PAGE 24 AUTOWEEK SEPTEMBER 4, 1976

Hunt aets Fifth Win

Carlos Reutemann, here leading Emerson Fittipaldi's star-crossed Copersucar, is rumored to be next year's
Ferrari number tWo. Neither of these cars finished.
Continued From Preceding Page
began to be obvious to him that it was just
a matter of time before Hunt made some
kind of mistake that would let him
through: so he settled in close behind to
await the closing stage of the race. There
was still half of the distance yet to go,
plenty of time to bide.
Then at the end of 47 laps it was his own
car that gave up the struggle, a gearb,ox
bearing breaking up, and Watson
suddenly braked sharply by the pits and
parked just beyond.
Now Hunt's cushion was dramatically
puffed up from 10ths of seconds to whole
seconds, more than seven to where
Regazzoni had slipped by Peterson for
second place. Ronnie was still separating
Regga from Andretti at that point, but not
for long; his oil pressure dropping,
Superswede finally came into the pits
before losing the whole engine. That let
Andretti resume his pursuit of Regga,
had he closed up to within a second. At the
same time Regga began gaining on Hunt,
until with 10 laps to go in the race James'
advantage was shunken to four seconds.
Smaller and smaller it got, harder and
harder drove the pursuit, and with three
laps left the Ferrari was within two
seconds of the McLaren while the Lotus
was 1.5 seconds behind that. No way to
make:betsabout this kind of race, nothing
to do but hold your breath until it's over.
As they started the next-to-last lap Hunt
had 1.2 seconds and Reggahad 1.B; as they
hurtled into the final lap the gaps were 0.9
and 1.B. But nobody threw
in those final 2.5 miles, James lasted to
the checkered flag, and won his fifth GP of
the season by 0.92 seconds. Regazzoni
was 1.17 ahead of Andretti. It was
fabulous-the best race of this season and
one of the best for several seasons past.
Just five seconds back was Pryce,
bringing the obviously excellent DNB
Shadow home fourth in its debut event,
while the six-wheeler Elf Tyrrells of
Scheckter andDepailler sandwiched the
March of Brambilla, who had behaved
himself with circumspection this
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James Hunt and John Watson (28) fought for the lead until Watson went out.
weekend and thus managed to score &.
point.
There were just 12 cars runing out of the
26 starters; among them in ninth place
was an unhappy Jochen Mass struggling
to herd the new M26 McLaren through its
debut run despite very bad handling. Last
runner was his countryman Rolf
Stommelen, doing his second GP of the
year in the Hesketh normally driven by
Edwards-whose wrist, damaged by
hitting Lauda's crashed car at the
Nurburgring, was still unservicable.
Saddest of the 14 retirements was Jacky
Ickx, who came in afterward on the end of
a rope-but the crowd in the grandstand
applauded him hugely. From his 11th
starting place he'd pulled the Ensign up
as high as sixth, and was doing the same
lap times as the winner at a distance of
exactly 5.0 seconds behind fifth-place
Scheckter and closing, when the Ensign
"just stopped". Something electrical had
gone wrong.
But not before something had gone
electrically rigbt with Jacques B. Ickx.
Jean-Pierre Jarier (17) took the Shadow DN5 to 10th; the new DN8 shown on page 22 looks like a much better
car.
Lauda Back On His Feet,
May Drive At Mosport
Continued From Preceding Page
Ferrari's team manager was on the phone
to the Austrian promoters trying to get
them to do just that; he used the line that
in the absence of their national hero
Lauda their "patriotism" ought naturally
to lead them to scrub the race!)
Ferrari rejoined the wars at Zandvoort,
fielding Clay Regazzoni in his choice of
two chassis-but late on the second day of
practice the Italians rushed out a little
ploy of their own. A set of "Nurburgring
tires" had been carefully hoarded, and as
these are of a slightly softer compound
than those supplied by Goodyear for
Zandvoort the other teams all cried out
"Oh, unfair! Oh, most foull" At Kyalami,
you see, they'd all agreed as gentlemen to
use only the specific tires supplied for the
specific race.
In point of fact it cannot be established
that the "trick" tires did Regga any actual
good. Driving with a couple of ribs
cracked (in a tennis match earlier in the
week) he was bog slow on Friday,
finishing up. 16th best on this circuit the
Ferraris have dominated for two years
past. Next day he leapfrogged up to fifth
overall-but his degree of improvement
was matched by several other drivers,
who had clustered around him at the back
on Friday and at the middle-front on
Saturday. The Ferrari team-and this was
verified by outside timers-said he did
identical times on both kinds of tire.
The diversion created among the rival
teams must have been gratifying, though.
If a little bit of one-upmanship brought a
smile to Ferrari's face, thus making it feel
. more like going Fl racing, it seemed a
small enough price to pay. GP racing
doesn't perhaps really need Ferrari-
Austria was a splendid race-but the
Prancing Horse definitely adds a certain
vital spice, politically as well as
technically.
Niki Lauda, meanwhile, says he's
aiming for a return by Mosport; skin
grafts have been completed from his legs
to his face, and he'll be able to start
physical training within the week. If he
can indeed manage to come back fighting
fit, and wrest his second World
Championship title from the grasp of
J ames Hunt, it will be the story of the year
and it will, at last, make the controversial
little Austrian a genuine hero.
Let's hope that the endemic
emotionalism of his team will die back
down now and that everybody will get
back to the methodical kind of steady
work that raised Ferrari to
Championship level in the first place.
Niki deserves that the team back him up,
now.-Pete L.vons