Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry Page 13

  The Belgian Grand Prix that year was held at Zolder on May 16. It was a 2.6-mile tight, featureless, and artificial track with few passing opportunities. It was the sort of track James Hunt despised, entirely different in character from the sweeping Spa-Francorchamps circuit where the Belgian Grand Prix had traditionally been held but which was now excluded from hosting the race for understandable safety reasons.

  While McLaren had their technical problems, Ferrari’s troubles were confined to Niki Lauda’s physical condition. He was still in a lot of pain from his broken ribs, and recovery had been hindered greatly by his driving in the Spanish Grand Prix. The two weeks in between had brought no respite at all. For the Belgian Grand Prix, Lauda received a painkilling injection that was supposed to last for four days. It didn’t, so he called in a doctor who gave him electroshock treatment, which deadened the pain. Lauda admitted that the pain was so bad he would not have been able to drive the car that weekend without the treatment.

  Ferrari was still using the old-model 312T car as the spare and was relying on serendipity to get them through. As it was, Lauda was forced to use it for part of qualifying after he lost an engine in his regular car. In a bizarre incident, the wire grid covering one of the fuel injector trumpets somehow got inside the engine when it was running and mangled the innards.

  Amazingly, with his car in such poor shape, Hunt managed to top the qualifying charts on the first day of practice, ahead of Clay Regazzoni’s Ferrari and Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell-Ford. But there was good reason for that: Caldwell had not had time to complete all the modifications at the factory and planned to move the oil coolers on the Friday afternoon during the first day of qualifying. There simply had not been time at the McLaren factory for the oil coolers to be moved; hence the arrangements were made to modify them at the track.

  So between the morning and afternoon sessions, the mechanics shifted the oil coolers back to their old position below the rear wing. Hunt said, “We put them back virtually where they had been, under the wing, but because the wing had been moved forward, the coolers were now about an inch away from their old position.”

  That alteration, along with the combined effect of Caldwell’s other modifications, completely changed the car’s aerodynamic setup. Hunt recalled: “In order to make it narrower, they unnecessarily moved radiators around and things like that. But they hadn’t checked it out and completely ruined the performance of the rear wing. As a result, the aerodynamics of the car overall were hopeless.” The final changes had turned his McLaren-Ford M23 into an ill-handling brute. A journalist standing out on the track described Hunt’s revised car as a “bucking bronco.”

  So much so that in the second session, Hunt was ninth fastest, and in the final session, he was eleventh. But he managed to line up on the second row of the grid by virtue of his time in the first session—before the oil coolers had been moved.

  Afterwards, Caldwell sought to defend his radical changes: “We had several things on the car which were reasonably dodgy. You couldn’t have oil fittings above a certain width from the center of the car, let’s say 80 centimeters, which meant the oil coolers in front of the rear wheels could be—could be—construed as illegal.”

  Hunt was deeply depressed about his chances in the race. His only solace was that his chief rival was not having a particularly good time of it either, although the definition of Niki Lauda not having a good time of it was a resounding pole position, with his teammate Clay Regazzoni alongside him on the front row of the grid.

  For once, Hunt made a good start off the grid and the flag. He somehow managed to clamber past Regazzoni into second place behind Lauda’s Ferrari. But Lauda quickly built up a huge lead and pulled away from Hunt at the rate of one and a half seconds a lap. Hunt was holding up the rest of the cars, which were queued up behind him. Gradually, Regazzoni, Jacques Laffite in the Ligier, Patrick Depailler, and Scheckter all passed him. He was sixth when his car’s gearbox seized up, and he retired from the race at exactly half-distance.

  For Niki Lauda, it became an almost accidental afternoon. For reasons he knew not, he found himself in an early lead dominating the field. He had no idea how he was managing to maintain such a comfortable lead. But 20 laps from the end, he had a reality check when his new Ferrari 312T2 began wildly oversteering, again for no apparent reason. He remembered: “I was lying well out in front when my car suddenly began oversteering 20 laps from the finish.”

  With Hunt out of the race, Lauda knew he had time to pit and probably get out again in front after Hunt’s McLaren had held up all the challengers. But just before veering off, he decided to try one more lap, and the car did not get any worse. As he said, “I assumed that the tires or suspension had bought it and was about to head for the pits, but instead I drove carefully for a few laps.” Lauda found the car stayed consistent, and so he decided to carry on. He had a scare in the final few laps when an unknown car laid oil all over three corners.

  Lauda easily went on to win from Regazzoni for another Ferrari 1-2. Jacques Laffite came home in third place and Scheckter fourth.

  On the podium, Lauda was utterly bemused that he had won. He simply could not understand it; as he said, “I managed to come first after all.”

  After the race, Hunt was forced to reassess his own driving tactics after an onslaught from the drivers he had held up during the race due to his car’s slowness. He had upset many of the drivers by employing some dubious driving maneuvers to prevent them from overtaking him. Several times, Jody Scheckter’s Tyrrell-Ford was nearly shoved off the road, and Jacques Laffite’s Ligier was hit by Hunt’s front wheel when he attempted to pass. It was also Patrick Depailler’s turn to be angry with Hunt: “Hunt was driving very wildly, holding everybody back. If Hunt says all these things about crazy French drivers, he should not drive in the same way himself.” The other drivers had a good case against Hunt and, once again, it was not his finest hour in Formula One.

  But that was far from James Hunt’s biggest concern. Lauda now had 42 points in the world championship, with the next best-placed driver, his teammate Regazzoni, on 15 points. Hunt was seventh in the standings with six points, with Jochen Mass ahead of him in fourth, with eight points. In truth, Lauda looked as though he was home and dry for the world championship, and no one in the Formula One paddock would have taken bets on James Hunt even being in the top three.

  There was also much chatter about the dominance of the 12-cylinder engine in Formula One. It had won every single race so far in 1976. In Belgium, 12-cylinder engines had dominated, and only Jody Scheckter’s fourth-placed Tyrrell-Ford was not lapped in the race by the 12-cylinder cars. People believed the era of the Ford-Cosworth V8 was over. They truly did.

  CHAPTER 12

  Lauda’s Magic around Monte Carlo

  The Austrian Dominates Again

  Monaco: May 27–30, 1976

  The Monaco Grand Prix dawned on the weekend of the May 26–30. Monaco is everyone’s favorite race, and it is eagerly anticipated each year by everyone in Formula One, from the mechanics to the drivers. It is the one race where the socializing is more important than the racing, and a very good time is had by all.

  Around 200 of the grandest yachts in the world descend on the principality and are tied up adjacent to the waterside. As night falls, the in-crowd and Europe’s glitterati hop from boat to boat in one long party that starts at six o’clock and ends around 4 a.m., when everyone finally goes to bed.

  Niki Lauda dreaded it; he hated the false glamor of Monaco. In contrast, James Hunt couldn’t wait to get started.

  And socializing on the Marlboro yacht was all McLaren had to offer in 1976. Even before a wheel was turned, the team knew that the car would be uncompetitive. And worse, no one knew why. Alastair Caldwell simply had no clues as to what had caused the car suddenly to become uncompetitive in Belgium. The team had completely lost its way, and back in England at the McLaren factory in Colnbrook, Caldwell and his men were running around like headless chicken
s. Having concentrated so hard on making the car legal rather than making it fast, Caldwell had briefly forgotten what Formula One was about.

  Meanwhile, Hunt was having his own personal problems. He had become disenchanted with Mark McCormack’s management of his commercial affairs and wanted to get out of the contract. He wanted his brother Peter, to take over as his manager. Although it was a relatively minor issue, it gnawed away at Hunt all weekend and added to the team’s other problems.

  Caldwell was in a foul temper as Hunt set out to have a good time in Monaco’s harbor and virtually ignored his team commitments. Hunt, after three years of partying with Alexander Hesketh, was an expert on Monaco’s social scene. He met up with former Formula One racer Johnny Servoz-Gavin. Servoz-Gavin, who had retired from Formula One in 1970, now lived on a yacht in Monte Carlo harbor. He and Hunt had been friends for years. They were joined by Philippe Gurdjian, a French mover and shaker. Gurdjian remembers: “They were very close, and I was very close to James.”

  The three young men painted Monte Carlo red on Wednesday evening. The following night, they jointly hosted a huge party on the boat, which ended up with many of the guests naked.

  Gurdjian remembers it as if it was yesterday: “We finished the party the night before the Grand Prix at four in the morning, and they were all racing the day after without any problems. Now it’s completely different, and you cannot imagine that.”

  That night, Hunt promised Gurdjian he would give him his race helmet when the Grand prix was over. The Frenchman still has it today, a prized possession from Hunt’s championship year. Gurdjian still remembers his friend fondly: “He was very friendly, he had a real face, and it’s a pity we don’t have more guys like that.”

  For the serious business of racing, Hunt’s car was in exactly the same specification and setup as it had been in Zolder. For reasons best known to himself, Caldwell had done nothing to the car, even though he knew it had severe self-inflicted problems. He was in a state of total denial and wasn’t ready to listen to anyone’s opinion about what might be wrong, especially his number one driver. The McLaren-Ford M23, which had been so fast earlier in the season, was now a pig to drive, and for no good reason that anyone could identify.

  Monaco was the worst possible place to have an uncompetitive car. It was the one race where it was important to qualify well. Without retirements, the cars would normally finish the Monaco Grand Prix where they had been placed on the grid, since overtaking was virtually impossible.

  Ferrari was in great shape for Monaco and finally had a spare 312T2 chassis on hand. The new car had a heavily modified monocoque that had been built without internal bracing, deemed unnecessary and at a considerable saving in weight. Clay Regazzoni quickly grabbed the new car (chassis number 27) as his race car, and his old car became the spare. Niki Lauda was unhappy about this but resigned himself to it, as he knew he could beat Regazzoni even in the older model Ferrari. Sometimes Lauda couldn’t even be bothered to speak to Daniele Audetto about it. By now, he had little time for the Italian.

  Even without Hunt in the reckoning, Lauda still faced a stiff qualifying challenge from the six-wheeled Tyrrell cars. The six-wheelers proved very adept around Monaco for both Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler. But Lauda was still quickest on Thursday and was quickest again on Saturday by a fairly wide margin. Halfway through the final Saturday afternoon qualifying session, he pulled up in the pits, got out of the car, and changed out of his overalls, totally confident that no one else was going to come close to his times. It was all so easy.

  During qualifying, Lauda received some bad news from Vienna. His wife, Marlene, who was a few months pregnant, had been rushed to hospital with complications and subsequently suffered a miscarriage. Lauda wanted to abandon the race and return home. But he knew he couldn’t. He considered going and returning overnight but quickly ruled it out when he realized he would get no sleep at all. Instead he vowed to get out of Monaco just as quickly as he could on Sunday and booked a helicopter to rush him to Nice airport when the checkered flag dropped.

  Hunt had no such problems, and his only decision was which girl he would spend that night with. But on the track, it was hopeless. He had been used to battling for pole all season and was now not even in contention for the first half of the grid. He nursed private doubts about whether he could even qualify. The team tried a special Monaco mod by moving the rear wing to increase downforce, but it made no difference. In addition to all his other woes, the gearbox selector mechanism kept jamming up, causing some disconcerting moments on the track.

  In the end, he finished in 13th place on the seventh row of the grid on a circuit where grid position was paramount. He said of his car: “It’s not nice,” and added, “The dreadful problem was that I was so far back on the grid I wouldn’t be able to pass anybody simply because there isn’t anywhere to pass at Monaco without doing anything risky or stupid. It’s a pretty stupid way to have a race.”

  On race morning, a desperate Alastair Caldwell ordered the removal of the airbox from the engine and found it immediately improved airflow and the performance of the rear wing. He had been scratching around overnight trying to find solutions to problems, and removing the airbox was a last desperate measure.

  But his solution to the problem made McLaren look like amateurs, and up and down the makeshift pit lane, technical directors couldn’t believe it. Interestingly, Colin Chapman of Lotus thought he knew exactly what McLaren’s problem was. But he wasn’t about to tell Caldwell.

  To be fair to Caldwell, McLaren was not the only top team experiencing excruciating technical difficulties. There were also problems at Brabham. Team owner Bernie Ecclestone had made a huge mistake in choosing to use Alfa Romeo engines for the 1976 season. The cars were having to start races with 10 gallons more fuel than the Ferrari, Matra, and Ford-engine cars: a weight penalty of about 65 kilograms (143 pounds). Even with that extra fuel, they were still regularly running out of fuel if they lasted to the end the race. The team’s number one driver, Carlos Reutemann, was looking to leave as a result.

  Like Reutemann, who was dead last on the starting grid, Hunt was dejected and knew he was finished even before the race began. The only plus point was that his car handled better with a full tank of fuel, giving him hope for the early part of the race.

  When the race started, Lauda streaked off the grid, already on his way to victory. He left the rest behind to squabble among one another. Hunt was stuck in twelfth place, although with full tanks, his car was the fastest on the track. He remembered: “I was running two seconds a lap slower than I wanted to simply because there was nowhere to pass.” He quickly lost concentration and spun off, but he avoided hitting the wall: “I have to say that I spun the car through my lack of interest and sheer bloody frustration.” When he recovered and restarted, he was dead last and going nowhere. But at least he was clear of traffic and found he was lapping as fast as Lauda, who was effortlessly leading the race. On the 24th lap, Hunt was put out of his misery when his Ford-Cosworth engine blew up, spilling oil all over the track.

  Not for the first time that season, Lauda spotted the oil first and threaded his way through. But second-placed man Ronnie Peterson fell right into it and spun, hitting the barrier and retiring instantly. The oil also eventually caused Clay Regazzoni, who was running third, to crash out.

  Lauda described the technique he used for handling the oil on the track: “I thought about the oil on the first lap, and on the next lap, where the car now stood, I thought there must be more oil. I got the car more or less clean through, but I looked in the mirror: no Peterson, a nice surprise.”

  As soon as he got out of the car, Hunt punched the air and acted just like he had won the race. He was delighted to be out and immediately went off to the harbor to begin celebrating his dismal weekend.

  The race itself proved to be a procession and one of the most boring races ever held around the streets of Monte Carlo. Needless to say, Niki Lauda won, followed across the
line by the Tyrrell-Fords of Scheckter and Depailler. Interestingly, only the Tyrrells were still on the same lap as Lauda at the finish. He had lapped every other one of the 12 finishers.

  Lauda didn’t have much to say at the finish but claimed that his victory had been “hard work” and that it had demanded “terrific concentration.” But in truth he had had great difficulty staying awake. He admitted he did have one tricky moment, 15 laps before the end, when he slipped the car into second gear instead of third. Inside the cockpit, Lauda was furious with himself and admitted he had almost fallen asleep with the boredom. But the moment brought him wide awake. As he said, “It was a shock to my whole body. Fury with myself gave me the strength to overcome my exhaustion.”

  It turned out to be a minor blip of no consequence. But if Peterson had still been running, he probably would have been able to get past. Afterwards, Lauda admitted: “It was one of those victories which are a bit of a bore—‘once again first from beginning to end,’ said the reports.”

  As he circulated on the post-race victory procession, Lauda was fired up with adrenalin. But inside he was exhausted and just wanted to leave Monte Carlo and return to his wife, Marlene, who by then had been discharged from the hospital. He said, “Everything overwhelmed me at once; the noise, the people, the pushing and shoving and slapping on the back.

  But there was plenty of compensation for the discomfort. Lauda now had 51 points to Hunt’s 6. Any notion that Hunt was a world championship contender was simply forgotten. No man had ever before won the championship from his position with six races gone.

  In the paddock later that evening, there was much speculation as to the reasons for Lauda’s success. Many were of the opinion that he was just a very lucky driver. But certainly not Walter Hayes, who ran the Ford Motor Company’s motor sport division worldwide and who was responsible for the Ford-Cosworth engine. Hayes was in awe of Lauda; as he said, “People overlook the enormous amount of work that Lauda does for his team. Without Lauda, Ferrari would probably fall apart. Lauda makes his own luck through his own efforts. Most of the people racing today want to get rich first and win next. Lauda wants to win.” These words from Hayes, one of the most respected individuals in motor sport, were printed in the Daily Express newspaper, much to the chagrin of Daniele Audetto.