Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry Page 9

  Surprisingly, Lauda was unhappy. He called his Ferrari 312T “shit” and declared, “It’s sliding too much.” But he appeared to be trying to outpsyche his opponents, and some even wondered whether he had let Hunt have pole.

  Hunt was very apprehensive about the start; he was a very poor starter, and Lauda was a very good one. As Hunt said, “Niki’s never been known to make a bad start yet.”

  On race morning, during the warm-up session Lauda had problems with an engine misfire that could not be cured. The mechanics replaced everything they could think of and hoped for the best.

  True to form—with Lauda never known to make a poor start and Hunt rarely known to make a good one—both performed as predicted. Lauda dropped Hunt at the start and roared off. Hunt made a terrible start and was only good enough for fourth place on the first lap behind Lauda, Mass, and Brambilla.

  A few laps later, Jochen Mass, in third, waved his team leader through. There remained only Vittorio Brambilla’s March-Ford between Hunt and Lauda. On lap six, Hunt got past Brambilla and into second place, albeit seven seconds behind Lauda. He gradually closed the gap on Lauda, although he never seriously challenged him. It varied during the race from 10 seconds to 3 seconds.

  But on lap 20 Lauda started to have problems. On the 20th lap his Ferrari started pulling to the left. The cause was a slow puncture in the left rear tire. Lauda also had problems with brake balance. He said, “Every couple of laps or so, I had to get used to a completely different car—every couple of laps, I had to work out a new line.”

  Hunt sensed that Lauda was in trouble as he closed up on him. As Lauda said, “It was just about the best moral tonic he could have hoped for, and he hounded me pitilessly.” With two laps to go, Lauda realized that Hunt could take him. Then fortune played its part as they both came up to lap John Watson’s Penske car. Lauda made a do-or-die thrust to get past Watson, surprising Hunt. So for the last lap, Hunt was held up by Watson’s slower car, thereby enabling Lauda to hang on.

  Over the line, Lauda led Hunt by 1.3 seconds at the finish. Mass was third, albeit 46 seconds behind. For Lauda it was another rout of his rivals, and he was now firm favorite to be world champion again. But despite Lauda’s apparent superiority, the first two races had lit the fuse for the 1976 world championship, and it was obvious Hunt would not let Lauda have it all his own way. When he took his helmet off at the end of the race, Hunt was grinning from ear to ear with his second place.

  Hunt was suddenly a genuine world championship contender, and he was strangely surprised by it. Hunt had dominated qualifying, but Lauda had dominated the racing.

  CHAPTER 7

  Women Problems Resolved

  Marlene and Jane

  April 1976

  The 1976 South African Grand Prix marked a watershed in the personal lives of Niki Lauda and James Hunt. Lauda debuted his new fiancée—soon to be wife—Marlene Knaus, and it finally became apparent that James Hunt’s marriage to Suzy Miller was over when she appeared in public on the arm of actor Richard Burton in New York.

  The resolution of their personal circumstances was a huge relief to both men, especially to Niki Lauda, who had agonized over the dumping of his fiancée of eight years, Mariella von Reininghaus, in favor of his new love, Marlene Knaus. Equally, Hunt had been desperate to see Suzy settled into a new life.

  Lauda’s relief seemed more palpable in South Africa. Marlene Knaus was a very sensual woman in an ethereal way; pretty rather than beautiful, she exuded sex appeal. There was something about her that men liked, even though she invariably wore her hair in a severe, brushed-back bun at the top of her head, which made her appear a lot older than her 24 years.

  In South Africa, Lauda and Marlene could be seen every night in a quiet corner of the bar of the Kyalami Ranch Hotel. They were clearly enjoying each other’s company and couldn’t stop exchanging reassuring glances as curious people dropped by to say “hello.”

  They were both nervous. Although a secret in England, Lauda’s love life had been a source of speculation in continental newspapers for the past few months. But with no firm evidence, and none of the principals talking, journalists could only guess what was going on. But at Kyalami it was clear Lauda had most definitely taken up with Marlene Knaus.

  The ripples in Europe’s social circles were immediate. Lauda and Mariella had been one of the most important couples in Europe for the past eight years. Lauda was desperate to not appear to have left Mariella for Marlene, and it was his good luck that his new girlfriend attracted very little attention. Lauda had figured he could test the water in South Africa, away from the full glare of European journalists.

  But he hadn’t figured on the Hunt-Burton-Taylor story making his news a complete nonevent. Such was the buzz surrounding James Hunt that hardly anyone noticed Lauda had a new girlfriend.

  The newspapers were only interested in Hunt’s wife and the fact that Suzy had broken up the marriage of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It was the perfect cover for Lauda’s low-key introduction of Marlene.

  To those who did notice, Lauda introduced Marlene by saying simply, “This is my lady.” Remarkably, the sudden dumping of his companion of eight years and the woman he intended to marry did not seem to merit any further explanation than that. As he had been seeing Marlene for at least six months during the close season, and Mariella had already been long gone from his life, he had forgotten all about her and didn’t care to discuss it. For him the transition was seamless.

  But outside of Lauda’s earshot, there was plenty of gossip and discussion. The truth was that no one was interested in Marlene; they all wanted to know what had happened to Mariella.

  And as soon as word got around, Lauda encountered a muted but hostile reaction to Marlene from the other wives and girlfriends present. They put up a united front in support of Mariella in her absence. They were horrified when they realized what Lauda had done and plotted together as to how they could reunite the couple.

  They simply couldn’t believe that Lauda would dump the spectacularly striking Mariella for Marlene, who was undoubtedly attractive but not in Mariella’s class in the beauty stakes. John Watson, a disinterested observer at the time, described Mariella’s beauty as akin to a piece of “Dresden porcelain.”

  David Benson, the motoring editor of the Daily Express, was the journalist in the know, and he was also critical of Lauda’s decision to dump Mariella, saying, “Lauda had simply removed the fuse on the emotional circuit in his brain.” But when he filed the story back to his newspaper, he found the news editor was barely interested in it.

  Lauda was also under fire from all quarters, including ones he never could have imagined. One vociferous critic was the architect who was building his house. Once he realized that Lauda had split with Mariella, he refused to do any more work. He told Lauda, “It’s a dirty trick. I wanted to build the house for you and Fraulein Reininghaus.” He told Lauda he would not finish the house because of how he had treated Mariella. The architect’s opinion reflected what everyone else thought. They all sided with Mariella, and some were quite hostile to Marlene.

  But as people got to know Marlene, they warmed to her, including David Benson, who said, “I established a friendly relationship with Marlene when the other people on the racing circuit cold-shouldered her, thinking she was merely some local pickup.” But Benson could sense that Marlene was more than a casual fling—although he had no idea how much more.

  Mariella may have gone quietly, but she was very popular on the Formula One scene, and others were resolutely determined to save the relationship. In fact, people went out of their way to try to mend the relationship. The wives and girlfriends worked fervently behind the scenes to dispatch Marlene and reinstall Mariella at Lauda’s side. They believed Lauda would come to his senses quickly if pressure was placed on him and if news of the relationship leaked out and he saw peoples’ reactions. For a few weeks there was still a great deal of fevered speculation about whether Lauda and Mariella would
get back together again.

  Nina Rindt, widow of Jochen Rindt, took direct action and invited people to a party where she hoped to reunite the couple. The party was at her house, overlooking Lake Geneva. Helen Stewart, Jackie Stewart’s wife, offered to get in touch with both Mariella and Lauda and to try and heal the breach. Helen was nominated by the others to directly intervene. But they were all laboring under the impression that Lauda and Marlene had just met and had no idea what had occurred the previous year in Reading. And they didn’t count on Lauda’s reaction to the scheming.

  When news of the women’s summit and the party at Lake Geneva reached him the next day, Lauda decided to take action. He didn’t want a media circus, and he knew the Austrian and German press would take Mariella’s side against his. So Lauda went as quietly as he could to a registry office in Vienna-Neustadt and married Marlene. The registrar agreed to perform a special ceremony outside normal hours, and astonishingly it remained a secret for nearly a month, by which time journalists accepted it as a fait accompli, making further speculation effectively unnecessary.

  With that, speculation about a reunion ceased and Mariella was forgotten. And James Hunt continued to hog the headlines, which suited Lauda just fine.

  And those headlines kept coming, for it was a far juicier story than anything Niki Lauda was getting up to in the bedroom.

  It was pure coincidence that Richard Burton and his wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor, were spending the 1975–76 winter holiday season in Gstaad at the same time as James Hunt and Suzy Miller.

  Although the Hunts had agreed to be together for the holidays, their marriage to all intents and purposes had ended the previous summer. Hunt had spent much of the summer with Jane Birbeck in London, while Suzy moped around in Marbella wondering what to do next.

  When they got to Gstaad, Suzy and Hunt immediately went their separate ways, hardly seeing each other. Hunt was in serious training for the 1976 Formula One season and spent all day at the gym or running. At night he didn’t drink and, consequently, didn’t socialize. Without alcohol, Hunt was a different man. But Suzy knew he was surreptitiously seeing local girls during the day, and she ended up very depressed for the first time in her life. She spent most of her time wandering around Gstaad on her own. Hunt was unhappy that she was unhappy and wished their situation could be resolved. On a whim, Suzy decided to stay on in Gstaad when her husband jetted off to South America for the Brazilian Grand Prix in early January. Anyway, Gstaad could be great fun in January, and Suzy needed some fun in her life.

  Suzy was well aware that Burton and Taylor were in town, as was everyone. They were the most famous people in the world and had just been married for the second time the previous October. But Suzy had heard that the new Burton-Taylor reunion was not going well. She had always found Richard Burton very attractive and had vague connections to him though Brook Williams, who was a friend. Williams was Burton’s closest aide, and she wondered whether she might get to meet Burton one day.

  But what happened next she did not expect.

  Suzy first set eyes on Burton as they were going opposite ways on a ski cable lift. Their eyes met, and Suzy smiled. Burton flashed back his trademark smile, and there was an instant attraction. He recognized the signs, and she made a huge impact on him straightaway. When she had gone past, Burton turned to Williams and asked, “Who is that vision that just passed by?”

  Burton was transfixed, as he would say later: “I turned around and there was this gorgeous creature, about 9 feet tall. She could stop a stampede.” Burton immediately sought an introduction and asked Brook Williams to fix it for him. He said he would.

  Burton was staying with Taylor at her house in Gstaad, called Chalet Arial, and Williams soon engineered another meeting. He invited Suzy to a party at the château. Suzy quickly discovered that Burton and Taylor were already leading separate lives and that the remarriage had not worked out. Burton was sleeping in a room at one end of the château and Taylor in a room at the other end.

  The affair between Burton and Suzy began almost immediately. From the day they were introduced, Burton and Suzy became virtually inseparable. He was 50 and she was 26. Burton remembered: “She started coming to the house two, three, and then four times a week.”

  Eventually Elizabeth Taylor noticed the Englishwoman coming to the house every day. She immediately realized what was going on and said to Suzy, “You’ll only last six months with Richard.” To which Suzy replied, “Perhaps, but those six months will be very worthwhile.” With that, Taylor went out and found herself another boyfriend at a local disco, clearing the way for Suzy and Burton to take their relationship forward unhindered.

  Burton invited Suzy to join him in New York, where he was due to star in Peter Shaffer’s play Equus on Broadway. She accepted but said she would have to ask her husband’s permission.

  As the affair developed, Suzy was keeping James Hunt, in Brazil, fully informed over the telephone of her developing situation. To say that he was delighted would have been an understatement. In fact, when she first told him that Burton had invited her to go to New York, he had simply replied, “Fine, off you go.” Burton opened to rave reviews in Equus and was the talk of the city. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, journalists in New York soon began to ask who the blond was that accompanied him everywhere. They had absolutely no idea who she was, and uncaptioned photographs started appearing in New York newspapers.

  When Hunt headed home from South America, he found his house empty. By then Suzy was spending most of her time with Richard Burton in New York. After a few weeks, he left for South Africa early and was soon parading around Johannesburg with different women. All this was going on despite the fact that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Hunt and Suzy were still happily married.

  Eventually the New York journalists worked out that the striking blond was the wife of racing driver James Hunt and that she had clearly broken up Burton’s marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. There was no bigger media story than that in the last week of February 1976.

  With the news suddenly out, and Suzy and Burton no longer a secret, Hunt was in for a shock in South Africa. He was suddenly being followed by journalists, who had flown in specifically to work on the story. His hotel was staked out by a throng of jostling journalists and photographers—none of them interested in the race. Alastair Caldwell remembers: “Suddenly we had huge media interest. We had the Sydney Morning Herald and the Punjabi Times; we had every daily newspaper in the world, even Mexico. All were trying to interview us and talk to James. They were being flown in by the planeload.” It became so bad that Hunt had to move out of his hotel.

  Once again it was David Benson who was ahead of the story and gave the Daily Express its biggest ever show business scoop. Benson wrote a story that appeared on the front page of the Daily Express on February 26, 1976. It was headlined: “Suzy To Marry Burton.” The story read: “Suzy Hunt, wife of British racing driver James Hunt, is seeking a quickie divorce in America so that she can marry Richard Burton. This follows the actor’s latest breakup with his second-time wife Liz Taylor. He and 27-year-old Suzy are staying at the same New York hotel. Burton, too, was said to be in a hurry to get a divorce.”

  The article finally legitimized the story and made it official. James Hunt was finally free of his marriage and officially a single man again. To celebrate, he went to the gym. It was one of the most satisfying workouts of his life. He was finally free, exactly 16 months after his wedding day in London.

  Richard Burton telephoned Hunt in Kyalami, ostensibly to apologize for what had happened. Hunt remembered Burton being rather embarrassed and tongue-tied on the telephone, which he found strange. Hunt assured Burton that, far from being upset, he was delighted about the situation.

  Burton couldn’t quite believe that Hunt was being so casual about letting go of his wife. He expected Hunt to be bitter toward him and devastated. But Hunt simply said to Burton: “Relax, Richard. You’ve done me a wonderful turn by taking on the m
ost alarming expense account in the country.” A bemused and somewhat relieved Burton replaced the receiver in his hotel room and turned to Suzy and smiled. She said to him, “I told you James is fine about all this.”

  When the news was out, a relieved Hunt spoke to journalists: “Her running off with Burton is a great relief to me. It actually reduces the number of problems I have to face outside my racing. I am mainly concerned that everyone comes out of it happy and settled.” In fact, there was no disguising Hunt’s utter relief at what had transpired, as he confessed: “I prefer to be on my own at races because, really, there’s enough to do looking after me. It’s more than I can handle to keep myself under control at a race meeting without trying to look after someone else as well and have more responsibilities and worries. I find that if I want an early night before a race, or if I want a couple of hours to cool off and relax before dinner, I can do no better than to read a book or listen to music and, therefore, it’s better to be on my own.” Resolving not to get tempted into marriage again, he told journalists: “Meanwhile, it is probably a good thing that I am still technically married. I have that as a safety valve. It will stop me from doing anything silly again.”

  Hunt flew straight back into London from Johannesburg to stay with his parents, where he was due to drive at the non-championship Race of Champions at nearby Brands Hatch. While there, he realized that he must meet Burton to firm up the arrangements for the divorce. He was very anxious for nothing to go wrong and for Suzy not to become his responsibility again. He was also anxious to sort out the financial arrangements and to find out how much the divorce would cost him.

  After the race he was helicoptered away from Brands Hatch straight to London’s Heathrow Airport, where he flew to New York to discuss the details with Burton face to face. In New York, a nervous Hunt was shocked to find himself again surrounded by photographers and journalists asking him questions about his wife and Burton.