RUSH: Howard's movie does history a service

Formula One compelling viewing on the big screen
Irrespective of whether it’s a box-office hit, the new movie Rush could go a long way to righting a wrong and ensuring Niki Lauda’s proper place in history.

To those unaware of it yet, Rush is a story of the rivalry between Formula One stars James Hunt and Niki Lauda in the 1970s, especially in 1976.

That was the year in which Lauda had an horrendous fiery crash in a Ferrari at Germany’s Nurburgring and was given the last rites, yet came back to race six weeks later. Lauda then withdrew from the season-ending grand prix, deeming the torrential conditions too dangerous. This allowed Hunt to take the world title by one point.

Rush, directed by two-time Academy Award winner Ron Howard and with Australian Chris Hemsworth playing Hunt, is an excellent couple of hours on the big screen, even if the F1 purists will note that it is not always entirely accurate.

It is a tale of opposites – the English playboy, the handsome and carefree (except when vomiting nervously before races) Hunt and the ugly, clinical, ultra-professional Austrian Lauda, played by Spanish-born German Daniel Bruhl (who it must be said is nowhere near as ugly in real life).

High-living Hunt died 20 years ago after sharing the F1 commentary box with Murray Walker beyond his racing days.

Lauda’s torched lungs had to be vacuumed as he lay in hospital a month after his crash, he has carried terrible facial scars from the burns since and he lost an ear.

In his very direct Germanic manner he told recently of a woman asking him why he never had even more surgery to replace the ear.

“Where the f… do I find an ear?” replied Lauda, who after his retirement created and ran a major world airline for some years and these days is the chairman of the greatly-improved Mercedes F1 team.

While Hunt oozed charisma and charm, Lauda always has been short on social skills and Rush is a reflection of how apt his nickname The Rat has been.

It’s an odd experience sitting in a darkened theatre watching this movie knowing that hardly anyone else in the audience, at least at this screening, was born at the time in which it is set. Yet, while Hunt undeniably won the 1976 world championship, Rush is a reminder to those of your correspondent’s vintage, and a lesson to those younger, in just what a great F1 driver Lauda was.

The Austrian, along with Luca Cordero di Montezemolo (now chairman of Ferrari) and designer Mauro Forghieri, revived F1’s oldest and greatest team in the mid-1970s from a lower ebb than Michael Schumacher, Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Co two decades later.

Lauda originally had bought his way into F1 with borrowed money after his wealthy father refused to support his racing career. He had a wonderful feel for setting up racing cars and was relentless in his testing of them at Ferrari’s private test track, Fiorano.

Niki won the 1975 world title and was on the way to a second in ’76 until the Nurburgring crash in another race he felt (like the deciding Japanese GP after his comeback) should never have been started, so bad were the conditions.

It was a miracle that Lauda returned to the track at all, let alone so soon, and – rather than it be seen as waving a white flag of surrender – an act of the courage of his convictions that he pulled out at Mt Fuji after just one lap when he might have clinched back-to-back championships.

He only did that one lap so that Ferrari could collect its starting money.

The very next season Lauda duly won his second title with a point score almost double that of fifth-placed Hunt.

Lauda fell out with Ferrari, raced for the Brabham team then owned by Bernie Ecclestone, retired for two years, then came back with McLaren – which had been Hunt’s team in ’76 – and won a third title in ’84.

As undeniable as it is that Hunt became a world champion, to this correspondent it always has seemed that morally Lauda was the victor in that ’76 season - and thus a four-time world champ.

Indeed, history has overlooked how great Lauda was -- perhaps because he was followed so quickly by Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, then Michael Schumacher. And now F1 has Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton.

Lauda stands tall among that company. Of today’s crop Alonso and Vettel may bear comparison with him, but not Raikkonen and Hamilton.

While Rush is essentially the story of a title Lauda lost, it also is a partial insight into what a superman he was in his day.

Hunt has his place in history too, yet in a sense he was a one-year wonder – and then largely because of Lauda’s misfortune and principles.

Rush perhaps overstates the rivalry between the pair. Certainly it was not at the level of that between Senna and Prost years later.

Comparisons are already being drawn with the Senna movie of a couple of years ago. Emotive as that was, the documentary it was by nature more of a chronology of the Brazilian’s career.

Rush is far more entertaining, especially to the uninitiated.