AJ
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About the Book
Few names in international motorsport are as revered as Alan Jones. When he speaks, they listen.
One of only two Australians to win the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship, and the first to claim the title for the now-famous Williams team, Jones’s brilliant achievements brought Formula One to Australian TV screens. Today ‘AJ’ is the voice of Formula One on Network Ten and is also a Formula One steward at a couple of grands prix a season.
The son of Stan Jones, winner of the 1959 Australian Grand Prix, AJ started with billycarts in Balwyn, in Melbourne, and climbed to the top of the tree in Formula One. His career was dotted with highs and lows, the latter mainly from a lack of financial support compared with his cashed-up rivals.
Jones’s no-nonsense style brought him both admirers and detractors, but he always spoke as he saw it. He still does that today. There are countless stories to tell from his racing career, his personal life and business. In AJ: How Alan Jones Climbed to the Top of Formula One, the 1980 world champion doesn’t hold back.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword by Bernie Ecclestone
Foreword by Sir Frank Williams
1 From the Beginning to England
2 England Take Two … to Formula Three
3 Formula Atlantic Year
4 Formula One Debut
5 I Was There … But I Didn’t Want to Be
6 Me and My Shadow
7 Ferrari Driver / The Turning Point
8 1977 Williams Grand Prix Engineering
9 Macau
10 Can-Am / Cruise and Collect
11 IROC and a Hard Place
12 Williams 1979 / Emerging Contenders
13 My Favourite Thing About Winter Is When It Is Over
14 BMW Procar
15 The Championship Year
16 Australian Grand Prix
17 My First Final Year
18 Retirement … Part 1
19 Beatrice F1 – American Muscle
20 Racing After F1
21 Not a Racing Driver, Not a Journalist
22 A1 Grand Prix
23 Racing Philosophy
24 Family
25 AJ Today
Afterword – Andrew Clarke
Index of Searchable Terms
Picture Section
About the Author
Copyright Notice
While this book is a very personal story, it is also one that couldn’t have been written without the thousands of people that helped during my career, many of whom you will read about in these pages. I owe them all a great debt, but it is one I trust I repaid on the track.
Foreword by Bernie Ecclestone
I got on very well with Alan. It was usual for the drivers to be competitive and this also included the teams. We all loved him. I will tell you how Alan came across as an Australian; a lovely guy but do not try to push him around. He was aggressive on the track and when he was in the car, look out. When he was not racing, he would fight for what was right and wrong for him to be competitive. Otherwise, Alan was not aggressive at all.
Alan’s World Championship win is so different to what the sport is today. The people are different, team owners and drivers are in a new environment and times have changed since Alan was racing. Alan could not exist today. He was friendly with everyone in the sport. Both the teams and drivers in those days would help each other out.
When he was at Williams and I owned Brabham, if either of us was in trouble, the teams would help each other. Frank would say, ‘I need some help from you,’ and we would assist. The same can be said for when we approached Frank at Williams. Today the teams and drivers do not talk to each other. It is not an Alan Jones time environment today. We did whatever was necessary to get the most competitive piece of machinery and then the drivers would do whatever they could do to win races. But, in doing so, in a different environment than today.
Today, if somebody wants to do something there are 2000 lawyers involved. Alan was not a guy who wanted a profile and to get in front of the press and have his photograph taken. He was not that sort of a driver. He was very friendly with people but did not seek publicity and things like that.
Alan represented Australia in a great way when he was racing in Formula One. Look at the percentage of people in Australia as compared to Europe. I think the percentage of those that Australia has had and been good at their job is probably higher than most places. Things have changed.
Alan as a driver steward is great. He is happy and sensible. He makes the right decisions, I am sure. We miss Alan. I miss him. I really do miss him being around all the time.
Foreword by Sir Frank Williams
I have been privileged to have employed some of Formula One’s greatest drivers since I started in the sport in the 1960s. Alan Jones played a very important role in my professional life and will forever have a place as a central figure in Williams’ history.
Alan joined a Williams team in 1978 that was very much an unproven force in Grand Prix racing. Alan came on board at a time when my co-founder Patrick Head and I had just relaunched Williams with a fierce determination to make the team a front-running contender.
Alan was deemed a solid and reliable driver at the time, but he had never really had the opportunity to get behind the wheel of a truly competitive car and show his potential. He didn’t have what you would call the classic Grand Prix racing frame; at first glance he looked uncomfortably big to be a Formula One driver – certainly by today’s standards. But Alan did possess raw pace and a knack for pulling out his best when he needed it most. Both qualities are very hard to come by and cannot be taught, in my opinion.
In 1978 we gave him a car that was extremely reliable and well engineered, but perhaps a year out of date compared to our competitors because it didn’t have the ‘ground effect’ design that proved such a performance enhancer. Regardless of this limitation, Alan did enough to make heads turn both within the team and across the paddock. In 1979 we gave him a car that was capable of winning races, the FW07, and he used it to good effect and really helped put himself, and Williams, on the map. Despite some early reliability problems, we won four races that season and finished third in the Championship.
It was in 1980 in the FW07 that Alan really showed his qualities and ultimately won the Formula One World Championship. His battles with Nelson Piquet in the Brabham that year stand out in my memory. Yes, Alan was fast, but this was combined with exceptional mental fortitude; he was awed by nobody and would go toe-to-toe with his fellow drivers and never back down. With Alan Jones behind the wheel of your car, you knew you were getting 100 per cent commitment at all times. He had natural car control and his driving style matched his character; rugged and no nonsense.
On a personal level, he was a real man’s man and very personable. His boisterous personality fitted in well with Williams and he developed a very good relationship with Patrick Head and myself. I know Patrick found his style particularly beneficial. He was never the sort of driver that buried himself in the detail, but what he did have was a knack for giving Patrick direct and useful feedback that could be easily actioned. He would come back after a session and have a clear idea of what he liked and disliked, what was working and not working, and this is always very helpful to a Technical Director.
As our first ever World Champion, Alan will always have a key place in the history of the Williams team. His skills, combined with Patrick’s engineering genius, proved a formidable double act and set us on the way for further success in the years to come. His decision to retire from the sport in 1981 came as a surprise to myself and Patrick, but his native Australia was where his heart was and it was clear that he wanted to return. Havi
ng said that, he was a racer through and through, so it was no surprise to me that Alan soon found his way back into a racing car on an ad hoc basis in the years that followed.
Modern Formula One drivers are a very different beast to Alan and his contemporaries; with 24-hour media and greater corporate commitments, it is inevitable that we do not often see personalities and characters come to the fore in the way that we used to. Alan Jones, though, will always go down as one of the sport’s good guys and a very talented racing driver in an era that witnessed some of the sport’s finest going head-to-head.
1
From the Beginning to England
I DIDN’T GO racing for anyone other than myself and, to a lesser degree, my team. I didn’t crave fame – in fact, I worked hard to avoid it, although I did enjoy some of its trappings. In my early years, I made it clear to anyone who employed me that I was there to race and to race hard enough to win. If you couldn’t help in that quest, I was going elsewhere.
I believe I acted throughout my career with honour and stuck to the values I have held since my early years. I have never wanted anything more or anything less than has been agreed. If we do a deal, I expect you to honour your part of the agreement, just as I will mine. My old man also taught me manners come cheap. They cost nothing. Everyone deserves respect: a waiter, a bellboy, a cleaner – say thank you and don’t take those people for granted. I’ve tried to stick by that all my life: not to be arrogant and to treat all people the same way. In many ways, despite my dad’s flaws, I did learn from him … in some ways I am more like him than I ever wanted to admit.
We are all affected by our parents, consciously or subconsciously. I was born in November 1946 and I was only 12 when my parents split up and my father, Stan, went broke a decade later. Those events were big lessons for me, and helped shape who I became, even if I didn’t know it at the time, even if I don’t fully understand it today, 60-odd years later.
My parents’ marriage was volatile. I remember the police coming to the house a few times. The old man was a fantastic bloke. He had a heart as big as Phar Lap: you’d be going along with him and he’d see a homeless person and he’d stop and give him five quid. But he’d rather a fight than a fuck half the time, and was a bit inclined to give Mum a biff, which upset me. She’d call the police and they would come around and then there’d be a full-on blue in the house with him and the police … he wasn’t scared of having a go at them either. In fact, I don’t think anything frightened him, but he was extremely kind to me.
While it upset me, there was nothing I could do, so you just carry on like it wasn’t happening. I don’t think I was ever the sort of kid that would say, ‘Mum, could we sit down and have a talk? I’m a bit worried about the old man hitting you.’ I wasn’t even that person as an adult. It was never discussed.
But I am not my father, just as my son Jack is not me. Jack is totally different to me; he doesn’t care about motorsport for instance. He loves his soccer and he has a beautiful temperament – unlike me. He might turn out to be a real prick, I don’t know, but at the moment, he’s a lovely boy. I worry for him though, because boys like him get into trouble they are not looking for.
Whereas Zara, his twin sister, she contributes to most of the aggro in the house. I brought some sushi home one night and it was the wrong sort. She got stuck into me, so I threw it in the rubbish. To which she sarcastically said, ‘Oh, welcome back.’ She’s not scared of giving it to me. Zara is me and Jack is Amanda, their mother, which makes life interesting.
So I didn’t suck my thumb and curl up in the foetal position upstairs at night, thinking about it; no, I just rolled on. That’s the way it was, that was the kind of man my father was and I couldn’t change it, so I had to wear it. Mum too. I remember him for all his good characteristics, not his bad habits. You might consider that to be denial – I don’t know about that, nor do I care. The one thing I did take away was that I would never hit a woman, and nor would I allow a woman to be hit if I could do anything about it.
Dad was raised by his grandfather in Warrandyte. He was a bastard in the true sense of the word and he was self-made because of that. I’m sure his childhood was tough; everything he had or did, he created himself.
My mum, Alma, was typically Irish, stubborn as a mule and never taking a backward step … something to do with the red hair I suspect. She’d rev Dad up something shocking, call him something and that would be enough for him to give her a whack. It wouldn’t stop her though – if you gave her a backhander she’d just come back for more, mouth off even louder. He was volatile and had a very short temper … it didn’t make for a good mixture.
Mum was one of three girls – Auntie Maude, Auntie Nell, and Mum. There was a brother too, Jack, who got killed driving his truck up at Ballarat. When that crash happened, the old man had a brand-new Jaguar XK120, and he ripped off the governor – the device that limited its speed – and screamed up there. I used to go in the truck with Jack quite a bit, its name was Leaking Lina. He was a lovely guy.
They were a reasonably close family, which was obviously different to Dad’s. When Mum and Dad used to go out for dinner, they’d drop me around to Nanna and Pops. I’d go to the local pictures when I was there, because in those days you could walk down to the picture theatre at night by yourself, even as an eight-year-old. I’d be too scared at my age to do it now.
It’s funny, I look back on my childhood now and can see how abnormal it was, but at the time I had no idea. I thought Dad and his girlfriends was a normal thing. When they got divorced I ended up living with Dad, which was unusual at the time. Still is. Mum was keen for it to work, and if I’d had a choice that is what I would have asked for too, so everyone was happy. The old man pretty much got what he wanted most of the time, and this was just another example. We were living in East Ivanhoe, in Melbourne’s north-east, and he had the Holden dealership in Essendon, over in the north-west, about 20 kilometres away.
Mum went off and married a man called Wally, and then my parents became the best of friends. The old man and I would go around to their place for roast dinners and the like. Most people would say, ‘Christ, what a weird set-up that was.’ I didn’t really see any problem: it worked.
Mum was a very good mother and wife. Without fail, every day when she was with Dad, she’d stop housework at a certain time, have a shower, get fresh clothes on, put the perfume on, and get dinner ready. She always made sure she was well presented and looked good when Dad came home. Unfortunately, half the time he never came home, which was a bit of an issue. She knew he mightn’t, but she got dolled up anyway, come what may.
Mum was fiercely loyal: she would always stick up for me and would do anything for me. She was in charge of choosing the places for my schooling. I started at All Hallows, a Catholic primary school in Balwyn, and then I went to Burke Hall, the junior school for Xavier College … again Catholic. My mum was the Catholic in the family; her father’s name was Paddy O’Brien, which speaks for itself.
I was certainly no scholar. I thought I was far too good and clever to worry about sitting down and learning anything. How the hell, I thought, was Latin going to help me buy and sell cars, or race them? Which of course Latin – and everything else – does, in a roundabout way. But when you’re Mr Smart Arse aged 13, you don’t think about education or getting help from anyone. My objectives as a child were strictly those of the day I was living in; tomorrow didn’t exist.
Dad was the sort of person who really couldn’t give a shit about religion. If Mum had said she wanted me to go to a Jewish school, he would’ve said, ‘Yeah, right-o, whatever. As long as he’s out of my way and being educated and he’s happy.’ She was the one that wanted me to go to Xavier. Burke Hall was in Studley Park Road, which wasn’t too far from where we lived, and then from there I’d go to the big school for the rest of my education … well that was the plan.
I won’t say I was expelled, but I think the school suggested to Dad that it’d be better if I finish
ed my education elsewhere. Then he sent me to Taylors Business College, which was basically a place for kids that had been asked to leave private schools, so that their parents could hold their heads up in their social networks and say, ‘Oh no, he’s going to a business college.’ Which was just bullshit. It was on the sixth floor of a building in the CBD of Melbourne.
I finished off my last year or so of schooling there, but for me it just didn’t matter. I was a shocking student, I wasn’t academic at all. It was a complete waste of time – not that I want my kids to have the same attitude. But I knew what I wanted to do.
I had something other kids didn’t have. Racing was my chosen goal; my father was a racing driver and because Stan Jones was known to be good, I could also be good. I grew up with his mates and his mates’ sons, and every last one of them was going to go racing, too: which they invariably didn’t. But for me, there was this great big billboard in my mind that said, I’ve got to do it. School, in my eyes, was of no value. I wanted to be a racing driver and that was it. All this was just filling in time.
My Catholicism didn’t last. Burke Hall turned me off. They used to strap me for blowing my nose the wrong way. You didn’t have to do much and those pricks would pull out these long straps they kept in shoulder holsters. They were leather with steel in them, and they used to soak them in vinegar just to make the leather a bit crisper. You’d have to hold your hand out and you’d either get two, four or six of the best, depending on how much you flinched.