The big British GP chance F1 almost missed

If Drive to Survive helped launch Formula 1 towards a new millennial audience, the 1976 season was key for a previous generation in making grand prix motor racing such a powerful part of the television landscape. There are many stories of that famous campaign, and some of the behind-the-scenes developments were as dramatic as the on-track action.

Television and film had a big role to play in the first 25 years of the F1 world championship. But this was background footage, documentary material that is of great value to content creators today but, in the absence of live coverage, it was hard to build a regular audience and to develop personalities that would encourage the audience to invest their attention.

But 50 years ago all the ingredients seemed to align, with a highly competitive championship featuring an exciting contender who brought in a new audience by living his life as much in the gossip columns as the sports pages. In 1976, James Hunt seemed to have given British television the opportunity it needed… and British television did its best to mess the whole thing up.

Even at the start of the season there was anticipation that July’s British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch would be the best yet. But before that there was a hurdle to overcome. In March, the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch included the Surtees entry with sponsorship from the contraceptive brand Durex.

The BBC, which was the contracted broadcaster, ruled that if the sponsorship remained unchanged, its coverage would be off. Nothing changed so the BBC packed up and went home. There was also the threat that if the Durex sponsorship stayed on the Surtees, the BBC coverage of the British GP would be off as well.

All this was a desperate blow to John Webb, the energetic and imaginative chief executive of Brands Hatch, whose promotion of the event had included helping to fund a gala Grand Prix Night of the Stars at The Albert Hall. The evening culminated with a voluntary trumpet solo from Hunt himself and, as a result, the whole nation, grand prix fans or not, were now focused on what was going to happen in the big race.

BBC’s fit of the vapours over Durex decals on Jones’s Surtees opened the door for ITV

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But they would have to do without live television coverage. The BBC gave peak time coverage to the Grand Prix Night of the Stars but, with the name Durex remaining on the side of the Surtees of Alan Jones, the BBC Sport cameras would not be at Brands Hatch.

Recorded, filmed coverage remained the only option, and here there was more bad news. The obvious choice would be to use the cameras of Brunswick Films who, funded by Marlboro, were present at many GPs in the 1970s. But the 1976 British GP was sponsored by John Player, so Brunswick would not be inside the gates of Brands Hatch either…

Time was running out, and there was a distinct possibility that there could be 80,000 people inside Brands Hatch but no television cameras. So urgent contact was made between Webb and John Bromley, the head of ITV Sport. 

The ingredients could hardly have been more mouthwatering. Hunt was coming off a victory at the French GP and was now 26 points behind Lauda in the world championship with eight races to go

The two men were very much alike. From this writer’s experience of working alongside Bromley at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and at World of Sport in the early 1980s, there was nothing he liked more than a challenge and an opportunity. And this was both. ITV clearly had ambitions within F1 and during the 1970s had generated a similar amount of race coverage and documentary material as the BBC.

Now the opportunity of having the Hunt-Niki Lauda British GP on World of Sport, albeit a film report, a week after the event, was irresistible.

So regular contributors Barrie Gill and Andrew Marriott were given the task of scrambling resources, a handful of cameras and a production team headed by John and Tricia Mills, who had done a bit of motorsport but would make their names about 10 years later with animation series such as The Animals of Farthing Wood. Brands Hatch gave them a different kind of story to tell.    

Hunt’s success and off-track profile inspired a growing British audience for F1

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The ingredients could hardly have been more mouthwatering. Hunt was coming off a victory at the French GP and was now 26 points behind Lauda in the world championship with eight races to go. History beckoned for Hunt, who was looking to become the first English winner of the British GP since Peter Collins in 1958.

A capacity crowd who had spent hours sweltering in traffic jams were now enjoying the heatwave and were ready for the drama, which had Hunt starting from the inside of the front row.

Clay Regazzoni, starting from the second row, was far too ambitious and collided with his Ferrari team-mate Lauda. Hunt later described the momentary pleasure he got from seeing the two Ferraris take each other out and then realised that he too was part of the mayhem.

His car was launched into the air, landed heavily, and Hunt was barely able to limp on to the back of the circuit when the red flags came out. 

And then, as has been documented so many times elsewhere, chaos broke out as the stewards tried to make sense of the rulebook and the confusing restart regulations. It looked as though Hunt would be denied the chance to restart the race, especially if he had to go to the spare car. The McLaren tactic was to argue at length, in order to give the team at least a chance to repair the race car.

This delay helped change the task facing the ITV film crew as well. Suddenly, nimble, handheld film cameras were the ideal, instead of cumbersome outside broadcast equipment. They could move swiftly among the arguments on the grid and were in position at track level to get the iconic shot of Hunt sprinting back to his team in the pits.

Gill’s roving crews captured Hunt’s “not now, there’s a race going on, dear boy” moment

Photo by: Racing Past Media

And of course they were in the perfect position to get the quotes that were free flowing from a pumped-up Hunt: “I was just minding my own business and somebody hit me up the arse.” And to Murray Walker, who was there on pitlane reporting duty: “Not now, there’s a race going on, dear boy.” 

There was also the comforting knowledge that all this wonderful material and complete chaos could be sorted out in the edit suite in two days’ time. As the delay went past 45 minutes there was the strong likelihood that, even if the BBC Outside Broadcast unit had been on duty, the network would have got bored and gone elsewhere. 

A small personal point at this stage. It is easy to get sniffy about post-produced coverage compared to the greater challenge of a live outside broadcast, but it was precisely this kind of approach that was the foundation of the first 10 years of the British Touring Car coverage, getting the championship established before making the decision to go live. On that July day in 1976, post-produced film cameras were certainly the ideal option as well.

When Hunt was wheeled back on to the front of the grid to a standing ovation from the grandstand, F1 in Britain was reaching a new level of awareness and involvement

Then there were the riots, or at least the slow-handclapping and the growing chants of ‘We want James’ that was putting more and more pressure on the stewards. There may have been a bit of orchestration, possibly from Brian Jones in the circuit commentary box and from some journalists and photographers who had never seen anything quite like this on a British race circuit, but all that can be forgiven. 

Eventually, when Hunt was wheeled back on to the front of the grid to a standing ovation from the grandstand, F1 in Britain was reaching a new level of awareness and involvement.

After that, Hunt’s victory over Lauda seemed almost routine, as did the disqualification that came a few weeks later! The half-hour edit of the race was heavily trailed by ITV and generated a big reaction. And the new awareness for the sport among British viewers was consolidated by the fiery drama of the Nurburgring and the rain-hit championship decider in Japan.

An overambitious move from Regazzoni triggered first-corner chaos at Brands Hatch

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There was a new awareness among the television executives as well. Jonathan Martin, head of sport at the BBC, still had to abide by the Corporation’s decision on the Durex sponsorship but, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, he announced the launch of the Grand Prix highlights series, which ran continuously from the 1978 Monaco GP. He acknowledged that it was the Brands Hatch experience and the clear ambitions of ITV that had brought a new urgency to the project.

F1 moved quickly as well, with Bernie Ecclestone soon tying up television deals and commercial arrangements that meant that the championship’s television coverage would never be left quite so vulnerable again.

But what of the broadcast team who brought you Brands Hatch 1976? They went back to much more reliable projects, but they acknowledged their adventures in motorsport by creating a company grandly entitled Formula One Films, a name that greatly irritated Ecclestone but that he could do little about.

A year ago, that title and the content of Formula One Films, including Brands Hatch 1976, was bought by Racing Past Media, founded by your author. Within the growing RPM archive that concentrates on the first 30 years of the F1 world championship, the 1976 British GP is among the most historic and influential pieces of content and will get many viewings as the classic race hits its 50th anniversary.

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the August 2026 issue and subscribe today.

Delay before restart offered broadcasting rich pickings caught on hand-held cameras

Photo by: Phipps/Sutton Images/Getty Images