1976 The champion’s defence, from a runaway spring to a wet October day in Japan

The champion’s spring

He began the defence with a new number on the car. As champion he carried No. 1, and Ferrari gave McLaren the numbers 11 and 12 in exchange for 1 and 2. For the first three rounds he raced the Ferrari 312T that had won him the title in 1975, with Clay Regazzoni again his team-⁠mate, and the season opened as if it would be a repeat.

In both of the first two races James Hunt, in the McLaren, took pole; in both Lauda beat him away and won. At Interlagos on 25 January he passed Regazzoni and drew clear. Jean-⁠Pierre Jarier was gaining more than a second a lap on him until he slid off on oil on lap 34, and Lauda won by 21.47 seconds from Patrick Depailler.

At Kyalami on 6 March he made the best start, led every lap, set the fastest lap, and nursed a slowly deflating left rear tyre over the closing laps as Hunt came at him, to win by 1.3 seconds. Alan Henry ended his report in Motor Sport with a dig at those who still said Lauda won only because he had the better car.

The new car, the 312T2, made its debut on 14 March at Brands Hatch, in the non-⁠championship Race of Champions; Lauda started from the front row and retired with a broken brake pipe. At Long Beach on 28 March, in the 312T for the last time, a driveshaft broke in the decisive practice session and he started 4th. Regazzoni went away from pole while Lauda watched Depailler and Hunt tangle, and Ferrari finished 1st and 2nd. After three races Lauda had 24 points and Hunt 6.

A tractor, and Jarama

Shortly before the Spanish Grand Prix (a few days or two weeks before it: accounts differ) a tractor he was using rolled over on him at his property near Salzburg. Motor Sport found him at the circuit still black and blue. The ribs were broken; how many is told differently: two in Der Spiegel that October, three in Lauda’s own telling of 2013: “I overturned the thing, and it was lucky I only broke three ribs…”

At Jarama on 2 May the Ferrari 312T2 ran in the championship for the first time. Lauda started from the front row and led for 31 laps, with Hunt pressing; Denis Jenkinson thought Hunt pressed precisely because he doubted the champion’s stamina that day. On lap 32 Hunt came through. Both Lauda and Der Spiegel said the pass made him swerve and jar his ribs, and the magazine reported him saying “I knocked my broken ribs in Hunt’s ambush at the corner and actually wanted to stop” (attributed). He finished 2nd, 31 seconds behind, and was too exhausted to go to the podium.

That evening the stewards excluded Hunt, and Jacques Laffite with him, finding the McLaren too wide: by 1.8 cm in Der Spiegel’s figure, by about three-eighths of an inch as Hunt remembered it. The win went to Lauda, until the FIA Court of Appeal, sitting on 5 July, reversed the decision, restored Hunt’s win and fined McLaren and Ligier US$3,000 each.

Zolder and Monaco

At Zolder on 16 May some 70 road-going Ferraris, on a club rally, arrived behind the grandstands in time to see Lauda and Regazzoni on the front row. Lauda had taken pole on the Saturday with a new engine; he led from the green light to the flag, set the fastest lap and beat Regazzoni by 3.46 seconds. Pole, win, fastest lap and every lap led: in F1DB’s count it was the only race of his career in which he did all four. Two laps more, Jenkinson calculated, and he would have lapped Jody Scheckter as well.

A fortnight later he won at Monaco from pole by 11.13 seconds from Scheckter, having lapped everyone but Scheckter and Depailler. At the presentation he kissed the hand of Princess Grace as he took the cup, for the second year running. At Anderstorp on 13 June the six-wheeled Tyrrells finished 1st and 2nd, and Lauda, driving as hard as he could, was 3rd.

At Paul Ricard on 4 July he started 2nd, led by a second a lap and set the fastest lap on lap 4, before his flat-12 broke on lap 8; Regazzoni’s failed the same way. In practice he had tried a spare 312T2 with de Dion rear suspension and did not like it. With Hunt’s Jarama win restored the next day, the championship stood at 52 points to 26.

Brands Hatch, 18 July

He took pole for the British Grand Prix and chose the left of the grid, which the organisers had drawn the wrong way round; another grid was published on the morning of the race. Away from the grid Regazzoni shot past Hunt, the two Ferraris collided going into Paddock Bend, and one of Lauda’s wheels ripped into the side of Regazzoni’s car. Regazzoni spun, Hunt’s McLaren rode over the Ferrari’s wheels and was thrown into the air, and the race was stopped.

It was nearly half an hour before the stewards announced that cars which had not completed the first lap could not restart, and a crowd that Jenkinson put at 77,000 answered with boos, whistles and a slow handclap; Motor Sport later wrote of the threat from bottle-throwing spectators who thought Hunt would not be allowed to start. While the argument went on, McLaren repaired Hunt’s race car, and he took the restart in it.

Lauda led the restart and set the fastest lap. Then his gear-change grew stiff and slow and began to wear him out, and on lap 45 Hunt went by and away. Lauda was 2nd on the road, nearly a minute behind. Ferrari, Tyrrell and Fittipaldi protested that Hunt should not have restarted; the stewards ruled that his car had still been moving forward when the first race was stopped, and threw the protests out. While they deliberated, those who stayed were entertained by Chris Barber and his Jazz Band.

Ferrari appealed, to the Royal Automobile Club and then to the FIA, and in late September (the exact day is given differently) the FIA Court of Appeal disqualified Hunt and gave the race to Lauda: his fifth win of the year, by 16.18 seconds from Scheckter. Motor Sport refused to accept it: as far as the magazine was concerned, Hunt had won. In Italy, after the race, the press had attacked what it called a British mafia in Formula One, and named Bernie Ecclestone its father. By the autumn Der Spiegel could describe a season in which Ferrari and McLaren had spied on each other and intrigued even between races.

1 August, and 42 days

Lauda went to the German Grand Prix as champion and as the drivers’ leading voice on safety, having argued that the Nürburgring Nordschleife was too dangerous for modern Formula One cars and that the race should move to Hockenheim. He still set the pace in practice and started 2nd, to Hunt’s pole. On the second lap, at the fast left-hand kink after the Adenau bridge, before Bergwerk, his Ferrari crashed and caught fire. Drivers who had stopped, helped by a marshal, got him out of the car, and Arturo Merzario released his harness. He was given the last rites. The Nürburgring, 1 August 1976 tells the day, and the days after it, in its own chapter.

He had 58 points that evening, and Hunt, who won the restarted race, 44. Enzo Ferrari announced that his team would withdraw for the rest of the season; grandprix.com gives the reinstatement of Hunt’s win at Jarama as the reason. He was also, Jenkinson wrote, incensed to hear the crash blamed on a broken suspension link. Ferrari missed the Austrian Grand Prix on 15 August, which John Watson won, and came back at Zandvoort a fortnight later with Regazzoni alone; Hunt won there. Carlos Reutemann bought himself out of his contract with Brabham and was confirmed as Lauda’s team-⁠mate for 1977, and Regazzoni was let go.

On 12 September, 42 days after the crash, Lauda raced again, in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He started 5th and was 4th at the finish, 0.1 seconds in front of Scheckter, while Ronnie Peterson won, Reutemann drove a third Ferrari, and Hunt, sent to the back of the grid when McLaren’s Saturday times were struck out over the octane of its fuel, spun off. Monza and Fuji, 1976 tells that weekend and the last race of the year.

The title lost by a point

Once the Court of Appeal had taken Brands Hatch from Hunt, Lauda led by 64 points to 47 with three races left. Hunt won two of them. Lauda’s own explanation, given in 1998, was that the development of the 312T2 had been allowed to drift while he was in hospital, as McLaren kept working on the M23. At Mosport on 3 October he started 6th and ran 5th from lap 18; on lap 58 the car began to weave, and Henry wrote that Lauda, cautious of any fault in the chassis after a German Grand Prix accident still unexplained, eased right off. He was 8th. Der Spiegel reported that he had refused to start; he had not. The same magazine noted that while Hunt came to Mosport two weeks early to learn the bumpy track, Lauda first sat the examination for his pilot’s licence.

At Watkins Glen the two men had adjoining hotel rooms; what passed between them on race morning is in Lauda and Hunt. Lauda was unhappy with the handling, and Henry saw him in heated discussion with Mauro Forghieri and the team manager, Daniele Audetto, about the lack of testing. He started 5th and finished 3rd behind Hunt and Scheckter, and Ferrari made sure of the constructors’ championship. With one race left he led by 3 points, 68 to 65.

The last race was run at Fuji, on 24 October, in a downpour. At the end of the second lap Lauda drove into the pits and got out of the car. Hunt took 3rd place, and the title by 69 points to 68.

Away from the circuits, he married Marlene Knaus that year.

The two protests had moved 9 points each, and in opposite directions. Had the stewards’ decisions at Jarama and at Brands Hatch both stood, the totals would have been the same, 69 to 68; the Jarama exclusion alone, upheld, would have made Lauda champion. It is arithmetic, not a grievance. He came back in 1977 to win the title again.