TREMAYNE: The unlikely Austrian GP win that launched the career of an F1 World Champion

It had rained, hard, that morning at the Osterreichring. An Austrian crowd that had celebrated sunshine the previous day was now clad in more suitable wet weather attire, some nursing brutal hangovers on a weekend when groups of unruly spectators had run amok.

As local hero Niki Lauda, the 1975 champion and current points leader, sat on pole position in his Ferrari, fractions ahead of friend and rival 1976 champion James Hunt’s McLaren, a great race was in prospect, even if many of the local papers carried stories of fights, damage to cars and even, unbelievably, the stabbing of police dogs.

The dilemma for many was which tyres to choose: wets for the obvious patches of water that remained all round the super-fast circuit, with its daunting high-speed sweeps, or dries for when – if – conditions began to improve over the course of the scheduled 54 laps.