return to the track that day and had been saving his engine and his tires for the race, believing he had done enough to get pole. Now he realized he would have to go out again and do another flying lap. It was an inconvenient development, but he was not worried, as he knew he had not pushed the Ferrari to its limit that weekend.

As he drove out of the pits, everyone expected Lauda to grab pole back from Hunt, and that’s the way it looked as he sped out—that was until halfway though his fast lap.

Just at the wrong moment, Lauda’s luck changed. As he approached the Curva do Sol bend, he found the BRM of Ian Ashley in front of him. As he moved to overtake the slower car, the BRM’s 12-cylinder engine blew up in the most spectacular fashion and splashed oil all over the road and smeared Lauda’s visor. Any chance of a faster lap was over, and the world champion found himself second on the grid after being fastest for virtually all the qualifying sessions. Lauda got out of his car in a furious mood and threw down his helmet. He stepped out of his overalls and set off for the BRM pit, whose pit crew he blamed for his misfortune. Halfway there he stopped and turned around, realizing it was just a racing incident and that it could have happened to anyone.

Hunt’s pole position was made even sweeter by the fact that he had blown off his highly vaunted teammate. He had also put his predecessor, Emerson Fittipaldi, to the sword. Driving in Fittipaldi’s home country, in Fittipaldi’s old car, Hunt had beaten him. All his nemeses—Mayer, Niki Lauda, Fittipaldi, and Mass—had been vanquished in one stroke.

Although Fittipaldi and Lauda were upset, Jochen Mass was devastated by Hunt’s performance. He had believed he would easily outqualify Hunt and be crowned the team’s number one driver.

Meanwhile, Teddy Mayer had returned to the McLaren pit after his earlier expulsion and still couldn’t believe what he had just seen. Never before had he witnessed such amazing bravado and experienced such a conflict of emotions within a 20-minute time frame. Having been prepared to fire Hunt the minute he stepped out of the cockpit, Mayer completely forgot about that and was now ecstatic. He embraced Hunt with as much vigor and passion as he had ever shown toward another man.

Mayer was most excited because Fittipaldi’s nose had been rubbed in it. The resentment at Fittipaldi’s abrupt departure had been gnawing away at Mayer for weeks. As Hunt recalled: “In front of the Brazilian crowd, it was almost more than Mayer could take. It was not what McLaren had been used to with Emerson. But it was important psychologically, because we immediately had each other’s respect.”

He said, “It was my first-ever pole, which I was rather pleased about. And it impressed the boys. After that, I was very much number one.” Caldwell and the mechanics were suddenly in awe of their new driver. In that five-minute window, Hunt had established undoubted number one status, ensuring that Mass would not challenge him again.

The last-minute battle for pole revived local interest in the race and set the turnstiles rattling on race morning. Race day dawned hot and sunny as the 22 cars assembled on the grid. For Niki Lauda, who was used to sitting on the front row of the grid, it was just another race with the only difference being an unfamiliar helmet alongside him. Being beaten by Hunt in qualifying was a minor annoyance, and the two men sat on the front row of the grid glaring at each other.

But for James Hunt, his first-ever pole position in a Grand Prix was a very big deal indeed. He found he was extremely nervous. He started shaking, and three times had to go round to the back of the garages to vomit. The vomiting was normal before a race, but this time it was exacerbated by the amount of cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine circulating in his body. Aside from illness, Hunt was particularly frightened of burning his clutch on the start line and feared he would make a poor start and let Lauda lead away.

Hunt’s fears became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that is exactly what happened as Lauda went off ahead of him. Hunt said, “I erred on the side of safety; one thing I didn’t want was to not get to the first corner at all.”

But it was Clay Regazzoni who outran both of them. He led the opening laps, with Lauda close behind and Hunt third after a very brief challenge from Fittipaldi, which faded as quickly as it had begun.

It was immediately clear that Lauda was much quicker than Regazzoni, and so he bided his time, knowing it would come. But after seven laps, Lauda suddenly got annoyed and started harrying Regazzoni. They were looking like anything but teammates as they squabbled on the track. On lap nine, Lauda swept past and within one lap opened up a three-and-a-half-second gap, demonstrating to Audetto, who was standing in the pits with his stopwatch, how superior a driver he was.

Watching how easily Lauda had disposed of Regazzoni, Hunt saw his chance and on the next lap also went past. Regazzoni had overcooked his tires trying to stay in front and quickly lost his right front tire, which had worn to the canvas. He had to pit when the tire finally gave way.

The race seemed set for a battle royal between Hunt and Lauda, but the contest ended as quickly as it had started when Hunt’s new Cosworth engine let him down. One of the eight fuel injector trumpets fell off, and the cylinder stopped firing altogether. The engine would still have taken him through to the finish if it hadn’t been for the trumpet moving around and eventually dropping into the throttle slides.