“He’s just like his dad. When he parties, he parties hard and wakes up late…Is it possible to postpone the interview?” reads the text message from the team owner of M & N racing. With his flowing mane, need for speed, love for wine, women and parties, Freddie Hunt is the proverbial chip off the old block. The old block in this case being James Hunt, a former Formula 1 world champion, whose career was well-documented in the 2013 film Rush . “I’ve learnt an awful lot from my father. I’ve learnt from his mistakes in partying and drinking, because it can be depressing. So I don’t drink much because I don’t want to be depressed,” says Freddie.
But interestingly, when we meet, he’s nursing a hangover. It’s almost as if he has a reputation to live up to. Freddie, 27, was in the city last weekend to participate in the MRF Challenge 2014. Unfortunately for him, the race didn’t go the way he would have liked it to. “Technical glitches…the input shaft failed,” he says. He was even fined Rs. 25,000 during a race here. “That’s because this car ahead of me had stopped for a break check where he was not supposed to. So I got out and smacked him on the helmet,” he explains. Again, just like the father who once infamously punched a marshall and was fined 2,750 dollars. But there’s another side as well to the Brit brat. He stopped during one of the races to check on Laura Tillet, whose car somersaulted after hitting his car.
“I took to the sport because I saw my father driving. I was 13 when I realised what a phenomenon he was,” says Freddie, who started racing at 19. But being James Hunt’s son comes with its baggage. “It makes it difficult on the track because there are lots of cameras pointed at me, people focus on me...making it difficult for me to focus on the race.” That’s perhaps why in his initial days nervousness often gripped him just before the white flag went down. “I was fine during practice sessions, but not on the actual day. I wasn’t nervous about crashing…I was scared of not delivering. That was the reason I stopped racing for a few years,” he adds.
In this time, he bought himself a pest control business in 2011. By the close of 2012 he had sold it, and in January 2013 he moved to Argentina where he played polo. After trying his hand at other sports, in March 2013, Freddie knew that racing was what he wanted to get back to. While participating in what he calls a few “fun races”, he realised he could actually drive without pressure. Predictably enough, he moved back to England and started racing in 2014.
Unlike James who made it big in Formula 1, Freddie isn’t a fan of that form. “I like watching it but not driving, because it’s too much. It makes one famous. So, luckily, I can walk down the road without being recognised,” he smiles. But at the race track in Chennai, it was a different story with a mob of people surrounding him for pictures. “It was just a few people at first who wanted individual pictures and then there was a whole crowd around me,” he laughs. And for those who missed out on catching Freddie in the city, watch out for Sons of Speed , a documentary that features him and Mathias Lauda (Austrian Formula One driver Niki Lauda’s son) scheduled to release by the end of this year.
