Product Review

A new documentary, previously aired on BBC, is now available. The film is called 1976: Hunt v Lauda and it is a straightforward documentary of the 1976 season in which James Hunt was crowned champion and the movie RUSH used as its storyline. Besides my admitted bias toward documentaries, I really enjoyed this film for many reasons. The most pressing reason is the interviews with Alastair Caldwell (McLaren team boss in 1976) and Daniele Audetto (Ferrari team boss in 1976). These two have such personality, passion and recollection of every detail of that year and their rivalry is clearly still tangibly visible to this day�no, I�m serious, you can tell these guys are no fans of each other and that they still harbor some scars from the 1976 season. With rare footage of the races and behind-the-scenes action, the documentary does a nice job of visually keeping you in the game and unlike the cinematic movie, the level of detail begins to unpack the story for you. Shots of the British crowd staging a hand-clapping revolution and mob mentality is video I had not seen before prompting Caldwell, an Englishman, to call it, �not very British� as he laughed about the event.

The documentary wraps up very quickly after the title was won and if I have a criticism it would be that the film could have let the viewer make a tad softer landing from the emotionally charged height the director created. Perhaps a little post 1976 career unpacking might have been good but that�s nitpicking really. Overall, I found the documentary by producer Mathew Whiteman to be a very enjoyable piece with masterful commentary offered by Peter Windsor (as usual) and Simon Taylor (the pro that he is). If you enjoyed the movie RUSH, then you owe it to yourself to get this DVD to help fill in the gaps and give you a much better appreciation of what really happened. If you are a veteran of the sport, you�ll love the new footage and hearing the tale again as well as the team boss commentary. 60mins.