When Hunt the underdog bit back with a shock maiden F1 victory

We all know that time flies — but, even so, the abrupt arrivals of some anniversaries still have the power to gut-punch with shocking force. For example, two days ago I raised an unsteady glass to the late James Hunt on the occasion of the 50-year anniversary of his maiden Formula 1 grand prix victory.

The 1975 F1 season had started much as the 1974 F1 season had ended. Emerson Fittipaldi and McLaren, the 1974 F1 drivers’ and constructors’ world champions, had kicked off 1975 with a win in Argentina, after which Carlos Pace had won in Brazil for Brabham, for which team Carlos Reutemann had won three grands prix the year before. Jody Scheckter, who had won two grands prix for Tyrrell in 1974, had then won in South Africa, after which, following an eight-week hiatus before what we used to call the European season had begun, Jochen Mass won for McLaren in Spain. Then Niki Lauda, who had won twice in 1974 but could have won more often that season had his Ferrari been more reliable, won three grands prix on the spin, in Monaco, Belgium, and Sweden.

So it was that, in mid-June 1975, as the F1 circus rolled into Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix, the eighth grand prix of the year, Lauda led the F1 drivers’ world championship chase with 32 points, 10 ahead of Reutemann in second place, just ahead of Fittipaldi in third place on 21 points, followed by Pace (16) and Scheckter (15). Hunt lay ninth with just seven points, the result of having finished second in Argentina and sixth in Brazil.

He would retire from the next five grands prix – Kyalami, Montjuïc, Monte Carlo, Zolder, and Anderstorp – but, if you had taken the trouble to look, you would have seen that he and his Hesketh team, the last of the great F1 privateers, had been showing flashes of encouraging if sporadic form, despite their recent inability to finish races. Having notched up world championship points in both South American grands prix, and having recorded the fastest lap in Argentina, they had struggled in South Africa, never looking like troubling the scorers there, a fuel metering unit failure mercifully drawing a close to a lacklustre weekend. Then they had looked much more competitive in Spain, where Hunt had qualified third and had led the race for its first five laps until he had spun off on a puddle of spilt oil.

Monaco had never been a happy hunting ground for Hunt, and it never would be, for he never so much as scored a point at the Principality in seven attempts, and in 1975 he qualified 11th there then drove an undistinguished race that ended with heavy contact with the Mirabeau guardrail, the result of a failed attempt to pass Mass’s McLaren. After he had clambered out of his bent Hesketh, James had remained at Mirabeau for many laps so as to shake his fist at Jochen whenever he had driven by. At Zolder Hunt had qualified 11th and had climbed to ninth by the time he had been stopped by gear linkage failure, and at Anderstorp he had qualified 13th and had charged his way up to fifth by the time a brake fluid leakage had ended a run in which he and his Hesketh seemed to be gelling well again.

Hunt and Hesketh took with them to Zandvoort their promising Anderstorp form, and James qualified an excellent third on that then-wonderful Dutch racetrack, just ahead of Scheckter’s Tyrrell in P4 and best of the rest behind a Ferrari front-row lock-out, Lauda on the pole just ahead of Clay Regazzoni in P2. On race morning it rained heavily for a few hours, after which a stiff North Sea breeze dried the track a bit, albeit not quite enough to make slick tyres a sensible option, and all the runners went to the grid on wets. At the end of lap one Lauda led from Scheckter, Regazzoni, and Hunt.

Backmarkers were unused to moving over for a Hesketh

That stiff North Sea breeze now whipped up, drying the track surface rapidly, and at the end of lap seven Hunt dived into the pits to fit dry Goodyears, the first driver to do so. Had he gone too early? We would soon find out. On the next lap Fittipaldi did likewise, followed by Jean-Pierre Jarier (Shadow) the lap after that, then everyone decided that the time had come.

Hunt had dropped to P19 after his stop, but he had been delighted to find that his slicks had immediately offered better grip than the wets he had discarded, and he was able to make up time as the runners ahead all pitted. By lap 15 they had all done so – and he found himself in a 10-second lead over Lauda, Jarier, Fittipaldi, Scheckter, and Regazzoni. Better still, the Hesketh boys had chosen a dry set-up, gambling that the track would dry, whereas Ferrari had gone for a dry/wet compromise.

Nonetheless, Ferrari’s dominant qualifying pace had shown that the cavallino rampante was very much the form horse here at Zandvoort, and Lauda was therefore able to catch Jarier in very short order. Nonetheless, ‘Jumper’ had never been an easy man to overtake – indeed over the next eight F1 seasons he never would be – and today he played all his favourite blocking tricks, parrying every attempt that Lauda made to pass him, often tyre-smoking his way into Tarzan on an ultra-defensively tight inside line, and it was not until lap 43, braking later than late into Tarzan, that Lauda finally managed to scramble by. There were still 32 laps to go, mind, and Niki soon began to erode James’s eight-second lead.

The Zandvoort marshals had long suffered a reputation for being haphazard and laggardly with blue flags, and so it was that Hunt was finding lapping backmarkers a tricky and hairy task, not least because they were unused to moving over for a Hesketh. Behind him, however, Lauda was having no such problem, for the marshals had their blue flags unfurled and at the ready for his Ferrari at every turn, and the backmarkers were well used to giving way whenever their mirrors were filled with rosso corsa. As a result, by lap 67, with eight laps to go, the Ferrari and the Hesketh were running nose to tail.

There was no doubt that Lauda’s car was the quicker of the two. He had driven the race’s fastest lap on the 55th tour – a blistering 1min 21.54sec – a lap after Hunt had managed his fastest lap (1min 22.01sec). Nonetheless, James’s Goodyears were in decent shape, as were Niki’s, and the Englishman continued to push as hard as he dared. Above all, he was desperate not to make a mistake. Just a few metres behind him, running in the Hesketh’s wheel tracks, Lauda was waiting patiently for him to do just that.

But Lauda would wait in vain, for Hunt reeled off the last few laps with impeccable precision, crossing the line 1.06sec ahead of the Ferrari driver; in truth they had co-dominated the race, finishing almost a minute ahead of Regazzoni in third place; and they had lapped everyone else.