Rush – the movie on the Hunt/Lauda battle in ’76
The movie of that hectic season of ’76 will be in your local cinema this year. Peter Morgan is listed as author but even he must have found it hard to believe as he was chronicling the way things really happened. Ron Howard directed the movie.
The footage I’ve seen makes it look believable and I reckon I’m a reasonable judge because I was there when it was happening and wrote Hunt’s book, Against All Odds in 1977.
Hunt was a strange cove but when you look back he probably had closer links with Barry Sheene and Mike Hailwood. The motorcycle racers were generally a looser lot than the Grand Prix drivers who tended to be older and fancied themselves as being more circumspect. James wore his hair long and blonde and fancied any sort of smoke and drink. Scarcely your superfit professional racer.
This offbeat approach probably worked well with the happy-go-lucky Hesketh team but his last-minute switch to McLaren for 1976 left me wondering how James and the oh-so-serious Teddy Mayer would cope with each other. They didn’t.
Hunt and Lauda chased the championship all summer until Niki crashed in flames and was lucky to escape with his life but the thought of beating James to the title powered him back in bandages. “You don’t need a face to race... you need a right foot!” Watch the movie to see how James won the title at the last race in Japan.
I was never a Hunt fan and the weekend after the flight from Japan I had a chap on my phone at home in Surrey, telling me he was a book publisher and he had James Hunt in his office. Would I write a book on the hectic title season under James’ name?
I said no. The publisher was amazed. Why not? “Three things,” I said. “Writing books is a pain in the bum, they don’t pay enough money... and anyway I don’t like James Hunt.” Silence. Then he said he could pay £3000. That was a LOT of money then! I asked him to call back in an hour.
My wife insisted that I take the three grand. He phoned back and I said there wasn’t enough money. He raised it to £5000, I accepted, and then he told me James was going to his beach house at Marbella and I’d have to do the book there. But he needed it finished in a month.
In fact I got on extremely well with James, became aware that his public image was an amusement, and I finished the book in 10 days! Good bloke, that James Hunt!