Daily James Hunt

There were concerns about maintaining order, so James, Clay and Jacques did take the re-start, with James in his original car (McLaren prepped the spare car and repaired James at the same time). Ferrari and Ligier decided to just re-start, and see if their results would be allowed to stand. After almost an hour, the race re-started.

(It helped that the original call to stop the race was now being questioned because the track was cleared very quickly).

Niki had a great start again, and held his lead for 45 laps until he had a car issue, when James overtook for the lead. He said later that he was sorry Niki didn't fight harder, but that Niki was in some ways the more professional driver. In James's view, Niki had assessed that he was under no threat from behind and driving safely to finish with six guaranteed points (Niki was criticised for this a lot in his career, especially in his last title-winning season against Prost in 1984. James at least managed to make it sound like a compliment, or at least a humblebrag about his own never-stop-pushing ethos).

The aftermath

In the end, James took an unstressful win, with Niki second and Jody Scheckter third. Ferrari, Tyrrell and Fittipaldi (team, not driver) appealed the result, but for now, the championship standings were 58 points to Niki, with James in second on 35. He gave this memorable interview after the race.

There was a three-hour meeting on the day, and the result stood. James wrote to Autosport magazine to thank the fans.

Interestingly, it is possible or likely that James's second wife, Sarah Lomax, was in the crowd that day. She later recounted going to a British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, deciding to support Hunt because he was good-looking, while the boys she was with supported Divina Galica because she was a woman. Sarah believed she was 16, which would have been 1974, but Divina didn't race in a British Grand Prix until 1976. Sarah took home a sticker that said 'I LOVE JAMES HUNT' and stuck it in her chequebook, then forgot James Hunt existed until she met him in Spain after he retired from racing. She found the sticker later and remembered he had technically been her schoolgirl crush.

She may have been wrong about her age, the identity of the female racer, or just not remembered the chaos and protests (which she didn't mention), but it also may have been a different year. There's no way to be sure (especially now that Sarah has died) but it was a huge day in James's career and possibly also in his future marriage.

James's first experience of commentary was at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1980. His leg was in plaster after a skiing accident, and he famously, according to Murray, arrived

"...in his frayed denim shorts, his shoeless feet, his right leg in a cast from ankle to crutch, and clasping a litre of rosé. I won’t go so far as to say he was drunk but he was, well, full.

He then proceeds to put his plaster cast in my lap and get stuck into the rosé. God knows why, but our producer actually sent out for a second litre bottle halfway through the race. It all made for a pretty difficult situation. But James had the knack of surviving incidents like that."

From that start, it was hard to believe they would become so iconic.

The BBC only gave them one mic, so they couldn't talk over each other. This meant a *lot* of arguments and fights over it. From time to time, both James and Murray would separately approach their boss, Jonathan Martin, to complain the other one was hogging the mic. Jonathan would promise to talk to the alleged hog, would do nothing, and then the complainant would come and thank him and say the problem had got much better. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Murray Walker, Mike Doodson and James Hunt

In a radio interview, Murray told this story:

"I was standing up and James was sitting down and I was giving it plenty.

James saw the old boy had been talking long enough and he gave the microphone wire a terrific tug. The microphone flew out of my hands and into his.

I had my fists back to give him a fourpenny one because I was absolutely incandescent with rage."

Luckily, the producer caught Murray's attention and gestured at him not to hit James, and he didn't.

Murray also points out in a lot of interviews about James that they belonged to different generations. Murray was born in 1923 and James in 1947; they literally could have been father and son.

Murray was known for being high-energy, wild and excitable. James, in his commentary career, was much more chill. Murray spent the entire weekend roaming the paddock for information; James sat in the Marlboro motorhome and waited for gossip to come to him. Murray felt that as a non-racing driver, he had no right to criticise drivers in his commentating. James criticised everyone - so much so that he had to apologise to drivers on air from time to time. I love one clip of James apologising to Senna with Murray beside him like a dad bringing his son to say sorry for breaking a window. James does not consider this interaction to require a shirt.

(I can't find a non-Meta link for it, but if you google "James hunt Senna apology" and select video results, it should be the second one)

Some of James and Murray's best moments together:

James swearing

"Flames!!"

James teaching Murray to drive an F1 car

There is a long video on YouTube (well, 12 minutes plus) of Murray and James discussing the 1992 season before it began. Sadly this would be the last season James would witness in its entirety. I think it's worth a look because in my opinion, it shows James at his best. At this point in his life he was in a committed and happy relationship with Helen Dyson, he was an involved father with his sons, he wasn't misusing alcohol (he does have a glass of wine in this video, but he wasn't drinking to excess in his final years) and he had fully settled into a respected role as an expert and commentator. It also shows the deep mutual respect and liking that had grown between James and Murray.

As James died while their partnership was ongoing, he isn't on record reflecting or speaking about it much, so we don't really know firsthand how he felt about Murray. It is fair to guess that his feelings were extremely warm, since Murray was asked to speak at James's memorial service. It feels like the close people planning the service would have only invited people to speak who were important to James.

Murray participated in a documentary about James, called The Real James Hunt, which has a lot of flaws. The documentary used Murray's quote about his impression of James during his racing days (not good) and didn't use the rest of the interview. Murray complained about this publicly, saying it misrepresented his opinion of James by only featuring his impression from before he and James worked together. He also felt the documentary downplayed James's commentary career. I wrote about that documentary here, before I knew anything about Murray's feelings on it, and my impressions at the time are pretty much the same as Murray's. Murray was on good terms with James's sons until his own death, so luckily it's fair to assume no one close to James was upset by what Murray said on camera.