by David Finlay (31 May 2006)
You may recall the tiresome tabloid hoo-hah which resulted not long ago from Kimi Raikkonen's attendance at a Mayfair lap-dancing club. In the introduction to his book,
Memories of James Hunt, author Christopher Hilton briefly refers to that business, and then uses it to compare Raikkonen with his subject. "James Hunt," Hilton writes, "
was a lap-dancing club."
It is almost unimaginable that a man like Hunt would be allowed within a hundred paces of a Grand Prix grid nowadays. Then again, in the 1970s - when he enjoyed a brief but spectacular career which culminated in his winning the World Championship thirty years ago - it didn't seem particularly feasible either.
Back then, Hunt was as much known for his off-piste behaviour as he was for his success on the race circuits. He smoked a lot, drank a lot, took a lot of drugs, had so much sex with so many different women it was a wonder he could stand up straight, and was of such a frantic nervous disposition that his pre-event routine regularly involved copious vomiting.
It seems apt that a man like this should have got his F1 break with the riotously eccentric team owned by Lord Alexander Hesketh and managed by Bubbles Horsley. It's a good example of the mental process of the Hesketh outfit that, having been unsuccessful in other classes, they decided they might as well be unsuccessful in Formula 1. Rather unexpectedly, though, Hesketh's F1 car was a bit useful, and Hunt drove it well, and even won the 1975 Dutch Grand Prix with it.
Hesketh stopped racing at the end of that season, so Hunt joined McLaren. It was a rare case of McLaren signing a driver it didn't want. What McLaren wanted was to hold on to Emerson Fittipaldi, which seemed easy enough because there were no other decent drives available. But then Fittipaldi set up his own team, leaving McLaren in the lurch and in no position to be choosy. A half-decent driver with no job would have to do.
This was no sort of prelude to a Championship season. 1976 was, as 1975 had been, Niki Lauda's year. Lauda, driving for Ferrari, romped away in the points in the first part of the season and was leading by an enormous margin when he was almost burnt to death in a horrifying accident at the Nurburgring.
Even so, for all Hunt's efforts to close the gap, Lauda was still ahead after his amazing comeback, and did not need to do much to retain his title during the final round at Fuji in Japan. But the weather at Fuji was dangerously bad, and Lauda, after splashing round for a couple of laps in minimial visibility, decided that having two fatal accidents in the same year was beyond a joke.
He retired, but could still have been Champion. Hunt, however, did enough -
just enough - to overtake him on points. It was the apex of his life. Christopher Hilton describes it as well as it can be described: "Everything Hunt had done before led to this. Everything he did after reflected it."
Indeed. Hunt's racing career did not last much longer, but he remained in the sport as one of the most popular television commentators ever. His double act with Murray Walker - perhaps Hunt's opposite in every important respect - is better remembered than the careers of most of the drivers they talked about.
As well as this, Hunt lost most of his money, gained yet more eccentricity, settled down (after two wildly troubled marriages) with the artist Helen Dyson and became intensely involved in the upbringing of his two sons. He died, ridiculously young at 45, of heart failure.
Christopher Hilton tells the story in an unconventional way. As its title suggests,
Memories of James Hunt consists of the recollections of people who knew him: ex-girlfriends, ex-wives, friends, fellow racers, fellow budgerigar breeders (yes, really), team members, journalists, people who loved him, people who had no time for him, people who distrusted him at first but eventually found the man underneath the hype.
Into the last category falls Murray Walker. Walker's comments are searingly honest, intensively thought through, passionately felt. They tell as much about Walker himself as about the man he is talking about, and they are worth the price of the book on their own.
Christopher Hilton is a very fine writer, but his voice comes through only rarely; he leaves his interviewees to do most of the telling. The editing of their spoken words is light, so you feel they are talking to you directly, and sometimes this means that they leap from one subject to another and back again in a way that is normal in conversation but difficult to follow in a book.
I have to say I was irritated by this at first, but as I kept reading I stopped noticing, and when I reached the end of the final page I put the book down and thought, "Wow! What an experience that was." And then I smiled, because that sequence of emotions is about the same as Hunt inspired in me. He was no hero of mine when I was a small boy, but he gradually became a fascinating, if difficult, character to appreciate. In that respect, Hilton has written the right book for the man.
Oh, and I'm so pleased to have discovered that Max Mosley, now the President of the FIA, was once known as the Great Chicken of Bicester . . .
Memories of James Hunt, by Christopher Hilton, is published by Haynes at £19.99. ISBN 1 84425 215 9. More details at
www.haynes.co.uk.