Nigel on the unconventional champion that was James Hunt
IT WAS IN JUNE 1993 – TWO DAYS AFTER...
the Canadian Grand Prix – that a heart attack claimed James Hunt. He hadn’t been in Montréal, instead doing the BBC commentary with Murray Walker from London. I got back on the Tuesday morning, and towards lunchtime had a call from Autosport, informing me of the news, and requesting I write an obituary forthwith.
It was not until the next day that I got around to my answering machine, and the last message stunned me: “Nigel, J. Hunt calling. Six twenty-five, Monday evening. Just calling for a gossip. If you’re back tonight, give me a shout – failing that, tomorrow perhaps. Bye...”
Having covered F1 through the 1970s, I’d grown sadly accustomed to losing friends, but Hunt didn’t die violently, and you don’t otherwise anticipate the loss of someone of 45 – particularly one who had cleaned up his act, even taken to cycling everywhere.
It was on two wheels, in fact, that Hunt had arrived for Denny Hulme’s memorial service the previous autumn. As we milled around outside the church, James arrived on a ‘Miss Marple’ bike, complete with basket on the front.
James, who loathed formality, was less than suitably attired, but he knew how to behave when it mattered: after disappearing briefly, he returned, immaculately suited. Following the service, he reversed the process, then pedalled off again, back to the lovely, slightly shabby, house in Wimbledon where he lived in splendid anarchy.
I was much upset by his death, although in truth it was only after the end of his F1 career that we had become friends. During his racing days some of the hangers-on around him set your teeth on edge, “It was only then,” he once said to me, “that I started to relax – and only then, actually, that I really began to love motor racing. I’d never really liked it when I was doing it.”
Hunt’s time at the top level, though spectacular, was brief: his first grand prix was Monaco in 1973, and he called it a day at the same race six years later. There were three seasons with Hesketh, three with Mclaren, and seven races with Wolf, during which time he won 10 grands prix and a world championship, clinched on a chaotic afternoon at Fuji in 1976. Never as complete a driver as his consummate rival Niki Lauda, on raw speed Hunt unquestionably had the edge.
If James in combat mode was indeed a sight to see, he was always brutally frank about himself, as aware of his failings as his strengths. “I was a good racer, I think, but never much of a worker, never that much involved, outside of when I got in the car,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t the sort of driver who thought about racing all the time, and I thought that worked for me. In bad times, though, some drivers will get stuck in, and regenerate enthusiasm in the team, but I was never the man to do that – I always needed to feel I could win, and latterly I didn’t have the car to do it. No way I was prepared to go on risking my life to finish seventh…”
In reality, Hunt was among the bravest of drivers. Yes, he was invariably sick before a race, but it was from tension rather than fear. Once in the car, the nerves evaporated, for his natural ability was high, his racing brain acute. Few could read a race like James.
He loved to talk about his days with Lord Alexander Hesketh’s team. After a troubled start to Hunt’s F3 campaign in 1972, it was decided to do F2, where results came in equally short supply.
“We ran a Surtees with a Ford engine, but neither were what
you needed,” James recalled, “so Alexander then took the rather intelligent view that if we were no good at F2 we might as well do F1! You could do it for about 30% more, and his philosophy was, ‘If we’re going to make fools of ourselves, at least let’s do it in the real thing.’”
Hence, for 1973, Hesketh purchased a new March, and as the season progressed the team, for all its attendant fripperies, ceased to be a joke: by the time of the British Grand Prix Hunt was among the frontrunners.
“At Silverstone we were competitive,” Hunt remembered, “but I didn’t have the confidence to mix it with the three in front of me – all I did was follow them round. Plus, we didn’t want a crashed car, because we didn’t have a spare. In my first year I was not encouraged to race…”
By season’s end James was right there. At Watkins Glen he finished at the heels of the winner Ronnie Peterson, and for 1974 Hesketh Racing built its own car, designed by Harvey Postlethwaite. Apart from a victory in the International Trophy at Silverstone, the season was largely barren, but the following year brought Hunt’s first grand prix win, following a race-long battle with Lauda at Zandvoort. “For the first time,” Hunt said, “I won a race more with brain-box than balls.”
At the end of that year came his big break. When Emerson Fittipaldi unfathomably left Mclaren to join the team set up by his brother, the management signed Hunt. There were six wins – and the title – in 1976, three the year after and then… nothing more. In 1978, a season dominated by Lotus, Mclaren was not competitive, and James’s enthusiasm evaporated.
A parting of the ways was inevitable, and he joined Walter Wolf Racing, but the car was only so-so, and after seven races Hunt called time on his career.
“It’s a fact,” he said, “that I was getting scared of hurting myself. I don’t think it would have happened in a car that could win, but I didn’t have that in my last couple of years, and I was never the type to get pleasure from simply being a racing driver. When you’ve got the ability, driving a racing car is like riding a bike – you don’t get worse at it. It’s only your head that moves around.
“In my book, driving at ten-tenths is no more dangerous than at seven-tenths – I mean, how is an accident at 167mph going to be any better than one at 170? For me, driving at the limit didn’t change the risk. Whenever I made mistakes on my own, it was when I wasn’t trying – wasn’t concentrating enough – so it was always more likely I’d shunt in an uncompetitive car.”
Once out of the cockpit, James joined the BBC, and, with his dark brown voice and irreverent humour, developed into one of the great commentators. As with Martin Brundle today, there was always the substance of personal experience.
Predictably, James was fearless in his opinions: “I won’t compromise by saying things I don’t mean – what tends to happen, in fact, is that I compromise myself by saying exactly what I think.”
It was an irony that towards the end of his short life Hunt began working hard on his fitness, renouncing both tobacco and alcohol, previously staples of his existence. “The tail,” he smiled, “was starting to wag the dog.” Similarly, he made no attempt to hide that he was much less well off than he had been. There was never a grain of self-pity.
In a world ever more bland, James was a true free spirit, still missed by all who knew him, some of whom, it must be said, always suspected he might leave the party early. As he said, “It’s always the bores that stay to the end, isn’t it?”
IT’S A FACT THAT I WAS GETTING SCARED OF HURTING MYSELF JA MES HUNT