AJ

by Alan Jones

  I was lucky that it happened during a practice session and that there were only three cars on the track. During a race, I would have sat there just as helplessly, but I would have registered another fact: that I was going to be hit; someone was going to whack into me. And then likely it would happen again.

  What you do when you face a potential crash depends very much on its nature. I had a big one at Donington in 1980. I was testing some new radial tyres and the tread flew off one; one moment I was barrelling down the straight as fast as I could go, the next the car was turning left into the Armco and I went bouncing off it all the way down the straight. It was as if I was glued to the Armco, and I couldn’t get the car to steer at all; it kept pulling into the wall. I knew the car was badly damaged, but I concentrated on riding it out, taking my hands off the wheel so that if it wrenched very quickly, it wouldn’t break my fingers.

  It seemed a huge distance down the straight when the tread flew off, but by the time I’d decided what I would try to do, there wasn’t any straight left. I had no brakes because my left wheel was down in front and my right wheel up in back. I was still going fast and coming up to the escape road. Great, I thought, I’ll just slide up the escape road and come to a stop. Unfortunately, there was also a little ditch and then a succession of eight-foot tall concrete posts. It hit me that when I came to the end of the Armco, I was going to turn left and start mowing down the concrete posts.

  I put my head down and mowed into the first three or four and the fifth one actually flipped up; it flicked the top of my dashboard and flew straight over my head. From the dashboard down on my car it’s all skin and no open space, but for sure, if I hadn’t ducked, that cement post would have taken my head off. When I got out of the car, the whole of its left side was ripped right off and the front had a huge dent where the post had end-over-ended and gone right over my cockpit. I was just lucky that day. And sometimes a simple reflex will save your life. I didn’t think, ‘Here’s that post coming, now I’d better duck’; I just ducked.

  To me, the worst shunts of all are when a throttle gets stuck open. Because when that happens, the shunt is almost bound to be a big one. You know what you have to do: you’ve got to declutch and blow your engine up – anything to get some of the speed off. If you can de-clutch, that stops your back wheels spinning. And if you’ve got time to do that, maybe you have time to flick the kill switch, too. But jamming on the brakes, which is what most of us would do instinctively, is of no use at all. The moment you brake, you lose your steering, and then you inevitably go head first into whatever you’re trying to steer away from.

  It happened to me at Zandvoort, in Holland, also in 1980. I was on a really quick lap and had just come out of the right-hander before the Hanserug, which I usually go into a little bit sideways, keeping my foot deep into it, braking at the last possible moment and then steering left to go up the hill. The trouble with corners like that, in which a driver will commit himself very deep, is that if anything goes wrong there is no time or space for him to either get around the corner or do anything to avoid a crash. That day, it was getting towards the close of practice and I went in very deep indeed. When I took my foot off the accelerator, it made no difference at all. The throttle was jammed wide open. What was the point of thinking about avoidance? I was in the fence before I could even consider evasive action. I gave that fence a proper whack.

  But the strange thing is, the moment the car came to a rest, I didn’t think what a lucky escape I’d had; I just thought, here it was, the last few minutes of practice and I’d messed up a good lap! My instinct was to jump out of the car and run back to the pits so I could go out in my spare.

  Later, you might sit down and think about it. Then you say to yourself, what the hell am I doing running back to my car when I should be running away from it! But I get so worked up and so obsessively concerned with a result, with being well up on the grid, that I’ll brush by people and ignore the danger and do absolutely anything to get that result. It’s a form of blindness, and as long as a driver can keep his mind working that way, with only his place on the grid or in the race counting, he’s all right. It’s when he starts to sit down afterwards and think, ‘Christ! I might have been killed!’ that he ought to start thinking about giving the game up.

  The worst crash I ever had was not on a racetrack. My friend Brian McGuire had bought a Ford Thunderbird and we were going to a party in Earl’s Court. The T-Bird is just about as poor-handling a car as you can buy, so Brian should not have tried to out-corner a Lotus Elan. But he did and we just went straight into a brick wall, and from the brick wall, just as straight, into a tree. I took the door handle off with my ribs and went through the windscreen, busting my nose and shoulder.

  All right, that time I knew I was seriously hurt. And if you’ve actually injured yourself, in a way that’s easier. You know there’s nothing you can do for yourself; you’re totally in the hands of other people. So in Atlanta I just lay back and let them get on with it. I was in a sort of day-dreamy daze. They put needles in you, cut you out of the metal, and twist your body free from the wreckage. You just go along with whatever they’re doing. You’re a good boy, because it’s their business to look after you now.

  So it felt good to walk away from the medical centre. All the drivers had come to see if I was OK, and Les Richter turned up with the good news … they had a spare car for me to keep using. I think I audibly said ‘Oh, fuck,’ which is not good with the good old boys. These things were piles of shit even though the NASCAR boys were saying, ‘Oh, aren’t they honeys? They’re so agile.’ I’m thinking, ‘If they call these things agile, their things must be like Kenworths to race.’

  I really didn’t want to do it again.

  Then they said, ‘Right, first of all we’ll get you down the local gym. They’ve got a beautiful spa down there, and you can have a nice big spa.’ Not with my dick wrapped in cotton wool and a bow on it, that would get them talking. So I managed to talk my way out of that and headed back to the hotel.

  ‘Oh you Aussies are so tough.’ If only they knew.

  Back in the hotel I’ve got into bed and it looked like someone had had a paint brush and literally painted black stripes on me where the belts were. So that was all right, they were just bruises. Then the phone rings … ‘How are you, Alan? I met you at Long Beach, and I hear you’ve just had a big wreck.’ I could barely get a word in, to Cathy, or Mary, or whoever it was. I uttered acknowledgement of that and she said, ‘Let me come up and look after you.’

  Jones’ Law kicked in, because even after I said I was OK and declined as politely as I could she had raced upstairs and knocked on the door. I thought it was someone from the hotel, so I opened the door and there she was. I rushed back and sort of jumped into bed, with the blankets up around my neck. She was giving me the big come on and I’m saying, ‘No. Look, I’m happily married, I’m a Catholic …’ The old fella stayed in his wrapping that night.

  Anyway, I survived the night and went out to race on Sunday. They’re all bloody banging door handles and carrying on, but mentally I was out of there. I stayed out of that fight and finished the race down in eighth, way out of danger.

  That was my IROC experience and the last time I was ever going to race on an oval. Aside from a couple of Can-Am races in 1979 (for one win and a crash) and a one-off CART race at Road America in 1985, that was pretty much it for me in terms of American racing.

  I loved racing in America, I loved the fans, but I hated the ovals. I valued all my limbs and my life too much to race there full-time.

  12

  Williams 1979 / Emerging Contenders

  WHEN THE SEASON started in Buenos Aires, Argentina in January, we were still in the old car while plenty of others had jumped into new ground-effects cars and the season would be decided by when and how well each team introduced its new Lotus-busting cars. Lotus were the leaders of ground effects, and while Ligier and Tyrrell were really good at the start of the season, the rest
of us would switch as the year progressed.

  Some others had much-improved engines even if they didn’t have new cars yet, so we just had to be patient, which is not a virtue of mine. We were miles off the pace. Jackie the Foot in a Ligier smashed the qualifying record as we qualified down in 15th.

  There was a big crash on the first lap, which took a whole bunch of the quick qualifiers out of the race and it was red-flagged. I managed to pull up on the grid while others went into the pit lane, so I just sat there in my car as I liked to do until I realised the wait was going to be more than an hour. The second part of the race was nothing special for me and I finished a lap down on Jacques Laffite in ninth.

  Two weeks later we were back at the Interlagos circuit in Brazil, which is a great track that I never went well at. No idea why; it should have suited me, but it didn’t. Filling in time with the old car still, 13th on the grid turned into a DNF with fuel-pressure problems.

  A month later we made it to South Africa after the battle between FOCA and FISA threatened the race for a while. Jean-Marie Balestre, the Frenchman who headed FISA, was rearing his ugly head and taking the focus off the racing and putting it firmly on himself. Ferrari had its new ground-effects car in South Africa and dominated the race with a one-two. Renault in its little way also showed turbo power was going to become a threat to all of us with a pole position, but as ever the engines weren’t that strong and detonated in the races.

  My weekend was a miserable 19th on the grid and a DNF when the rear suspension failed in the race, and to me it was simply a matter of when could I get into the new car. Unfortunately that answer was when the European season started for round 5 in Spain, but not after we bid farewell to the FW06 with a podium in Long Beach.

  That was just one of those days, and it was the sort of track where I could muscle my way around the track. Tenth in qualifying was certainly OK compared with where we had been. There were three attempts to start the race, which is not good for a Formula One car. The Ferraris of Villeneuve and Jody Scheckter were in another league that day and they sprinted away for an easy one-two, but behind them it was on.

  I showed enough patience to get the old girl into a good position, then I harried those in front and jumped at any gap. First it was Patrick Depailler, then Mario and then Jarier … and with less than 20 laps to run I had climbed to third. I stayed there comfortably clear of Mario, far enough behind Jody not to even dream of challenging for second.

  Straight after this race we went to Ontario Motor Speedway to test the new FW07 for the first time. This day changed my world. I’d sat in the car before, but it had never turned a wheel.

  I went out for those first few laps and I just couldn’t believe it. I came back and said, ‘Jesus, it’s no wonder Andretti’s winning these races. I tell you. It stuck like shit to a blanket.’ The downforce was unbelievable. I was staggered at how deep I could go into the corners and how early I could get onto the power.

  As a driver I needed to start reassessing a few things. Commitment into the corner was one, because this was so different – you could almost brake into the apex with the car, and then you’re no sooner off the brakes and you’re on it. I thought I had a weapon to unleash on the Formula One world when we got back to Europe.

  I still to this day don’t know if it was just a car that suited me and my aggressive driving style, or if it really was just that good a car. Perhaps it was both, but regardless I was now excited about the rest of the season, even if I was starting from well behind the pack. Jacques and Gilles both had two wins by that stage of the season and Gilles led with 20 points. I had four. Mind you, at this stage of the season my new teammate, Clay Regazzoni, had no points and I was out-qualifying and out-racing him, which was my first measurable.

  I knew I could do it as a driver. We would have won races in the FW06 if those Lotuses hadn’t have been around and we didn’t have so many mechanical problems. But 07 was just such a good car I knew if we could make it last we could win some races. Sometimes you hop in a car and you just feel at home … this was one of those cars.

  My first race in the 07 was at Jarama in Spain, but we weren’t the only team with new cars to start the European part of the season. Lotus and Renault also had new cars and McLaren had made massive changes to its car after it was hopelessly off the pace.

  It was a tough weekend with issues all over the place and my qualifying position was no better than I was getting in the old car, and then I had trouble with the gearbox in the race. Clay started one spot behind me on the grid and retired a few laps earlier than I did, so it wasn’t the best way to debut a new car, especially compared with Lotus, who got both cars on the podium.

  Zolder was better a couple of weeks later. I qualified fourth which was my best ever qualifying result. It was a strange field in some ways with people changing cars around all the time. Mario, for instance, went back to the old Lotus for this race. Jacques had pole with his teammate Depailler beside him. Nelson Piquet was in third and on the second row with me.

  Laffite got away poorly and I jumped both him and Piquet off the start. The front row got away and Patrick and I went into first and second, with Jacques dropping down to fourth, he soon passed Nelson and closed in on me. With Jacques closing in on me, I needed to get past Patrick. I pulled beside him in front of the pits but just couldn’t clear him going into Earste. I got onto the kerbs a bit on the outside and I left it open for Jacques, who went by and dropped me to third.

  Jacques took the lead a few laps later and then I eventually got by Patrick. We were so quick when there was no traffic that I closed in on Jackie the Foot quite quickly. My tyres were in pretty good shape and I think the Ligiers were struggling. Jacques was struggling for grip and twitching. I think he missed a gear and that was enough for me and I swept by into the lead. The two Ligiers weren’t helping each other and I pulled a really good lead.

  I led for 16 laps and was extending the lead on each lap when some stupid little mechanical and electrical problem stopped the car on the exit to Bolderberg. Our team had sent a message that we were quick. It was a shame; that would have been Frank’s first grand prix victory, without a doubt.

  Remember, at this stage the team was really only a year old and was a minnow compared with teams like Lotus, Ferrari, Ligier and the like. After that day in Belgium it wasn’t just the other teams we sent a message to – we sent one to ourselves as well … we knew we now had the equipment to do the job.

  The 50th running of the Monaco Grand Prix was the next race. We qualified only ninth. I was second by mid-race when I clipped a wall and broke the steering. Clay was having a great run in the other car, and by the last lap he was challenging for the lead despite having a gearbox issue. Perhaps without that he could have passed Scheckter’s Ferrari and won the race, but second was a great result for the team. After Monaco, James Hunt quit the sport. He was replaced by Keke Rosberg.

  The Swedish Grand Prix was supposed to be next, but the organisers ran out of money. With Ronnie’s death last season and local hero Gunnar Nilsson dead from cancer (there was a time trial event at Donington in his honour around that time, which I won), the Swedish appetite for our sport waned fast. So the French Grand Prix at Dijon was next. Patrick Depailler, meanwhile, had broken both his legs in a hang-gliding crash.

  Because the gap between the two races was a good month, we went and did some testing at Dijon. Frank organised for Frank Ifield, the singer, to come down with us in a Beechcraft King Air plane hired for the trip. We came in over the road to land at the grass field, and the pilot put the bloody thing in reverse thrust before it even touched the ground. That’s how short the runway was. I was too busy playing with my new Rolex at that stage to notice though. I was so happy I couldn’t have given a rat’s about anything else.

  When race weekend came around, I reckon Renault had invested everything it had to win. The cars were rockets and Jean-Pierre Jabouille won the race from pole. He didn’t have it all his way, my old mate Gilles V
illeneuve heading him for most of the race. Gilles joined the two Renaults on the podium and I was fourth, more than 20 seconds away from the wheel-banging last lap by René Arnoux and Gilles.

  It was the first win for a turbo-charged car in Formula One. Those Renaults were so fast in a straight line – it was just as well they were so unreliable.

  After France, Patrick Head had found a little aluminium thing – I told you I wasn’t technically minded – that he put at the back of the car. I could feel an immediate difference in the downforce, and it chopped 0.4 seconds off my lap time at Silverstone. Leading into the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, which in the absence of a race in Australia I rated as my home grand prix, we were quickest in testing.

  I got my first pole position in Formula One by six-tenths of a second over Jabouille in a Renault. That kind of gap was pretty rare and it kind of came from nowhere. If we thought the FW07 was quick before, now it was a real weapon.

  The Renaults at that stage were turning up the wick for qualifying and then winding it back to try and survive a race, which made the gap even more significant. They were amazingly quick in that qualifying trim, and on a fast track like Silverstone we had thought going in we had no chance for pole. At most tracks they would out-qualify us and have their own little battle for pole. Which never worried us, because we knew they’d have to come back to us in the races, and there are no points for pole.

  For me getting my first pole was a strange feeling. By that stage, without wanting to sound big-headed, I was where I thought I should have been. I wasn’t all that elated. I remember Frank saying to me, ‘AJ, you don’t seem very excited. You don’t …’ I said, ‘Frank, it’s because I should have had more of these.’