Hunt's 'red-blooded dogfight' – Zandvoort's greatest F1 race

August 22nd 2023 - Last updated: August 23rd 2023

At the 1976 Dutch GP James Hunt battled against some of F1's fiercest '70s heroes and a crumbling McLaren M23 to win at Zandvoort – its greatest race, says Matt Bishop

Hunt muscles past Watson in one of the all-time great Dutch GPs

Grand Prix Photo

The 2023 Formula 1 season will resume this coming weekend, in the Netherlands. The Dutch Grand Prix is unusual in that it has only ever been held in one place, Zandvoort, home to a once-majestic circuit nestling among sand dunes near the North Sea coast. Its track layout changed little between 1950 and 1985, during which period it was a regular if not ever-present round of the F1 world championship, but it was altered very significantly when the Dutch GP made a return to the world’s premier motor sport series in 2021, a result of the rapidly increasing popularity of local hero Max Verstappen, who fittingly won that race and last year’s, too. Who would bet against him also winning this year’s? Not I.

Neither of those Verstappen victories was a 24-carat classic, although he took both of them from pole with his customary efficiency. The other day a friend asked me which Dutch GP I thought had been the best of all time. Well, I have attended only two of them – the 2021 and 2022 iterations – but I have watched on TV and/or read about them all. Undoubtedly, Stirling Moss raced his Vanwall superbly to vanquish the BRMs, Coopers and Ferraris in 1958. In 1975 James Hunt beat Ferrari’s Niki Lauda brilliantly, in a dominant year for the Scuderia, doing so for an eccentrically patrician yet decidedly garagiste team called Hesketh, which never scaled such heights again. In 1985 Lauda scored his 25th and final grand prix win, charging through the field from 10th on the grid to beat his McLaren team-mate Alain Prost by 0.232sec. All three were great Dutch GPs, and there have been others besides. You doubtless have your own favourites. But, for me, for various reasons, the Dutch Grand Prix that beats all others was run a smidgen less than 47 years ago, on 29 August 1976. Here’s why it gets my vote.

3 James Hunt McLaren 1976 Dutch GP — Peterson leads from pole in ’76

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Four weeks previously, at the old Nürburgring, the drivers’ world championship leader, Lauda, shunted his Ferrari just after the fast left-hand kink before the Bergwerk right-hander; it thudded into an earth bank and burst into flames, and Lauda was very badly burned. Hunt won for McLaren. Two weeks later came the Austrian Grand Prix, which Ferrari did not enter, the last championship F1 grand prix to date in which the famous red cars have not taken part. Hunt finished fourth, thereby clawing his way up to just 11 points behind Lauda in the championship chase, 58 against 47. Lauda remained in hospital, fighting for his life, having been given the last rites.

“Wattie merely regrouped and mounted another attack, again and again”

So it was that, another fortnight on, when the F1 circus arrived at Zandvoort, the atmosphere was one of pessimism and paranoia. Ferrari was back, albeit fielding only a single car for Clay Regazzoni, who had cracked a rib playing tennis on the Monday before. On Friday he was only 16th-quickest, so, in order to try to make Saturday better, Ferrari gave him a set of softer and grippier tyres that they had kept in reserve from earlier in the season. It worked, and, despite being in some pain, he qualified fifth with them. The British team bosses were furious, but no actual rule had been broken, only a gentlemen’s agreement to the effect that tyres should not be hoarded and taken to races for which Goodyear had not earmarked them, and, then as now, F1 was not the kind of sport that could feasibly be governed by such genteel mores.

On race day, at the start, Ronnie Peterson led from pole, the only one he ever bagged in a March. Running second was John Watson, who had won last time out at Österreichring, and whose Penske was clearly handling better than the luridly understeering March just ahead. Yet, try as hard as he might over the next seven laps, Watson could never quite get by Peterson. Indeed, on lap eight he ran wide in an effort to pass him at Tarzan, the 180-degree right-hander at the end of the pit straight, and Hunt was able to nip by while Watson was gathering things up. A lap later Hunt passed Peterson, too, and a lap after that – finally – Wattie also passed Ronnie. The two fastest cars on the track, Hunt’s McLaren M23 and Watson’s Penske PC4, were now first and second, nose to tail, with 62 laps to go, and of course no pesky pitstops to interrupt their combat.

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At about a quarter distance – 20-odd laps into the 75-lap race – Watson was “getting happy with my car, settling down, settling in” and he began to try to pass the McLaren ahead. Lap after lap he drew level with Hunt on the approach to Tarzan, but lap after lap Hunt hugged the inside line under braking, then gradually lessened his steering lock through that long, long corner, forcing Watson out onto the sandy grass. It was a robust, gritty, red-blooded dogfight. Twelve months later, in the 1977 Dutch Grand Prix, Hunt would do the exact same thing in the exact same place to Mario Andretti, nerfing him off and ending his own race, triggering a flaming row afterwards; but in 1976 the more phlegmatic Wattie merely regrouped and mounted another attack, again and again. It was intense, and it lasted many laps, but Hunt held firm all the while.

Suddenly, however, one of his McLaren’s front brake ducts came loose, it began flapping in the air stream, and, even in that era of comparatively rudimentary aero science, it badly affected the car’s handling. Hunt was now battling unholy understeer in some places and fearsome oversteer in others. Even so, he held Watson at bay. He might not have succeeded in doing so until the end of the race, for Wattie was sitting pretty behind him, biding his time, but, just as he was planning his next move, he found himself unable to hook fifth gear, and, soon after, the Penske’s Hewland FGA400 gearbox gave up altogether: DNF.

4 James Hunt McLaren 1976 Dutch GP — Hunt battled with a recalcitrant brake duct throughout the race, but still came through to win

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Was Hunt home and dry now? He was not. Having taken a couple of Aspirins just before the off, Regazzoni had been sixth on lap one, but since then he had been quietly picking up places, passing Tom Pryce’s Shadow on lap three, Andretti’s Lotus on lap eight, and Peterson’s March on lap 18. Now, with Watson out of the way, there was clear road between his Ferrari 312 T2’s trademark unpainted aluminium front wing and Hunt’s increasingly loose McLaren M23. Moreover, Andretti was now pushing Regazzoni hard – “My chassis was workin’ bitchin’,” he said later – and the last 10 laps duly became a three-car battle for the lead. Andretti said after the race that he thought he could perhaps have won – his Lotus was now working visibly better than Hunt’s leading McLaren or Regazzoni’s second-placed Ferrari – but Clay was known to be notoriously ‘wide’ in his defence, was under huge pressure from Enzo Ferrari to steal points from McLaren’s annoying Englishman who kept winning races, so today the usually pugnacious American let caution be the better part of valour.

On the last lap they were nose to tail, all three of them, but Hunt was now slip-sliding all over the road in his efforts to stay ahead. He never made a mistake but, even so, he needed the help of Alan Jones, with whom he was friendly, and whose Surtees they caught and lapped on that ragged final tour. Jones let Hunt past easily enough, but he then held Regazzoni up, giving the Italian-Swiss badass some of the ‘elbows out’ medicine with which he had dosed so many, so many times, over so many years. Well, Jones’s Surtees was festooned with Durex logos, let’s not forget, so you could say that his attitude to Regazzoni’s efforts to pass him was fittingly prophylactic!

James Hunt McLaren 1976 Dutch GP — Race was key in Hunt’s chase for the title

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In the end Hunt won, just 0.92sec ahead of Regazzoni, who was in turn only 1.17sec ahead of Andretti. James had driven stoutly and unerringly, winning in a car that had not been the quickest at any point and had been hobbled in the later stages. In so doing he had closed to within just two points of Lauda’s total (58 against 56). It was his 29th birthday, too. One can only imagine his celebrations in Amsterdam that evening.

I will leave you with two sentences from legendary racing journalist Pete Lyons’ Autocourse report. Of Hunt’s long battle with Watson: “Lunging, chopping, opposite-locking and banging wheels, the two fastest men in F1 that day fought like rabid dogs.” Of the race itself: “By the fifth lap it was already the best grand prix of the year, and by the 10th it was one of the best ever.” Two weeks later, the F1 circus rolled into Monza. Against all odds, Lauda was not only alive but ready to race. He did so, heroically. But that is another story.