Fuji grand prix

The day Lauda wouldn't risk his life - and there was no stopping Hunt

If formula one is anticipating more fireworks between the championship protagonists this weekend, it will be nothing compared to the situation at Fuji 30 years ago. A 1976 season full of controversy reached its climax in the last race, formula one's first visit to Fuji, where McLaren's James Hunt overhauled Ferrari's Niki Lauda by a single point to take the Austrian's world crown. Lauda pulled out of the race after a single lap, unable to see properly in the appalling conditions.

Just a month earlier Lauda had made his comeback after a fiery accident at the Nürburgring that almost cost him his life. Lauda, badly burned, went into the final round three points clear of Hunt but in need of an eye operation that would allow him to blink build-ups of tears from his right eye. He could manage the handicap in the dry but, in an October deluge beneath Mount Fuji, he thought it was madness. "My life means more to me than the championship," he said, as he pulled slowly into the pits, blipped the engine and climbed out.

Daniele Audetto, Ferrari's team manager that day and now Super Aguri team principal, says that few drivers were in favour of starting the delayed race but that with TV satellite time running out and cancellation meaning no money from the promoter, Bernie Ecclestone persuaded everyone to start.

"Hunt should never have been champion," Audetto says. "We had an agreement thanks to Bernie to stop after the first lap. Emerson Fittipaldi stopped, Lauda stopped and Carlos Pace [Ecclestone's Brabham driver] stopped. But Hunt listened to the McLaren boss [Teddy Mayer] who said, 'Screw Ferrari, don't stop'."

Fuji came at the end of a season which had seen a string of controversial run-ins between the two teams, then as now. The veteran journalist Heinz Pruller, Lauda's biographer, was party to a pre-race drivers' meeting that day and is still a formula one regular. He remembers things differently. "Max Mosley was running the March team that day and his driver, Hans Stuck, had been four seconds quicker than anyone in the wet warm-up," Pruller recalls.

"Max, understandably, was keen for the race to start. Niki warned him that it was his responsibility to inform his young drivers just how dangerous conditions were. In fairness to Max he did that, and it's true that most drivers thought conditions were too bad. But no start meant no money - for Bernie, the teams and everyone.

"For Niki it was impossible but James did say that he wanted the championship. Niki watched on the pit wall for a few laps but it was clear James wasn't going to stop. Then the conditions improved. Niki shrugged and headed for the airport. The team wanted to tell Enzo Ferrari it was an engine failure but Niki wasn't having it."

Audetto claims that Lauda and Ferrari had been naive to expect the others to stop but did not want to admit that for fear of looking silly.

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