7/30/2019 Rush Day 17 2nd Page

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James HuntContinued From Preceding Page

of people who go on and say, oh , it's "McLaren tires"or it's "Ferrari t ires" an d they're wrong. They're

completely wrong. It's just that McLaren an d Ferrari

an d on e or tw o other people to a lesser extent havedone th e testing to suit their cars to the tires. It's the

other wa y round. An d a lo t of th e credit, in fact all thecredit, is to th e work that McLaren did last year withEmerson . I mean I don't take an y credit at all, it's them

and Emerson. They did a lot of work on the car last

year and they got it very good; they went throughsome pretty terrible areas to ge t it that way, but they

did it in the end.

Lyons: Just wh y do you reckon you, meaning yo u

and the team, went into a slump after Spain , and whyare you out of it now?

Hunt: Well. You really would have to ask Teddy hat,An d I don't think he 'd tell you! Because we 'd made abit of a cockup, and we moved something, and whenwe realized it and moved it back everything was all

right.

No, I'm not going to tell you what i t was! It mighthelp other people. I don't think it would, but it might.

Suffice it to sa y i t was aerodynamic, and it wa s minor,an d it wa s a cockup.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with the kinds of

circuits we were racing on , an d it had nothing

whatsoever to do with th e regulations thing, you

know, after Spain. Other than th e fact we were pu t intoa panic and a lot of work and we didn't have an y t ime

to go testing. And it wa s only testing at Ricard that pu t

the thing right. We suspected in Sweden what th e

problem very likely was, bu t we couldn't pu t it right

then, we hadn't the gear.Th e trouble is , you see, I would ik e to tell everybody

what it was because there 's a strong feeling that we

mu st have been ch ea t ing in Spain , getting anadva ntage, and as s oon as we narrowed the ca r wewere useless. Bu t it 's j us t noth ing whatsoev er to dowith th at, at a ll.

Ly ons : Ce r ta in dr ivers ge t ou t of the old He sketh,that is th e Williams , a nd sa y it' s a b ad ca r , it doesn'th andle , no g ri p .

"I had a pretty funnycareer up to F1 and I

didn't win any races."Hunt: Well-they've got to se t it up . That 's their

fault. No ? Getting acarright, within reservations , is acombination of a driver an d a team.

The McLaren doesn ' t feel , to the driver , an y better aca r than the old Hesketh did. Th e 308 used to handle

just as well , when it was handling well, an d when it

was handling badly it wa s jus t as bad as the McLarenis when it isn't handling well. They felt exactly thesame, they went through the same motions , you knowwhat I mean? Except the McLaren would appear to be

slightly more efficient, it does everything that little

bi t faster.

Which is faster than a driver ca n detect. I mean , if

yo u took me down to a circuit an d se t me in first on e

ca r and got me really comfortable with it, lo t of laps,right? Then a week later pu t me into the other on e

under the same conditions , an d didn't tell me any

times and took away from me an y measuring

equipment, disguised the us e of th e rev-counter fo rinstance-I wouldn't be able to tell you which was thebetter car. I f yo u 're only one mile an hour faster

around the whole track , wh o ca n tell the di fference ,from th e feel? I mean the y g o through th e samemotions.

Lyons: Why wa s i t that a t the beginn ing of last yearyou twice spun ou t of the le ad of a race, at Buenos

Aires an d again at Barcelona? You seemed to stop

doing th at, in the popular con ception any wa y , at

Za ndvoort.

Hunt: Yeah. I t wa s inexperien ce. I was, funnilyenough , you know , crack ing under th e pressure.

Oddly enough . I wa s so w orried about it , leading ,right? , that I was so busy telling myself to be careful,well you 're in the lead now , just take it ea s y an d be

careful-that when I go t to the corner I was stil ltalk ing to myself and not concentrating!

Th e finally I worked out that you had to just si t an d

relax and get on with it , just drive normally the way

yo u do when you 're no t leading and not spinning, stopgiving yourself a pep talk and not concentrating.

I think in a way it wa s a good thing, because it gave

me, yo u know, a good lesson. Yo u learn all the time.

You see, yo u ge t a ba d training in Formula Three. In

the days when I wa s running in F3 it wa s in a lo t of

ways a disadvantage to be leading because it ' s veryeasy to overtake, you ge t a good tow with an F3 ca r. I f

yo u 've got somebody right up your chuff chances are

he 'll be coming past you at any moment sometime on

that lap. On most of the tracks where there 's any kind

of decent sort of straight they jus t al l come screamingpast.

Whereas in Formula On e things are very much the

reverse. It ' s very, very difficult to pass in Fl , because

AUGUST 28, 1976 AUTOWEEK PAGE 7~

Hunt chats with Mclaren boss Teddy Mayer between practice sessions.

of the wings .getting messed up . an d yo u can't ge t veryclose to th e ca r in front. It took me a while to really

realize that, despite al l th e years I spent in F1. It took

me a while to reali ze th a t w hen you 're in the lead of aGP you're really on to p . A ll t he pr oblems belong to

other people. No matter ho w much faster they can go ,no matter that they 're br eathing dO ',\'n your ne ck . th eys till ca n 't fi nd a w ay r ou nd you .

You see , you've got to r emember I ha d a p re tt yfunny career up to Fl an d I didn't win an y ra ces . So Ididn't have an y p ra ct ic e a t w inn ing-and yo udefinitely get pract ice. I' ve go t a bi t of practice now ,an d getting into the mo od for it. and once you get intothe lead an d realize you 'r e really the guy in charge

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you ge t confidence, and you 're in much better shape.Once yo u get in the mood an d ge t confident th ing s

gets e as y . There was a point a t t h e b eg inning of this

se a so n th at I bro ke down , but I wa s behind N ik i and we

were very closely matched. He just had the edge , bu t-itwas a t iny, tiny edge . An d I always said, half of tha t

wa s the fact that they were in a winning streak an d we

were no t . I t only needed a tip of the scales an d we 'd ge tin to a winning streak and they'd be ou t of it. It 's a very ,very fine balance , an d it only needs to swing a li ttle

bi t. That wa s a ll it needed an d I wa s no t worried afterth e first couple of races, by an y means .

And then you know it did swing, an d no w it s m y jo b

to kee p it th a t way .

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