Hunt was born in Belmont, Surrey, the second child of Wallis Glynn Gunthorpe Hunt and Susan Noel Wentworth Hunt. He first learned to drive on a tractor in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Hunt passed his driving test one week after his seventeenth birthday. His obsession with motor racing began after attending a race at Silverstone with Chris Ridge's brother, Simon, who raced Minis.
Hunt's racing career started in a racing Mini. He later graduated to Formula Ford in 1968, driving a Russell-Alexis Mark 14 car. In 1969, Hunt raced in Formula Three with a budget provided by Gowrings of Reading, which bought a Merlyn Mark 11A. He earned a Grovewood Award for his promising career. Hunt was involved in a controversial incident with Dave Morgan during a Formula Three Daily Express Trophy race at Crystal Palace in 1970, which led to Morgan receiving a 12-month suspension of his racing licence. Hunt's career continued in the works March team for 1972.
Hunt signed for Hesketh in 1973, driving a March 731 chassis designed by Harvey Postlethwaite. He made his Formula One debut at the Monaco Grand Prix and took podiums in his rookie season at the Dutch and United States Grands Prix. For the 1974 season, Hesketh Racing built the Hesketh 308. Hunt achieved several podiums and won the non-championship BRDC International Trophy. In 1975, Hunt took his maiden victory with Hesketh at the Dutch Grand Prix, which is regarded as one of the greatest underdog victories in Formula One history. The team was left without sponsorship at the end of the season.
Hunt joined McLaren for his 1976 campaign. Amidst a fierce title battle with Niki Lauda, Hunt won the World Drivers' Championship by a single point in his debut season with McLaren. He drove the McLaren M23 to six Grands Prix wins in 1976. Lauda sustained near-fatal injuries in an accident at the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, allowing Hunt to close the gap in the championship standings. Hunt won the final round in Japan to secure the championship. He won several further races in 1977, dropping to fifth in the standings amidst reliability issues with the McLaren M26. After a winless 1978 season for McLaren, Hunt moved to Wolf in 1979 and retired after the Monaco Grand Prix.
Upon retiring from motor racing, Hunt established a career as a commentator and pundit for the BBC, as well as a columnist for The Independent. He also mentored two-time World Drivers' Champion Mika Häkkinen through Marlboro. Hunt was approached by Jonathan Martin, head of BBC television sport, to become a television commentator alongside Murray Walker on the BBC 2 Formula One racing programme Grand Prix. He continued for thirteen years until his death. Hunt also commented on Grand Prix racing in newspaper columns and magazines.
Hunt was involved in a relationship with Taormina Rieck from the age of 15. He met his first wife, Suzy Miller, in 1974 in Spain. They married on 18 October 1974, but by the end of 1975, Miller had left Hunt for Richard Burton. Hunt met Sarah Lomax in September 1982 and they married on 17 December 1983. The marriage resulted in two children, Tom and Freddie, the latter of whom is also a racing driver. Hunt and Lomax separated in October 1988 and were divorced in November 1989. Hunt met Helen Dyson in the winter of 1989 and proposed to her the day before he died.
Hunt was known as a fast driver with an aggressive, tail-happy driving style. Niki Lauda stated that Hunt was a "real top driver". After winning the world championship in 1976, Hunt inspired many teenagers to take up motor racing. His name was lent to the James Hunt Racing Centre in Milton Keynes when it opened in 1990. In early 2007, Formula One driver Kimi Räikkönen entered and won a snowmobile race under the name James Hunt. Räikkönen has openly admired the lifestyles of 1970s race car drivers such as Hunt. Hunt was inducted into the Motor Sport Hall of Fame on 29 January 2014.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.