HUNT’S FLAG DAY

BRITISH GRAND PRIX, 18 JULY 1976

Feelings were running high in the build-up to the 1976 British Grand Prix courtesy of a simmering feud between Ferrari and McLaren which was about to boil over. The bad blood had started at the Spanish Grand Prix earlier in the season, when James Hunt’s apparently victorious McLaren had been disqualified two hours after the race for exceeding the maximum allowable car width by 18mm (in). The Ferrari number one, Niki Lauda, was awarded the race but two months later, on appeal, Hunt was reinstated as the winner. This controversial decision met with a frosty reception from Ferrari, not least because it cut Lauda’s lead over Hunt in the World Drivers’ Championship to 27 points – 52 to 25. The British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch was the next race on the calendar. This was the long, hot summer when the British public basked in unexpectedly high temperatures and found a new sporting hero in 28-year-old Hunt, the dashing blond bombshell with the film star looks and the aristocratic accent. Hunt had acquitted himself creditably with the Hesketh team over the previous three seasons but this was the year which really catapulted him into the big time. Lauda was his friend and great rival, so it was fitting that the pair lined up alongside each other on the front row at Brands as the season reached its halfway point. The second rank was made up of Mario Andretti’s Lotus and Clay Regazzoni’s Ferrari. Having qualified on pole, Lauda chose to start from the left side of the track, thereby avoiding the steep camber of the opening right-hander, Paddock Hill Bend.

Lauda got away well but Hunt missed a beat, enabling Regazzoni to fly past from the second row and attack his team-mate at Paddock. It was a bold but misguided assault, one which saw the two Ferraris touch wheels. Regazzoni spun, Hunt veered left to avoid him but hit the sliding Ferrari. The McLaren rode over the Ferrari’s wheels and was launched into the air, crashing down to earth in an upright position but with the right front steering arm broken. In the midst of the mayhem Jacques Laffite crashed his Ligier into the bank. Hunt motored on slowly up the hill to Druids with one front wheel at a crazy angle and drifted down the other side towards Bottom Straight. He thought he was out of the race until he saw red flags indicating that proceedings had been stopped, so he turned off the track on to a little back road that led to the pits. As a crowd gathered around, Hunt climbed out and asked the mechanics to push the McLaren to the pit.

Half an hour later it was announced that the race would restart as if the first lap had not occurred, but that no car would be allowed to take part in the rerun if it had failed to complete the first lap. Additionally, no spare cars would be permitted to start. When the crowd heard that Hunt and, to a lesser extent, Regazzoni and Laffite, would be excluded, there was uproar. The McLaren spare car was wheeled on to the grid and as Hunt climbed into it, the bulk of the 77,000 crowd started to boo and whistle at the stewards. The slow handclap started up and some frustrated spectators threw beer cans on to the track. Hunt later remarked: ‘It soon became clear that the organisers were going to allow me to start because if they didn’t, they would have a riot on their hands!’ In a miraculous change of heart, the stewards did indeed suddenly rule that Hunt could start after all because his car had been mobile when the race had been stopped. And the issue of the spare car no longer applied since in the intervening period between the original crash and the restart, the McLaren mechanics had managed to repair the front suspension of Hunt’s race car. So he got into that while Regazzoni and Laffite used their training cars.

In the restarted race Hunt sat behind Lauda for 45 of the 76 laps until he took the Austrian at Druids. With the Ferrari slowed by gear trouble, Hunt pulled away to win by a minute but even as he stood on the victory podium, moves were afoot to snatch away his moment of glory. Ferrari, Tyrrell and Copersucar all objected to Hunt’s win on the grounds that his car hadn’t technically been running when the original race was halted. Tyrrell and Copersucar subsequently withdrew their objections but Ferrari held firm.

Ferrari’s appeal against the result was heard two months later. The McLaren hierarchy knew they were on to a loser when Lauda, having climbed out of his deathbed following his dreadful crash at the Nürburgring, was wheeled in by Ferrari swathed in bandages. Ferrari claimed that Hunt had abandoned his car, that the mechanics had pushed it with the race still in progress and that the McLaren would have been incapable of completing that first lap anyway. McLaren countered that Hunt had only stopped on seeing the red flag. Even though video evidence was produced to show that Hunt was still driving at the time, the FIA ruled that he hadn’t actually been taking part in the race when it was stopped, and disqualified him. Lauda had won the sympathy vote, the general feeling being that Hunt’s disqualification was to appease Ferrari following his reinstatement in Spain. It was a severe blow to Hunt’s title aspirations. But the season was by no means over yet.