by Alan Jones
My Brabham had previously been raced by a New Zealander named Allan McCully, who coincidentally joined AIRO with a Lotus 69. We had a trailer on the back of the truck and we went across the Channel, first for the three of us to race at Paul Ricard and then down to Monaco, where there were 70 cars trying for the 20-car grid.
I qualified sixth for my heat, the quickest of the three AIRO cars, and was running well when Tony Brise spun in front of me then backed onto the track to get going again at the Station Hairpin. I had to stop to miss him. I stalled the car and needed a push start – without that little incident I would have made the final easily. Brian didn’t qualify for the heats, while Allan made it into the final where he finished fifth after the heavens opened.
I also got my first taste of corruption that weekend. There was a lot of talk about the Alpine that Patrick Depailler used to win the race, but the scrutineers didn’t want to check it out while they pored all over the Lotus and Ensign cars that finished second and third. Both cars were cleared.
Mo Nunn, who owned Ensign, asked for the Renault engine in the Alpine to be vacuum-tested, but they managed to break the tester. George Robinson offered up his, but then the police got involved and said it would cost the equivalent of £90 to get it tested – which we, as AIRO, paid. Then they did the test in secret with only the Alpine team allowed to witness it. Of course it was cleared. It was very distasteful, but more of this was to come in my career.
I had a pretty good season in that Brabham and tested for March at Silverstone during the year. March had just started in Formula One, but it also had a really good Formula Three team, which had won one of the British Formula Three championships with Roger Williamson in 1971 and then would go on to dominate the class for a few years from 1973. Williamson was killed in only his second Formula One race in 1973 driving a March at Zandvoort. That crash was pretty significant at the time because there was such a shitfight afterwards. Roger was unhurt from the crash but died after the car caught fire and the marshals weren’t able to help because they didn’t have the equipment. David Purley, who I would have a brief brush with early in my own Formula One career, stopped his own car during the race and tried to get Roger out with the marshals watching him – he won a humanitarian award for his actions.
The March was a beautiful, simple, agile little car. The only trouble was I couldn’t afford one. I couldn’t really afford to go out and drive ten-tenths in one either, in case I smashed it up. But, being a heedless bastard, I didn’t think of that and every time I hit the track I gave it my all. One of the tests was a sort of open day to look over the new March cars and I had been invited.
I was surrounded, literally, by rich kids who’d driven up in their brand-new Porsches and who had sponsorship cheques dripping from the back pockets and were whipping around photos of their little pad in Surrey they’d hired at some exorbitant price for ‘the season’. It was enough to make anyone sick, these kids walking in and ordering brand new cars, brand new engines and then saying, ‘Christ! I nearly forgot a transporter! Can you tell me where I can find a new transporter?’
I knew half of them couldn’t drive out of sight on a dark night, and I couldn’t help the anger and the envy. Now I realise that they thought pretty much as I thought: that they were going to go out and race and brain everybody in sight. I don’t think many people go into motor racing knowing they can’t drive and will never make it; some just take longer than others to get that unhappy message. And among them are probably some with huge potential who drop out at the slightest little setback; life hasn’t hardened them up enough as it had me.
I did a couple of races with March but I didn’t get the full-time drive even though I had some good results. In my first drive in the March I qualified fifth and was then caught up in an incident on the first lap that took out the first four cars in the field. The next week I scored a second in one of the British Formula Three Championship races at Mallory Park.
After I missed out on the March drive, George helped me to get a works Formula Three drive for the rest of the 1972 season with GRD, Group Racing Developments, which had formed with a lot of staff from Lotus, who had closed the customer side of its business. I had a brand new chassis and George supplied the Vegantune engines.
It was good for me, I enjoyed it. They allowed me to prepare the car and I did it at home, in my garage – well, Jim Hardiman did really. He was also doing a bit of racing in England in a Hillman Imp. Eventually GRD got their own transporter and started looking after the car and getting it ready.
I was on a £2000 a year retainer as a works driver, which wasn’t enough to live on but all my racing was covered. So I topped up my wage with a few little extras. If someone wanted to buy a new Formula Three car they could have me go down to Snetterton where we tested, and spend the afternoon in it, setting it up for them. This suited me, I was learning while getting miles under my belt – and getting paid.
In all those laps I started to learn how to drive to a time, which is what Otto Stone was trying to teach me in the go-kart. All I had to do was drive fast enough to win. If I was opening a gap without stressing the car, that was all I needed to do. I also tried to be serious by keeping a record of things like gear ratios and the like that we used and what it did for the car.
If I wanted a longer third or a shorter fourth, I knew how to graph it, but it was Jim who would actually change them. If I took the back of the gearbox to pieces, Christ knows what would happen. ‘What’s happened to that other gear?’
I did my first race for GRD in the Formula Three race at the British Grand Prix in July and finished sixth, which was a pretty good place to put on a reasonably good show. There were lots of races for that class in England at the time, so I got in quite a few races between then and the end of the year.
We had some reliability issues, which wasn’t making me easy to be around, especially at Thruxton Park when something broke and sent me into the ditch at Club on the warm-up lap and people were saying I crashed. But when the car ran, we were competitive.
Over the winter I joined the GRD team run by Scottish industrialist Denys Dobbie (DART – Dobbie Automobile Racing Team) and ran the 373 chassis. Every year there’s one or two like him: they have a little surplus money and they think motor racing ought to be fun. Dobbie announced that he was going to sponsor three cars for GRD: a sportscar for John Miles, a Formula Two car for Dave Walker and a Formula Three car for me. My first year was to be in Formula Three, my second in Formula Two and my third in Formula One! I signed the contract and thought, ‘Well, this is it! I’ve done it at last, someone had made a plan for me and all I have to do is my job!’
My first race for DART was at Brands Hatch in March 1973 for the Lombard North British Formula Three Championship, which was one of the three British titles available in Formula Three, but not the most important one. Two weeks later I won at Silverstone, again in that series, and I was off and running. On the Friday of that race weekend, the old man died, just short of his fiftieth birthday.
Dad had been getting progressively worse, and after he had a stroke we had to put him in a nursing home. Beverley did a wonderful job looking after him for many months, but it just kept getting worse. We got to the stage where we had to put plastic up the walls and in his bedroom because he was so incontinent, and to her credit she used to shave him and look after him while I was doing my thing, but it became too much.
I was away when he died. After the news came through, Mike Warner, who owned GRD, said, ‘Alan, if you don’t want to race, we understand.’
But there was no way I was not going to race. The old man wouldn’t have been happy if I pulled out of a race just because he had died. For my win at Silverstone I got a big laurel wreath, which I put in his coffin before it was sent back to Australia.
He was quite unique, my old man, illustrated by the fact that he wanted to be buried in a lead-lined coffin with a phone. The lead lining because he didn’t want to be eaten by worms and the phone was so he
could make a call just in case they got it wrong and he wasn’t dead after all. He got his lead-lined coffin, because you couldn’t fly a body on a plane unless the coffin had lining to stop any leakage. But no phone.
Unfortunately I didn’t come back to Australia for the funeral because I couldn’t afford it, but I did my own little farewell to him. He’s buried at Springvale Cemetery in Melbourne, right opposite the Sandown car racing track, which is fitting.
I loved him dearly and I was so lucky to have him with me in England those last couple of years, even if he was hard work. One time he hopped in the car and took off to Belgium because he wanted to ship a car back to Australia and they wouldn’t do it without him present. I got a phone call from the Belgian police who thought he was drunk, because of his slurring. But the mere fact that he got in a car and went over there in that condition, gives you an idea of the bloody pigheadedness of the man.
After that win I felt like it was all starting to come together. There were three different Formula Three Championships in England at the time, the other lesser series was known as Forward Thrust Championship and the main one was the John Player British Formula Three Championship. I started winning in the other two series as well.
I only did six of the 13 rounds in the Forward Thrust series and still finished seventh. I missed a few of the Lombard rounds too and finished fifth there. It could have been better, I got a one-minute penalty at Castle Combe for jumping the start, which I didn’t, and that dropped me from first to 17th.
We focused on the important series, the John Player. The first round was at Silverstone and I had a sticking throttle that took me out of second in my heat, but I still qualified for the final because of my lap times. I fought my way to ninth by the end of the race, and that was a good recovery.
The next week it was wet at Oulton Park – it was England after all – and I got a second there before winning the round a week later at Mallory Park. Now I had wins in all three series and I felt like I was a serious contender.
Strangely, the championship had a round at Zandvoort, a sensational track in Holland. I qualified second quickest to a Japanese driver called Masami Kuwashima, who I was having some great battles with. There’s a big right-hander going on to the front straight, and he told me that he was leaving it in a higher gear, but taking it flat, which made the car a lot more settled. I was in a lower gear and the car was unsettled, so I tried Masami’s tip in the warm-up and I was instantly quicker. I went on to win the race – with Masami in second.
If I was ever in any doubt, I really learned that weekend not to volunteer anything to your enemy. I’d spend the rest of my life bullshitting people at race tracks, I’d never give up anything to anyone, I didn’t spend two days working out all my gear ratios just to hand them over to an opponent. If I was Masami, I would have said I was taking an even lower gear. But he told me something that helped me win that race, at his expense.
More importantly, I returned to England with the championship lead. But by this stage the March 733 was the car to have and Tony Brise had switched from the GRD to that mid-season and started to get the results. A couple more DNFs didn’t help me, but some good results and more wins sent the title down to the wire at Brands Hatch in October, with me heading in with a five-point lead over Jacques Laffite – or Jackie the Foot as I called him. Because it was a double-points race, there were mathematically a few drivers with a chance to win.
I led with 109 points in my GRD and Jackie the Foot (Martini Mk12) was second on 104 and it was then a gap back to Russell Wood (March 733) on 89 points, and if it was a standard points race the last driver with a chance. But it wasn’t, and that meant Tony Brise (March 733) on 83 points and my mate Masami (March 733) on 76 were also in there.
I wasn’t great with playing numbers, but this was perhaps a race to have them in my head. First or second place meant no-one could beat me – even Laffite if he won and I was second – and from there it tumbled down. If Wood won, fourth was enough for me to win on countback. If Brise won, fifth was enough and then if Masami won, seventh would do. If anyone else was winning, they’d have to calculate that in the pits and work out how to let me know … but my plan was to win and that would make it easy.
I went out to practice in the morning, and my engine blew up. That forced us into the situation I hate: a big panic and a change of engine over lunch. Nothing should be done in a hurry in racing, except the drive itself; for everything else, you need calm. They got the engine in, just in time, and I gave it a quick try: the bloody thing wouldn’t fire properly, or was running on one too few cylinders. I knew I was in for a tough race.
Part-way through the race I was fifth, in front of Laffite while Masami had retired and Tony was leading. Fifth, which was enough to win the championship – and as low as I could afford to drop.
Sitting just behind me was Larry Perkins, another Aussie, who wore glasses as thick as Coca-Cola bottle bottoms. As we went down into Hawthorn, Larry tried to pass me on the outside; I moved over to take up my line, and the next thing I know, we rubbed wheels and I see Larry’s Brabham spinning down the straight. I wasted no sympathy on him. I just thought, ‘Thank God for that, I’m still in fifth, I should be OK.’
I expected to come around on the next lap and see ambulances all over the place, but when I came around, the track was clear: not a sign of Larry and I wondered where the hell he’d finished up, because he must have hit something. No such luck! Lo and behold, I looked in my mirror and there was this white Brabham coming back at me. ‘Oh no! Don’t! Please don’t!’ Here I am with a handful of laps to go and a buggered engine, all I had to do was not drop a spot and the championship was mine – but if he passes me, that’s it, no championship.
Well, the engine grew progressively worse, he passed me, and I lost the championship to Tony Brise.
Disappointed is not the word; I was shattered. I headed straight for the bar after the race and there I heard someone say Perkins was going to enter a protest against me for dangerous driving. Larry at that stage was the new boy in Europe and he was writing for the newspapers back home. He said fellow Aussie Tim Schenken was over the hill – but Perkins wasn’t fit to clean Schenken’s boots, in my opinion. He wrote that this was my third year in Formula Three and he didn’t see me progressing much beyond this point. You could say we never struck up a close relationship.
Anyway, when he walked into the bar, I went up to him and said I’d heard he intended to protest me for dangerous driving. In the middle of his answer, he said he hoped he would never have the displeasure of racing against me again. He did have the misfortune to drive against me again too, but he never worried me. He actually made it into Formula One but never got anywhere … not even a single point, which I like to remind him of whenever we see each other.
With Jones’ Law, which you’ll hear of more than once, something like double points was always going to hurt me, and it did. I lost the championship, but I gained valuable experience.
Just as I had spent a lot of time talking with George Robinson, I used to spend time walking around the pits and paddock areas networking and selling Alan Jones, and I was pretty good at saying the right thing. Like when I was testing for March, I’d always say to the designer Robin Herd (who was the H in March), ‘This car is fantastic, if it goes as good as it looks …’ It comes back to me being a salesman – I knew you had to tell people what they wanted to hear to get what you want.
It’s a cruel fact of life. I wasn’t selling mini-vans, I was selling myself and this winter I was going to need to do a pretty good job.
3
Formula Atlantic Year
THE 1973–74 WINTER after my first full Formula Three season was like every other winter until I joined Frank Williams; cold, long and unsettling. I spent it by the telephone waiting for it to ring and wondering why it wasn’t. I thought I’d done well enough to be picked up by some team for a works or a drive, but it was as though once the season was over, I faded from sight.
I was a race-winning Formula Three driver and near as dammit the British Formula Three Champion. During the season I’d had the usual expressions of interest; in fact I’d been courted. But this was just about the nastiest winter of all. I no sooner got a drive teed up than it fell through and that process started with GRD and DART and my promised Formula Two drive.
The writing was on the board during 1973. The sportscar and Formula Two teams weren’t competitive and Denys had pulled back his efforts and investment to concentrate on me. What is it they say about motor racing – the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a big one. That was Denys’ story, and both he and GRD were pulling out. I thought I knew what was happening, and then it was all gone.
The fact is, I had to stick it out. I wasn’t a playboy. I’ve never known playboys that were all that good, with the possible exception of James Hunt. Niki Lauda was a wheeler and dealer and still is, but he lived in a basement flat in Earl’s Court and he didn’t go around flaunting himself all over town. Like me, he took his racing seriously. Having to wheel and deal hardens your character. Playboys can go out and just buy what they want – but they generally don’t make it. When the shit hits the fan they struggle. If things don’t go their way, they call it a day.
For me, it was either throw in the towel and go back to Australia and become a car salesman or have enough strength and conviction to fight for what I wanted. I was determined to get into Formula One and, this time, I wasn’t going home a failure. It wasn’t as though the whole Australian public was waiting with bated breath to see if I made it or not, but my friends sure were.
