One more month and it will be Bahrain. Bahrain in the sense of Grand Prix, the first of the new season. Winter is flying: just two months from the Abu Dhabi Grand Final, from its thrills and controversies, from champion Verstappen and Hamilton tripped just a few corners from what would have been his eighth title. Its greatest of all. But yet. Of that atmosphere, of that duel that sealed the most beautiful and hard-fought F1 World Championship of the last quarter of a century, we still have a great desire: that it start again as soon as possible. May Hamilton put aside his sulking for the wrongs suffered and that Max returns to the track with the same explosive energy which allowed him, for the first time since the advent of the Hybrid Era, to fight on equal terms with Lewis in different cars in 2021. Desire to fight, to ring: on a human level before and more than on a technical and technological level, of budget and political powers.
And then a photo comes to the rescue. I am Hunt and Lauda, the two mega duelists of 1976, in a fight to the death (it should be said) that went beyond the fight between Ferrari and McLaren and all the hindrances and pitfalls that contributed to making that season even more dramatic , unpredictable and at the last breath of what the rankings on the track decree. The facts of that year are also known to those who had not yet been born in 1976, at least in terms of automotive passion. Niki dominator of the first part of the championship, which he faced as a champion in charge, and James sublime pursuer, more and more convinced and unstoppable as McLaren grew. And then crashes in bursts, inside and outside the circuits: from Lauda’s cracked rib in spring in a misstep in his backyard and Hunt’s private life increasingly agitated between divorce and miss accumulated in evenings that the paparazzi had set out to chase more than his gallops on the track; at the stake of Niki in Germany, at his near death in hospital, at his still bleeding return to Monza, at the epilogue under the deluge of Fuji which denied him the title for a single point in favor of the English opponent.
In this picture, Hunt slipped into the cockpit of the Ferrari 312 T2 as a joke, and who knows what he is saying to Niki who is laughing at the game. It cannot have been taken in Spain, in Jarama, where the T2 debuted in the championship at the beginning of May in the championship: that weekend the Ferrari driver faced him with the aforementioned rib so sore that he would have forbidden such a plastic pose. Maybe in Belgium, two weeks later. Or in another (no Montecarlo: the right lake of the pit lane was not brick) of the four further races that preceded the Nürburgring which marked the end of those beautiful smooth cheeks, not slaughtered by fire scars, that Lauda shows here. But if this photo strikes us, the positive energy it transmits is due to its great human content. Lauda and Hunt, two young men (27 and 29 years respectively) who know they are at stake for success, prizes, fame and glory and also the gigantic risks of what is increasingly taking the form of a private duel. Yet they play: they laugh and joke, showing unequivocal signs of a relationship between young men who also shared sympathy and perhaps similarities. Other than the character rivalry, the diversity of training and perhaps of culture celebrated by a myth that has lasted for almost half a century, and that also the famous film Rush he underlined with sometimes pedagogical tones a few years ago. The two, on the other hand, shared more than one competition on the track. They recognized each other fast and dangerous. But probably they also shared something else, probably matured in the free life, that extra box, perhaps that of evenings and parties which then (unfortunately no longer today) were one of the litmus papers of a splendid and shiny, fun and dreamy Formula 1 . In short, the heart before the foot. A racing heart, able to guarantee the maximum with the steering wheel in hand, but also with a glass of champagne while nearby someone shoots music at mega decibels.
After all, the writer asked Hunt in an interview in 1987: ‘But how did you live the fact that you were the viveur of the paddock, always connected to beautiful women and a great drinker of beer and whiskey in the evening, while Niki was the abatino and went to sleep at ten in the evening always and only thinking about the next day’s race? ‘. And he: “What? Me and Niki, we had a lot of bad behavior together…”, And a big laugh down the stomach. Translated: ‘What?!? Neither Niki nor I have combined any, outside the paddock‘.
Here, maybe the spirit of this beautiful photo is right here. Hunt must have said to Lauda something like: ‘But if this T2 goes even stronger than the 312T (with which Niki had dominated the first two races ’76)why don’t we switch with my McLaren M23 at least for a GP?‘. And Niki: ‘You dream it: get off immediately!‘. Two laughs, bright eyes, a school trip spirit not contained by press officers or dictated by photographic poses for Social benefit. Imagine them, Hamilton and Verstappen, inventing such a gag in the Sakhir pits, in exactly one month, bypassing all the liturgies that make the F1 paddock today a cathedral of tight deadlines and drivers running towards or from their respective hospitality with their heads down if not even with the helmet pressed on the head? It would be wonderful.
#Racing #heart #FormulaPassionit