ICONS (Part 3) - James Hunt: Work Hard, Play Hard
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” goes the expression, which may date all the way back to the 1600s. Racing driver James Hunt was anything but a dull boy. But, despite the saying, those at the top of their game are often vilified for having a little fun.
The second their performance slips, observers rush to blame it on how they spend their time off the court, field or track. Imagine their frustration when Hunt became Formula One World Champion before the age of thirty...
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Immortalised in the 2013 film Rush, portrayed by superstar Chris Hemsworth, Hunt is remembered for an aggressive driving style that earned him the nickname Hunt the Shunt. But he is also remembered just as much for his off-track shenanigans and swagger.
After all, this is a man who donned driving suits with different patches that read “Sex: Breakfast of Champions” and “Sex is a high-performance thing.” His official website, maintained by his estate, still has t-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Race Hard, Party Hard” and “The Shunt”.
At the peak of his career, he said:
“I refused to be shoved around. If that meant calling a spade a spade and not toadying to middle-class ego-massaging and being dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, so what?...Even though it made a lot of people dislike me intensely, I said to myself: ‘Stuff it. I’ll do it my way.’”
Clearly, as much as “his way” might have been criticised, it worked for Hunt: a year after his first grand prix victory (in 1975), he would become the World Champion of Formula One.
It’s incredibly rare for public figures to balance elite athleticism with being a party animal – Usain Bolt, Dennis Rodman and Joe Montana all spring to mind – and there’s a great photograph of Hunt on the podium with a cigarette in one hand and a magnum of champagne in the other that encapsulates the way he struck that balance so perfectly.
All rights to this image belong to the original photographer.
Despite all the bravado and perceived reckless behaviour, Hunt remains a bona fide racing legend. Marlboro’s John Hogan, instrumental in Formula One sponsorship in the ‘70s, said that Hunt was “the only driver I’ve ever seen who had the vaguest idea about what it actually takes to be a racing driver.”
In 2014, Hunt was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. Maybe Rush, released the previous year, was just the reminder people needed that it was not Lauda (inducted in 1993) but Hunt who had triumphed in that epic 1976 showdown.
It’s telling that, after Hunt’s death, Lauda was quoted as saying “when I heard he’d died aged 45 of a heart attack I wasn’t surprised, I was just sad.” There’s nothing glamorous about an early death, but there’s something special about a ton of excitement squeezed into a short life.
None of us knows how much time we’re going to get, which is why it’s so important to live life boldly. Hunt’s pledge to “do it my way” is something we’ve always admired and tried to emulate.