Stream On: Formula One racing’s best frenemies, in ‘Rush’
Ron Howard’s 2013 film is an emotional powerhouse about a Formula One racing rivalry and a mostly true story.
True auto-racing fans never want to see crashes—that they do is an unfortunate characterization made by cynics. But crashes happen, and they make history, and racing stories of course are full of them. The 1976 Formula One World Championship hinged on a horrific crash, but in Ron Howard’s 2013 film, two drivers found their humanity because of it, too.
/Amazon /Streaming /🍅89%🍿88% /Trailer /2013 /R
“The closer to death, the more alive you feel.” (James Hunt)
Neither Englishman James Hunt nor Austrian Niki Lauda was an especially likeable character; Hunt’s father was a stockbroker and his mother was in the peerage, but James wanted to race automobiles. Hunt was hedonistic and impulsive; on the track he was known as “Hunt the Shunt” (“shunt” being motorsport slang for “crash”), but that didn’t lower his considerable self-opinion.
Niki Lauda was also born to money, and he, too, disappointed his parents by going into auto-racing. But Niki was no hedonist; in Rush, which was written by Peter Morgan (The Crown), he’s portrayed as an archetypal arrogant germanic type who speaks his mind to the point of rudeness and beyond.
We meet them both at a Formula Three race track. Formula Three is the third tier of open-wheel formula auto-racing (“formula” refers to the rules governing the cars’ construction) and a “feeder” formula for drivers attempting to rise to Formula One, the richest, most intense, most difficult, most political, and most international racing championship of any kind in the world.
Hunt was driving for the Hesketh Racing Team, essentially the hobby of Lord Hesketh, which entered various Formula Three events around Europe in the ’seventies, aiming simply to have as much fun as possible. Due partly to Hesketh driver Anthony “Bubbles” Horsley's lack of experience, there were few results—until James Hunt joined.
Niki Lauda raced here and there before taking out a personal bank loan to buy his way onto the BRM (British Racing Motors) Formula One team, where he impressed Enzo Ferrari, who gave him a spot on his team. He was a methodical but very quick driver; also somehow he knew how to set up a car for peak performance better than many professional mechanics.
What motorsport fans know going into Rush—and isn’t a spoiler, as it’s featured in the trailer—is that in 1976, as World Champion, Lauda crashed his car at the German Grand Prix and nearly died: he was trapped in his burning car for minutes and suffered third-degree burns to his face and hands (his helmet had flown off)—and inhaled hot gases that damaged his lungs and blood. Although Lauda was conscious and able to stand immediately after the accident, he later lapsed into a coma. In the hospital he was given the last rites, but he survived (Lauda later said of this, “I got so upset that I put more effort into not dying because of this incident with the Priest”)—and he missed only two races, returning in time for the Italian Grand Prix, against doctors’ orders, and, by his own admission, “petrified.”
Lauda had suffered extensive scarring from the burns to his head, losing most of his right ear as well as the hair on the right side of his head, his eyebrows, and his eyelids. He chose to limit reconstructive surgery to replacing the eyelids and restoring their functionality. After the accident he always wore a cap to cover the scars on his head. Typically, he arranged for sponsors to use the cap for advertising.
In Lauda's absence, James Hunt mounted a late charge to reduce Lauda's lead in the World Championship standings. Following wins in the Canadian and United States Grands Prix, Hunt stood only three points behind Lauda before the final race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix, and here is where the meat of the story takes place: can the supremely disciplined but badly injured Lauda retain the world championship? Can party boy Hunt the Shunt take it away from him?
In Rush, Chris Hemsworth portrays Hunt, and Daniel Brühl is Lauda—Brühl was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Supporting Actor. When he saw the film, Niki Lauda said, “…I was impressed. There was no Hollywood changes or things changed a little bit Hollywood-like. It is very accurate. And this really surprised me very positively.”
Sources include BBC, History vs. Hollywood, and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED).
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.