Free Rush to Glory: FORMULA 1 Racing's Greatest Rivalry by Tom Rubython Page A

was all sweetness and light. In fact, Hunt seemed to have completely forgotten all the acrimony that had gone on over the previous three days: “Fortunately we got it all together, and I think everyone—particularly Teddy, John (Hogan), and me—breathed a huge sigh of relief.”
    Alastair Caldwell had also completely changed his tune and now declared how glad he was to have Hunt in the team. He had never imagined that Hunt would be faster than Jochen Mass, and when it happened, he was genuinely stunned. Caldwell famously said, “This unknown bloke came in and blew Mass away. It doesn’t matter if the guy has got number one written on his forehead or tattooed over his whole body, if he’s second fastest, he’s number two—period.”
    The same situation, albeit in an entirely different manner, was manifesting itself in the Ferrari garage. Niki Lauda had carried on where he had left off, and Daniele Audetto had won his first race as Ferrari team manager. It seemed both of them could walk on water, and they temporarily forgot their differences.
    But there was one crucial difference between the McLaren and Ferrari teams as they both packed up to leave for home: While Caldwell, Mayer, and Hunt had genuinely put their differences aside and harbored no rancor, Lauda and Audetto’s rapprochement was only temporary. Audetto was seething that Regazzoni had not won, and Lauda told friends he believed Audetto was a pompous clown.
    In the end, it was the politics that would decide the outcome of the 1976 Formula One world championship—not the drivers, nor the cars, nor the teams.

CHAPTER 4
    Niki’s Women Problems
    Marlene Replaces Mariella
    Summer 1975
    S ometime in the middle of 1975, Niki Lauda fell out of love with his girlfriend of eight years, Mariella von Reininghaus. The sudden realization that, after all, he would not eventually marry Mariella was the equivalent to a volcanic eruption in his emotions.
    As romantic as the next man but devoid of many of the emotions of normal human beings, Lauda had always struggled with his love life. He was a man whose metaphysical makeup evolved at different, inconsistent speeds over long and undefined periods of his life—sometimes suddenly changing without warning.
    Emotionally he lacked consistency of purpose, which often led him into sudden decisions and diversions that defied logical analysis. It was a trait that followed him throughout his life and at times gave him that special edge that was often the difference between success and failure. When the traits were deployed well, they worked phenomenally well. But when not deployed well, they had the inevitable consequences, which often took years to play out due to the complexity of the thoughts behind them.
    To understand Niki Lauda, it was necessary to know him and to have observed him over a lifetime, so unusual was his emotional makeup. In time, the giants of motor racing, including people such as Enzo Ferrari, Bernie Ecclestone, and Ron Dennis were to run up against that curious concoction of emotions and emerge second best.
    In contrast, James Hunt was a simple man: easy to understand, easy to fathom, and therefore easy to predict. But that could never be said of Niki Lauda.
    The most obvious discrepancy in Lauda’s character was inconsistency. Lauda very often displayed the most inconsistent urges that could possibly be present in a human being. He would strongly criticize and condemn others, sometimes publicly but often in private, and then immediately display the same foibles and failures himself.
    Suffice to say that Lauda’s emotional and intellectual constitution was not the standard off-the-shelf variety. And that all manifested itself in the summer of 1975, when he switched off his fiancée of eight years and flicked to another woman, whom he had met at a party.
    The Lauda/von Reininghaus relationship was almost an institution within Formula One’s tight-knit community. Outside the sport they were one of