Whether you think Formula One is the most exciting thing ever to invade our Sundays or just some blokes in overalls driving around in circles for two hours, Peter Morgan’s terrific Rush script will teach you something about the sport you didn’t know. It follows the volatile relationship between world champions James Hunt and Niki Lauda, one of most famous rivalries in sport, through their death-defying battles in the 1970s. But as with any ‘true story’ there’s always more to it. Details have been tweaked and incidents exaggerated in the good name of storytelling. We’ve picked out ten things Rush didn’t tell you
1 James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda's (Daniel Brühl) on-track rivalry was bitter and hard-fought. Off the track, however, the two were more sympatico than Rush suggests. In fact, they even shared a flat in London for time. A fiver says Lauda did all the washing-up.
Verdict: False - - - - - -
2 Rush introduces a young, pot-smoking James Hunt and the much more methodical Niki Lauda – the film's Maverick and Iceman – at a Formula 3 race at Crystal Palace in October 1970. In reality, Lauda didn't attend that race and Hunt crashed out after a shunt with another driver.
Verdict: False
3 James Hunt's McLaren was disqualified from the 1976 Spanish Grand Prix for being too wide. Alastair Caldwell, McLaren team manager at the time, accepted blame for the error in a recent interview with Motor Sport Magazine. Spanish marshals, he claimed, knew that the car was in breach of regulations before the race but said nothing until Hunt took the checkered flag.
Verdict: False - - - - - -
5 Germany's infamous Nürburgring was never called "The Graveyard" by F1 drivers. Triple world champion Jackie Stewart did coin another name for it, "The Green Hell", after breaking his wrist there while winning the 1968 German Grand Prix.
Verdict: False - - - - - -
6 When Lauda called the vote to have the German Grand Prix cancelled due to treacherous weather conditions, he actually only lost by one vote rather than the landslide it appears on screen. However, Hunt's charisma undoubtedly helped carry the day.
Verdict: True - - - - - -
7 In Rush, Brühl's Lauda suggests that Ferrari replaced him with Carlos Reutemann even as he was being helicoptered to hospital. But was his team *that *ruthless? Perhaps not, but Ferrari definitely didn't linger over the decision. "It was difficult to explain the choice to Niki", says Luca di Montezemelo, "but the interests of Ferrari, then and now, always came ahead of those of the drivers, whoever they may have been."
Verdict: False - - - - - -
9 After proposing to Suzy Miller (Olivia Wilde) when they'd only been dating for only two weeks, Hunt couldn't make the marriage last and she really did leave him for Richard Burton. She later had an uncredited appearance in a film wiith Burton – The Wild Geese – in 1979 before they divorced in 1982.
Verdict: True - - - - - -
10 Lauda and Hunt were dramatically different characters – the former a rabble-rouser who liked to fly by the seat of his pants; the latter a calculating tactician who prefered to fly by his own airline – but there wasn't quite as much daylight between them as the film suggests. "I would never drink before a race," Lauda likes to point out, "[but] certainly after it, I had to." Rather than piously swerving his pit lane rival, he occasionally drank with Hunt.
Verdict: False
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