What might have been: Penske, Watson, and F1's great lost opportunity

It is almost exactly half a century since the Formula 1 circus gathered at Paul Ricard on July 4, 1976, under a brilliant Provençal sun, for that year’s French Grand Prix, a race that attracted none of the intoxicating controversy that characterised almost every other chapter of that remarkably feisty F1 season. Yet its 54 laps — and the podium that followed them — deserve more attention than history has generally afforded them, for they showcased a future F1 world champion in irresistible form, they demonstrated the effectiveness of one of F1’s most quirky designs, and they quietly heralded the emergence of a team and a driver who, for a few wonderful midsummer weeks, were gloriously able to unsettle the established F1 order.

James Hunt was magnificent that afternoon, and his McLaren M23, already one of the defining F1 cars of its generation, having carried Emerson Fittipaldi to F1 drivers’ world championship success in 1974, had matured into a beautifully balanced machine, easy on the eye and devastatingly quick on fast circuits such as Paul Ricard. In winning the 1976 French Grand Prix, dominantly, from the pole, after suffering a promising but frustrating start to the that year’s F1 season, Hunt had finally hit a rich seam of the fabulous form that would win him the 1976 F1 drivers’ world championship in dramatic circumstances that no Hollywood screenwriter would ever dare invent — for 16 acrimonious weeks later, mired in the rain, confusion, and controversy of Fuji, he and McLaren would drag enough points from the closing laps of one of F1’s most extraordinary afternoons to snatch the world title from Niki Lauda and Ferrari by a single point.

The 1976 French Grand Prix offered nothing so sensational — but, now viewed through the prism of a semicentury of F1 history, Hunt’s and McLaren’s triumph at Paul Ricard can be judged as a crucial element of their unforgettable magnum opus, for it was delivered with a confidence and an authority that demonstrated that Hunt the Shunt or Master James (as cheeky pressmen still liked to describe him) was becoming much more than a talented but accident-prone playboy.

Behind him in second place was Patrick Depailler, driving perhaps the most instantly recognisable F1 car ever conceived. Tyrrell’s six-wheeled P34 was one of motor sport’s great flights of engineering fancy, a machine whose quartet of diminutive front wheels ahead of two huge rears looked as though they might belong more naturally in an overambitious design student’s sketchbook than on a real F1 grid. Yet appearances deceive: the concept worked remarkably well on many circuits, and Depailler extracted from it at Paul Ricard a performance good enough to earn him second place on home soil. The P34 has acquired almost mythical status because of its visual eccentricity, but its dynamic competitiveness deserves almost equal remembrance. By 1977 it had passed its prime, but in 1976 it was a genuinely effective F1 car.

John Watson crossed the 1976 French Grand Prix finish line in third place in Roger Penske’s handsome new PC4, designed by Geoff Ferris, and that podium appearance — the first in F1 for both driver and team — represented the beginning of one of the shortest yet most captivating purple patches enjoyed by any new F1 outfit, and Penske was indeed new: it had first entered an F1 grand prix as recently as September 1974.

However, although a podium finish had been achieved, Watson’s run to third place had been flattered by attrition ahead, and there was consequently no overwhelming sense at Paul Ricard in 1976 that Wattie and the Captain were on the cusp of a breakthrough. Perhaps it was just one of those things — a blip in the form book — the F1 glitterati reasoned. After all, Watson had first raced the new PC4 at Anderstorp, Sweden, three weeks before Paul Ricard, and that F1 debut had not been auspicious. Penske’s tiny band of engineers and mechanics had struggled to dial into their new car a satisfactory balance during qualifying, as a result of which failure Watson, their sole driver, could manage only 17th on a grid of 26 starters. Worse, any hopes they may have had of developing the new car over a race distance were dashed almost immediately when a stuck throttle triggered a shunt that eliminated it on lap one.

Paul Ricard painted an entirely different picture. Watson qualified eighth, then he raced with intelligence and aplomb, engaging in and winning a spirited dice with Ronnie Peterson (March) and Carlos Pace (Brabham) from half-distance onwards. By the chequered flag he had secured third place, confirming that his improved qualifying speed had been an accurate augury. The result was that the PC4 was no longer being dismissed as a pretty but mediocre novelty. Rather, it was being discussed as a potentially capable new challenger.

Subsequent races would reinforce that opinion. At Brands Hatch, Watson qualified 11th and repeated his Paul Ricard finishing position: third again. At Nürburgring he had a tricky qualifying, ending up only 19th, but on race day he battled through to seventh. However, if he had thought qualifying had been harrowing at the ‘green hell’, worse was to come, for, like several of his doughty fellow competitors, on race day he stopped to help at the scene of Niki Lauda’s fiery crash just before the Bergwerk right-hander.

Next up was Österreichring — sans Ferrari and Lauda, who was fighting for his life in a German hospital — which in its pre-bastardised form was one of the fastest and most intimidating circuits of any era. Watson qualified second and produced one of the drives of his career to secure his and Penske’s maiden F1 grand prix victories. That he triumphed there was no accident. The PC4 had now become a genuinely competitive machine, while its driver, having now driven the then not insubstantial total of 40 F1 grands prix, had learned to combine controlled aggression with tactical intelligence in precisely the proportions required to conquer such a daunting and dangerous racetrack. For Penske, victory represented vindication. For Watson, it reinforced what many knowledgeable observers had reckoned for a couple of years already: given equipment capable of running at the front, he would belong there.

A fortnight later, at Zandvoort, Watson, Peterson, and Hunt fought out a scintillating battle at the head of the field for lap after lap, the Penske again displaying speed sufficient to challenge on merit not only Peterson’s March but also Hunt’s McLaren. It was a great race, and it might have become one of the best grands prix of the decade had mechanical frailty not intervened with brutal indifference. The Penske’s gearbox failed just as Watson, having dispensed with Peterson, and now bobbing about just inches behind Hunt’s leading McLaren, had been planning the move that would have secured him a consecutive F1 grand prix victory.

Hunt duly went on to win the Dutch Grand Prix and Watson DNF’d: such narrative pivots can define championships and reputations alike. Bitterly disappointed, Wattie accepted the blow with characteristic composure, but one cannot help wondering how differently that phase of the season might now be remembered had the Penske’s Hewland ’box survived another 28 laps.

Next, the F1 circus travelled to Monza, where the skulduggery off track became as significant as the action on it. In a fetid atmosphere reeking of the unmistakable stench of politics masquerading as technical scrutiny, the Italian authorities focused their attention on McLaren’s and Penske’s allegedly too-high fuel octane ratings — a vicious ruse that had the desired effect: Hunt would start the Italian Grand Prix from P27, his team-mate Jochen Mass from P28, and Watson from P29.

It was impossible then, and it remains difficult now, to avoid the conclusion that Ferrari’s principal rivals had been selected — and thereby nobbled — with unusual precision. Whatever one’s view of the legal and technical arguments themselves, one broader conclusion seems inescapable. Penske would scarcely have attracted such determined attention had the little team still been regarded as merely a promising outsider. No, the fact that Penske alone had been roped into the controversy that had been cooked up to relegate McLaren to the back of the Monza grid represented a remarkable, if unwelcome, compliment for such a new and compact organisation.

Momentum in F1 is a fragile commodity. After Monza the season entered its closing phase, taking F1 across the Atlantic to Mosport (Canada) and Watkins Glen (USA), then across the Pacific to Fuji (Japan). Penske and Watson remained respectable competitors — they finished 10th at Mosport and sixth at the Glen — but somehow they had lost their winning edge. The intoxicating surge in form that had originated in the south of France, and had then burgeoned across central Europe, had just as suddenly subsided.

What happened next? Well, before I tell you that, let me pause and state that, as far as Penske’s 1976 summer of F1 love was concerned, Watson deserves far greater credit for it than he is generally afforded. OK, I am biased, because he is a good mate of mine. Now a spry 80, and every bit as friendly, engaging, and perceptive as ever he was during his racing and indeed commentating days, he should be classified and hailed as one of the most underrated drivers ever to have competed in F1. Statistics alone never tell the whole story, but, although he won five F1 grands prix and stood on 20 F1 grand prix podiums, in his case they undersell his calibre.

There are quite a few drivers of his era whose reputations have endured more vividly, but few have combined speed, racecraft, and courage as effectively as Watson did, and street circuits in particular seemed to sharpen those qualities still further. After his Penske days had come to an end, he won for McLaren on the narrow streets of Detroit in 1982 (from 17th on the grid) and on the bumpy highways of Long Beach in 1983 (from even farther back: 22nd) — and, if those stunningly audacious victories are the most famous examples of his uncanny ability to create street circuit alchemy, his pole position in a Brabham at Monaco in 1977 and his front-row quali-lap for the same team in the same place a year later were also masterly.

Beyond his in-cockpit bravura, he was also a key intellectual contributor to Roger Penske’s blossoming F1 operation, and he was stunned and gutted when Penske made the decision to withdraw from F1 at the end of the 1976 season and concentrate fully on racing in North America. I guess we have to concede that history has since validated the wisdom of that decision, for few names have become as synonymous with sustained excellence in US motor sport than has Penske. IndyCar, NASCAR, IMSA, Can-Am, Trans-Am et al all bear the unmistakable imprint of an organisation whose professionalism, presentational standards, and consistent ability to win races and championships are now legendary. But you could put that another way: F1’s loss was almost every other series’ gain.