REMEMBERING JAMES HUNT

James Hunt has become, in the twenty years since his passing on June 15, 1993, a cultural phenomenon again.    Hunt was the antithesis of today's bland, media trained, corporate sponsored athletes, his spirit best represented but not equalled in today's  Formula One by Kimi Raikkonen.
This fall, the release of Ron Howard's "Rush" will place "Hunt the Shunt" in the spotlight for new generations who never knew his story.

Below is a 40 minute BBC documentary on Hunt's life tracing much of the story path fictionalized in Rush.

For more salacious details of Hunt's epic pre race rituals, don't miss " 33 Stewardesses in 13 Days".

KIMI'S WINNING

Ok fine, his car never got out of the garage during first practice but Raikkonen was winning with this James Hunt repro helmet today in Monaco.

Hunt's car would have the biggest bulge, wouldn't it?

James Hunt's Mclaren M23 parked on a NYC street for the Senna movie "premiere" yesterday.
Go read about ir and see more pictures over at Stassenversion


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When Motor Racing Was Dangerous and Sex Was Safe

We were all born too late. Another great flick, clear an hour for it.
(MotorsportRetro.com)
end of post

33 Stewardesses in 14 days

Somehow I can't imagine a Nico Rosberg or a Lewis Hamilton in the role, guess Senna sort of ruined all that with that darn professionalism and fitness... I suppose Formula 1 drivers just don't go on two week long sex, booze and drug binges in between races anymore, like James Hunt did in 1976 before the Japanese Grand Prix (see this old article on Axis).

The story in the Daily Mail (which excerpts "Shunt" by Tom Rubython) would is amusing even if half of it is true what with tales of streams of British Airways stewardesses in the hunt for pole position, James sharing the spillover and the coke and the blunts with Barry Sheene and still finding time to sample the local female population.

"While Jackie Stewart famously abstained from sex a week before a motor race, Hunt would often have sex minutes before climbing into the cockpit.
Nothing could have prepared Patrick Head, now co-owner of the Williams F1 team but then a young car designer, for the morning when he inadvertently walked into the wrong pit garage.
He found Hunt inside, with his racing overalls around his ankles, cavorting with a Japanese girl. Hunt laughed when he saw the interloper, who left, not quite believing what he had seen.

A few minutes later, Hunt left the garage and went around the side to carry out his pre-race ritual of vomiting — the result of extreme nerves combined with overindulgence.
Finally ready for action, Hunt went out to drive the race of his life... and won the 1976 world championship, beating his nearest rival by one point."

But that's not all, he ended up selling his wife too, to Richard Burton...for $1,000,000! That story you will have to read on your own HERE
(thanks to Alex McHenry for the tip!)


Purchase "Shunt, the story of James Hunt" by Tom Rubython on Amazon (and help Axis in the process!)



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Car Wars 1979

The 1979 formula 1 season, it was a time when there was much freedom for designers to come up with radically different solutions but it was also deemed the year when any driver in the right car could win the championship and Formula 1 had become "boring". The "machine over man" era was said to have begun. In reality, that was always the case, unless you are Nuvolari defeating Silver Arrows in an ancient Alfa, you can't win with inferior equipment.

Interesting tidbits in this old film, Hunt strikes a familiar note arguing Formula 1 had gotten boring and how people tune in with the hope of witnessing an exciting race, more then the expectation to. Yet when people quote the "good old days of F1 they invariably point to the 1979 duel between Villeneuve and Arnoux at the French GP. Today many claim F1 is boring, yet we had three incredibly close seasons in a row.

Did you notice just how shabby F1 was back then? I mean a Mclaren with chipped mirror housings? Drivers with stone pitted helmets? Even the GoodYear stencil on the tires looks sloppy and forget about safety in the pits, the cars or along the track. Ecclestone, Dennis and Mosley changed all that in the 80's.

Part 2 and 3 are after the jump.

Fuji and the another year of chaos

I posted this clip before but I wanted to re-propose it in light if this year's legal hoopla.

1976 is regarded by many as the year when global media really took notice of Formula 1, ironically because of the incredible political controversy surrounding that championship and, you guessed it, Mclaren and Ferrari. There was everything thrown in, disqualifications, reversals, near death and further disqualifications and even Hunt's wife leaving him for Richard Burton... the media loved it and nothing has quite been the same since. All I can say is that this year, when many worried that Schumacher's retirement would hurt ratings, Bernie Ecclestone's words to Peter Windsor recently on the grid sound familiar "It's all good for business".

The 1976 season was decided on the Fuji circuit in Japan under appalling weather and safety conditions (now we have paved runoff, back then they seemed to favor grass bordered by guard rails!).

The first clip is a wrap up of the season leading to the final race, the second, the first two laps to get a look at the circuit, and finally a priceless snippet of the post race interview with Hunt. Enjoy the rare look and that amazing tie-shirt combo on the host and don't miss Hunt getting his head drilled at the beginning of the second clip...ah those high tech days!


Caution volume very loud on these clips!

Big Balls and mutton chops

The discussion I had with badbadM about Kimi Raikkonen and McLaren's choice to take the risk for the win in the 2005 European GP got me thinking about some of the more colorful and basically did it for fun and passion.

Before the start of this Formula 1 season, Kimi sneaked off to Finland and without telling Ferrari's management who would have most certainly have had a cow if they had found out, entered a snowmobile race. He signed up with a pseudonym: James Hunt.








Now Hunt was the ultimate slacker genius of F1: girls, cars, booze and cigarettes, it's safe to say he would not have fit well in a corporate environment. In fact he had a clause in his Mclaren contract that he would not ever have to wear a suit or got to sponsor events.





I don't need to go into the James Hunt story which you can find elsewhere online but I did find this fantastic period clip starring Dickie Davies an announcer who looks like a cross between a Michael Palin character and a porn actor and must surely have been the inspiration for Brian Fontana. The graphics alone are hilarious.
It's a wind up to the 1976 season final at Fuji Japan a race that would be held under such torrential rain that Niki Lauda decided to quit after two laps even though the championship was on the line. I guess he gambled that Hunt "the Shunt" would throw it all away and that he would win by playing it safe. Of course you can't fault Lauda for bravery, not after missing only two races after his horrific accident at the Nürburgring, an accident shown in graphic detail in this clip.

the volume is kind of loud on this clip, you might want to turn the speakers down before you hit play...




I saw these cars in person at the last Monaco Grand Prix Historique. A fantastic event and a great chance to see all these amazing cars driven, in most cases, just as hard as back when they were new.




thanks to stavelot7