Flamboyant Briton won his first and only world championship in dramatic fashion in Japan in the last race of the 1976 season
Niki Lauda once described James Hunt as “one of my few real friends in racing”, the great rivals sharing a genuine bond even as they fought fiercely for the Formula One world championship in 1976.
Its destination was decided at the Japanese Grand Prix – where the sport heads for the third race of this season on Sunday – with this year marking the 50th anniversary of an extraordinary contest when Hunt won his only F1 title in an engrossing finale.
The Fuji Speedway was shrouded in rain and mist and the race start was delayed on that afternoon in late October. Hunt, always tense before a race, was wound up like a spring. The battle between the two drivers, Lauda at Ferrari and Hunt with McLaren, had been hard-fought from the off but 1976 was exceptional more than anything else in that Lauda was still in the fight at all.
Only two months before Fuji he had had the huge accident at the Nürburgring that had almost killed him. That he had returned at all was astonishing, perhaps the greatest individual feat of will and determination in the sport’s history, but then taking it to the wire was almost as remarkable.
