Niki Lauda and James Hunt were friendly rivals who battled for 1976 championship. Photo / Supplied
sup1308didier.JPG Caption photo 2: Didier Pironi and Gilles Villeneuve were bitter teammates and rivals at Ferrari in 1982.
Don Kennedy on Formula One
Red Bull designer Adrian Newey once said: "I never particularly like the 'war' analogy but it is a decent analogy, and so in the war analogy you look at every aspect you can to improve your competitive position." He adds that it is "natural we'll equally be taking a careful eye on what Mercedes are doing and see if we can see anything they are doing that we might be able to have a pop at. It's natural."
F1 is on a three-week break, so Red Bull will have time to analyse what's happening at Mercedes. But there is little doubt that, as this season has unfolded over the 12 races so far, war has broken out between title challenger Max Verstappen and world champion Lewis Hamilton, between Red Bull and Mercedes, and between the team bosses, Christian Horner and Toto Wolff
Newey need only look at the damage caused to the Red Bulls of both Verstappen and Sergio Perez in the last two grand prix to see how his team has gone from leading both the driver's and constructors' championships, to falling behind in both, to see where it has all gone wrong.
At Silverstone, Perez had a spin in sprint qualifying that meant he started from pitlane for the race, and finished 16th. In a now well-documented first-lap race incident, Verstappen was punted off at Copse Corner by Hamilton, who was given a 10-second penalty for causing a collision, but still won the race and celebrated his victory with gusto with his Mercedes team, as Verstappen watched on TV from the hospital where he was sent for a check-up.
In the next race in Hungary, Valtteri Bottas in the other Mercedes missed his braking point at the first corner, hitting Lando Norris in the McLaren, who then ricocheted into Verstappen, while Bottas cleaned Perez up for good measure.
Hamilton went on to finish second in the race after Sebastian Vettel was disqualified for a fuel irregularity, while the best Verstappen could do was finish 10th, since promoted to 9th with Vettel's DQ. The race was won by Esteban Ocon in the Alpine, his maiden GP victory, but the real news was Hamilton leaving Hungary with an eight-point lead over Verstappen, while Red Bull now trails Mercedes by 10 points n the Constructors' title fight.
F1 fans have waited five years for genuine driver rivalry, the last one being between Hamilton and his teammate Nico Rosberg in 2016. After losing the title to Hamilton in 2014 and 2015, Rosberg defied team orders and personally fell out with his former friend, Hamilton, to become world champion. But it took so much out of Rosberg mentally, that he announced his retirement from F1 just five days after being crowned champion.
Bottas then joined Mercedes but, in his five seasons with the team, has never seriously threatened Hamilton. Instead, it was left to Vettel when driving for Ferrari, and Verstappen, to try to unseat Hamilton. But, until this year, no other team has been able to challenge Mercedes, and now that we have a genuine rivalry between two teams, it has become acrimonious and political.
The history of F1 is littered with driver rivalries, starting with Juan Manual Fangio and Sir Stirling Moss between 1955 and 1959. Fangio won five titles while Moss failed to win one, despite winning 16 grand prix. There was mutual respect between the two and the contest never boiled over to anything even mildly controversial.
The next great rivalry was Jim Clark and Graham Hill who eventually became Lotus teammates. They had a good friendship but were opposites in terms of personality. Hill was very social and had a dry sense of humour, whereas Clark was basically shy and didn't seek the limelight. Hill won the championship with BRM in 1962, and Clark won with Lotus in 1963 and 1965. Hill then joined Clark at Lotus in 1967. For once the bad luck in terms of mechanical problems that meant Clark either won a race or retired from it, plagued Hill, who went winless while Clark won four times. But Denny Hulme driving a Brabham, beat Clark to the title, despite winning just two races.
In 1968, tragedy struck. Clark won the season opener in South Africa, his 25th GP victory, but it would be his last as he would be killed in a wet Formula 2 race at Hockenheim, aquaplaning into the trees. New Zealand driver Chris Amon questioned at the time that, if Clark could be killed, what hope did the rest of them have?
Hill went on to win the 1968 championship for Lotus in what was a bittersweet situation.
If the Clark-Hill rivalry was respectful, the 1976 title battle between James Hunt driving a McLaren, and Niki Lauda in the Ferrari, was even more so and was documented in a 2013 Hollywood movie called Rush. The two adversaries were chalk and cheese in terms of personalities, yet became close friends off track, despite an intense battle for the championship on it.
Lauda had been easily leading the championship when he suffered life-threatening burns in a fiery crash at the Nurburgring. Despite losing most of his hair and being scarred for life, to the extent he always wore a cap thereafter, Lauda was back racing in six weeks. He was able to score enough points to ensure the battle went down the wire to the last race in Japan, as he led Hunt by three points.
The race was very wet and Lauda elected not to finish the race, but Hunt still had to finish third, which he did, to win the title. Hunt, who became an F1 commentator alongside the late Murray Walker, died of a heart attack in 1973 aged 45. In a voiceover for the movie, Lauda said Hunt was "among the very few I liked, and even fewer I respect."
By contrast, the battle between Ferrari teammates Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi in 1982 was full of acrimony, and indirectly is widely believed to be the reason Villeneuve would die in practice at Zolder, Belgium, in 1982. Pironi had defied team orders to "hold position" in the previous San Marino GP in Imola, by overtaking Villeneuve on the last lap.
"Ever since I've been at Ferrari, when you get a 'slow' sign it means 'hold position'. Second is one thing, but second because he steals it, that's something else," Villeneuve told the media, who considered Pironi had betrayed him. Two weeks later at Zolder in trying to beat Pironi's best time, Villeneuve collided with a dawdling March driven by Jochen Mass. The Ferrari was launched over Mass's rear wheel and crashed into a gravel trap. Villeneuve was thrown from his car but died from his injuries a few hours later.
He had not spoken to Pironi since Imola. The latter would have a crash similar to Villeneuve's, at Hockenheim for the German GP, colliding with Alain Prost's McLaren in practice, shattering his legs. He would never drive a racecar again, but took up powerboat racing and, in 1987, he was killed after flipping over off the Isle of Wight.
Lauda and Prost became McLaren teammates in 1984, with the former seeking a third world championship, and the latter his first. They would finish just half a point apart, in Lauda's favour. Prost's victory in the rain-shortened Monaco GP meant he was given only half points (4.5 instead of 9) as the race hadn't gone past the 75 per cent point need to award full points, so that loss of points cost Prost the title.
"Forget it as quickly as you can," Lauda advised Prost. "Next year the championship will be yours."
And it was, with Prost beating Michele Alboretto by 20 points, while Lauda finished 10th, and retired from F1. Prost was joined at McLaren in 1986 by Keke Rosberg, the father of Nico, and Prost was champion again. But only just, as the Williams pairing of Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell were ahead of Prost on points heading to the decider in Adelaide. Prost, nicknamed the 'Professor', had stopped for fresh tyres but Mansell didn't, and he had a tyre explode down Brabham straight, and his title bid was over. Williams then pitted Piquet in case he too had a tyre explode, and Prost took the race win and the championship.
As a two-time champion, Piquet believed he had the number-one status in the Williams team, but Mansell had other ideas. The two disliked one another. They were, as F1journalist Alan Henry put it, "as oil and water".
In a London press conference before the 1987 British GP at Silverstone, Piquet remarked: "I suppose you could say that while I've won two world championships, Nigel has only managed to lose one."
Needling comments like that are what can fire up a championship battle. In 1988 McLaren boss Ron Dennis signed up Ayrton Senna to joint Prost, partly because the latter had suggested it. It would turn out to be the start of three seasons of incredibly intense and at times, bitter racing between two of the greatest drivers ever.
As we will examine next week in part two of driver rivalries, actions usually speak louder than words and can define a championship.