How James Hunt Bought A Formula 2 Car With No Money & Finished 3rd?

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Formula One Forever

6 min readDec 23, 2020

The extraordinary story of Formula 1 Champion James Hunt

It was the year 1972. James Hunt, the flamboyant and unconventional Formula 1 driver of all times was a battle-scarred veteran of four largely unsuccessful years in the Formula 3 wars.

He had also had enough of the F3 category, but certainly not of racing. Using the skewed logic that had seen him overcome, or at least sidestep, so many obstacles in the past, he decided to abandon Formula 3 and enter Formula racing.

But to accomplish this feat would require him finding such basic necessities as a chassis, an engine, four racing tyres, and money to pay for them. And he had none.

So James Hunt being James Hunt did what he knew best — To never give up.

He along with Chris Marshall (his team manager) devised a clever plot to prise a car away from March Engineering. They composed a letter to Max Mosley (Owner of the March Engineering F1 Team), to sue March for unfairly dismissing James from his Formula 3 contract, although the letter implied, they might perhaps be persuaded to forget the legal proceedings if a Formula 2 chassis was made available. Smart move James..!

Mosley responded with a good-humoured phone call — “Marshal, I am a lawyer, you can’t go around suing me”, but admitted they had a case. Mosley agreed to loan them an old March 712 chassis in which was installed a 1850 cc F2 engine, purchased by Lord Hesketh (owner of Hesketh Racing for which James drove) in lieu of the salary he had agreed to pay James Hunt in Formula 2.

Then, an estate agent friend was persuaded to use the funding of the running costs of the car as a tax write-off. Another friend was convinced into contributing 1000 pounds for tyres. “Hesketh Racing” was painted on the side of the car, and the hastily cobbled up team appeared at Brands Hatch in late August 1972.

The event, the Rothmans 50,000, was for a combined field of Formula 1, Formula 5000, Formula 2, and Sports Cars. As expected, Emerson Fittipaldi, the then leader of the World Championship standings, ran away with the race in his Formula 1 Lotus, but James Hunt fared much better than might have been forecast.

Though handicapped by a smaller engine (most of the Formula 2 opposition had engines closer to the 2-litre displacement limit permitted in the Formula), James Hunt was the second-fastest Formula 2 qualifier, well-judged and crash-free driving he finished 5th, behind three Formula 1 machines and a proper Formula 2 car. Equally rewarding for James and his makeshift team was the 2500 pounds prize money, which would go towards contesting as many of the remaining Formula 2 races as possible.

James was now properly ready to go racing for the remaining races of the Formula 2 season.

But a series of misfortunes would follow James in his 1972 Formula 2 season. Though he qualified for a round of the European Formula 1 Championship at the Salburgring in Austria and during the race ran with the leaders for many laps, he was forced to retire with a blown engine.

At Albi in France, James finished 5th, despite being hampered by lack of engine power on the circuit’s long straights and having to drive much of the race with no clutch.

In the next race at Hockenheim in Germany, an engine misfire cost him several places and he dropped back to eighth at the finish.

Change Of Fortunes

But the real turning point of 1972 came closer to his home, at Oulton Park, where a top field of International drivers gathered to contest the final round of the British Formula 2 series.

Leading the entry list were John Surtees and Graham Hill, both former World Champions, as well as people like Ronnie Peterson, Jody Scheckter, Tim Schenken, Roger Williamson, and Niki Lauda, all of whom had gone on to make names for themselves while James had languished in Formula 3.

At Oulton Park, this formidable opposition also had the benefit of better equipment and more professional organizations backing them up, but James qualified his elderly March 712 a sensational second, right behind Peterson in the state-of-the-art works March car. James parked his car to save his one and only engine because there was no money to buy another one.

At the end of the first racing lap, Hunt was 4th, behind Sheckter, Peterson, and Schenken, and ahead of Lauda, who was driving the second factory-entered March car.

When Scheckter dropped out with clutch failure, Schenken led briefly, then stopped with a broken fuel pump. Their retirements left Hunt in 2nd, sandwiched between the March team-mates Peterson and Lauda.

Halfway through the 40-lap race, the rear wing on Hunt’s car began to sag, causing his car to oversteer dramatically, but the Hesketh racing machine stayed glued to Peterson’s gearbox and continued to fend off Lauda’s best efforts. Hunt’s wing looked progressively more fragile, yet his persistent pursuit of Peterson became even more aggressive.

With four laps to go Hunt drew alongside Peterson on the main straight, out-braked him into the next corner, and forced the Swede to give way. Hunt’s car snaked viciously as it crossed the finish line in the first place, with Peterson and Lauda snapping at his heels, rather embarrassed at being led by a newcomer in an old March, and thus trying everything they knew to restore the balance of power.

With a couple of laps to go, the determined Peterson barged down the inside of a tight corner, forcing Hunt onto the spent rubber and dirt on the outside of the track. The reduced adhesion caused Hunt’s car to twitch wildly, then plough off into the undergrowth.

The Hesketh Racing machine was undamaged, but the 17 seconds it took Hunt to extricate himself from the weeds, put him into 3rd place, where he finished behind Peterson and Lauda.

But he got a hero’s reception from the enthralled crowd at Oulton Park and among the first to congratulate James were the works March team-mates Ronnie Peterson and Niki Lauda.

They weren’t surprised at the gritty performance of their former Formula 3 rival and both were genuinely happy to see James finally get a share of the success they felt he truly deserved.

The next year 1973 James Hunt entered Formula 1. And in just three years from having no money, no car, no acing future, he went onto become a Formula 1 World Champion in 1976

Now that’s how you buy a Formula 2 car to make your dreams come true. Well done James..!

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