peterwindsor.com

…chance doesn't exist; there's always a cause and a reason for everything – Elahi

Archive for the tag “James Hunt”

Paying drivers: nothing new

You can’t have a boring conversation with Niki Lauda: his brain is too sharp for that, his perspectives too logical. It’s always a case, indeed, of “so much to say; so little time…” I chatted to him recently about having to borrow money from a bank in order to secure an F1 drive; the best and worst F1 cars he ever drove; sleeping on the floor of James Hunt’s apartment; the aftermath of “Rush”; the comparisons between the airline and F1 industries, taking holidays (or not!); and his sort of attention to detail. (And in case you’re wondering what Novomatic is all about on this year’s Lauda cap it is this: it’s an Austrian company and it’s one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of…yes…slot machines.) Here is my chat with Niki (recorded in a Bahrain hotel) in three parts:

Images: LAT Photographic and Peter Windsor Collection

“There were plenty of things you could do back then…”

1976 Canadian Grand Prix.Alastair Caldwell (right, with headset, talking to James Hunt at Mosport, in 1976) is our guest this week on The Racer’s Edge – which means that at last we can sit him down and talk to him in outrageous detail about those early days at McLaren, about Bruce winning his first race in a car bearing his own name – and about the tricks they used to play back in 1976, when James Hunt fought Niki Lauda all the way to the Drivers’ World Championship.  We also catch up with Charlie Kimball, the son of the former McLaren and Ferrari Design Engineer, Gordon Kimball.  Last Sunday, Charlie won his first IndyCar race (with Chip Ganassi Racing) Images: LAT Photographic; TRE Production: Knockout TV in association with F1 Racing

Hunt vs Lauda

As the Hunt vs Lauda documentary has now been withdrawn from YouTube we are sadly unable to show it on these pages.  It is available, though, on the BBC iPlayer and it  will be screened again on BBC2 in the UK in near future.  We will publish dates of those screenings via Twitter @peterdwindsor.  Richard Wiseman, the archivist responsible for the video sourcing of the documentary, will also be our guest on The Racer’s Edge on August 22.

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