by Alan Jones
Eventually we were all doing it. It was legal – much more so than Piquet’s fragile qualifying engine the season before – but it was very borderline.
FOCA and FISA found some sort of common ground and signed what was known as the Concorde Agreement, which gave us four years of rule stability under FISA guidance, while FOCA retained control of the finances of the sport. The beauty of that deal was that it ushered in a period of unprecedented growth for the sport. If it was big before, it was now about to become massive – the biggest sporting show in the world bar none.
With all the testing done and my weight stripped off, the season started in Long Beach in the best way possible. We all turned up with newish cars with bigger wings and visible changes to the sidepods. We also had to adjust to Michelin tyres. Goodyear pulled out of the sport with immediate effect early in 1981 and we had to suddenly change to the new tyres.
We may have had the Concorde Agreement in place, but it didn’t stop the politics. Colin Chapman at Lotus must have been listening in to my conversation with Frank at Paul Ricard – he turned up with a twin-chassis car. The car itself was incredibly stiffly sprung, but there was a separate chassis for the driver, in effect an internal suspension for the driver. It was clever, too clever for some, who protested. No-one really knew what rule it was breaking, but it was banned.
I had a great qualifying session with Riccardo Patrese in an Arrows which had clearly found something over the winter. We traded the top of the time sheet a number of times during qualifying, and eventually he ended up with the pole and I was second, less than one hundredth of a second behind him. It was the sort of intense battle I loved, and I grazed the wall at one stage when the back stepped out coming out of the last corner, and Patrick got stuck into me over that, but I was giving it everything I had and that sort of thing happens on a street track.
At the start of the race, Gilles did a typical Gilles thing and made a wild dive for the lead from nowhere. He went off and we had to avoid him, and in that mess Carlos passed me for second and we stayed that way for the first half of the race, miles in front of everyone else. Didier Pironi was now driving for Ferrari and he was fourth, dropping away from me and holding everyone up. Perfect.
Patrese eventually retired and that left us with a Williams one-two, and with that I started to charge at Carlos. I had looked after my car in the early part and I had plenty up my sleeve, half a second a lap in fact. The three-second gap was soon nothing, and Carlos ran wide while trying to pass Marc Surer and I jumped through into the lead and sprinted away for a nine-second win, even after I eased off.
Brazil in the rain for the next race was a little more interesting, but not necessarily for the racing. Frank had drafted a new agreement for Carlos for the season, which had all these clauses in it and what I thought was a pretty improbable scenario; if we were more than twenty seconds in front of whoever was third, and we were less than three or four seconds apart, I was to win. It wasn’t just that I was the old boy at the school – which I was – but he didn’t want to transport two cars to the other side of the world, have them comfortably winning a grand prix, and have them take each other off while they fought for the lead.
So in other words, if the race was dead in terms of anyone challenging us, I was to win. Frank drew up the agreement and Carlos, with his eyes wide open, signed it. If he didn’t like it, he should have said something. I am a firm believer in living by the agreements you make, whatever they are and whether or not they become less palatable over time. Carlos, as it turned out, did not see things that way.
We were back at Jacarepaguá, since it was felt Interlagos was unsafe and that the slums of Sao Paulo that surrounded it were not in keeping with the image that was required of the sport. So Rio it was, on a much less interesting track. It was pissing with rain on race day and I started third behind Nelson and Carlos. We quickly cleared Nelson and I spent most of the race right on Carlos’ backside.
We were nearly a minute in front of Patrese with a handful of laps to go when the team hung out a board, ‘Jones-Reut’. I’d also won the first grand prix, so by letting me win, that would have consolidated my championship lead. Then there was the matter of what our contracts said. We did another lap, we did another lap, we did another lap, and I thought, ‘I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to wait until the last corner, make the big magnanimous buddy hand, like, OK you go through, and then tell all the journalists that he could have won, but team orders dictated that I win.’
Anyway, on the last lap it became clear he wasn’t going to honour the terms of his agreement. I thought, ‘This prick’s not going to do it.’ Sure enough, he didn’t. He kept going. I was furious, I could have challenged him many times. If it wasn’t for the agreement I would have. I was faster and felt I could easily have won, and Frank knows too well that without the agreement I would have slipped it down the inside, or I would have had a go somewhere. That could have ended in tears, so I didn’t have a go, because it was wet, which makes it a lot easier to lock your wheels up. And we had the agreement.
I thought, ‘No, I know what the team orders are, I know he signed the deal, so I’ll just consolidate another nine points.’ That would have given me 18 in the championship for the first two races. He would have had second in both, that would have given him 12. Everything’s hunky-dory.
The agreement was there to stop us taking risks with each other. Carlos didn’t abide by the rules of the agreement that he signed. That’s the thing that upset me.
Now, purely circumstantial, it was still pissing with rain, and I pulled up in the designated zone and climbed out of the car and no-one was there, in true Brazilian fashion. There was no-one in sight. I thought, ‘Screw this, I’m not hanging around in the rain, I’m going back to the garage.’ Now, of course, that was interpreted as me having the screaming shits. It wasn’t, it was because I didn’t want to stand around in the rain with no bugger there.
I didn’t talk to Carlos after the race. I just said to Frank, ‘All bets are off.’ Frank only paid him for finishing second that day as a sort of fine, but if Carlos expected me to give him any help in the Championship, that just went out the window. I’m a bad loser anyway. Carlos was good enough to drive elsewhere, it was not like Williams was his only option.
Of course, even to this day the whole aftermath of the race is reported as a dummy spit by me and that gave the next race, Carlos’ home grand prix in Argentina, a great build-up. Although it wasn’t good for me.
I needed armed guards for the most of the weekend and I had a police escort from the airport to the hotel. Taxi-drivers were pulling up and giving me the finger. The first time I practised the marshals were into me as well. I thought, ‘This would be bloody nice, if I have a shunt or something, they’ll just let me burn.’
The front row of the grid was dominated by Nelson with his new ‘illegal’ suspension and Alain Prost, who was now at Renault, then it was the two of us with me in third and Carlos fourth. Good luck, I thought. He was off my Christmas card list. In my eyes we just weren’t teammates. It was every man for himself. Hopefully we’d make it past the first corner.
Brabham had come up with a clever solution to the side-skirt problem and dominated the race – so good even Hector Rebaque was able to run second until his car broke. There was nothing we could do about them. I had an uninspiring race and finished fourth and Carlos got onto the podium to take the Championship lead.
For some reason I was a little down on my qualifying speed at Imola for the next race, which was now called the San Marino Grand Prix. San Marino is a little principality maybe 100 kilometres from the Imola track, entirely encased by Italy. The rules were that only countries could host a grand prix, and countries could host only one, except the USA, which was a market Formula One was keen to crack. The Italian Grand Prix was back at Monza, so San Marino was the answer for Imola, which wanted to keep hosting its grand prix. So the San Marino Grand Prix was not run in San Marino.
Sta
rting the race eighth in the rain, I was quickly into it. By the end of the first lap I was challenging Carlos for third, while the two Ferraris used their turbo power to sprint away. Carlos didn’t like me challenging him and we hit – one of the race reports at the time said he had ‘driven into’ me, so you can read into that what you like. My front wing was damaged and I had to pit.
I finished two laps down and out of the points while the two people I thought were my biggest challengers for the title were on the podium and pulling away in the points. Carlos led on 25 points from Nelson on 22 and me on 18. It should have been both of them on 22 and me on 21, and who knows what else if Carlos hadn’t hit me.
Zolder was up next and it was a bit of a shitfight, and it needed to be. The pit lane there is narrow and there were so many people allowed in the pits you could sometimes not even find your own pit when you came in. There were no speed limits in pit lane then, and it was dangerous. During practice, one of the mechanics from Osella stumbled on the pit wall and fell in front of Carlos, who hit him. The mechanic died in hospital and we drivers decided we needed to take a stand, so we organised a protest on the grid, which really just created confusion.
The start was all over the place. I was starting sixth and Carlos was on pole, Nelson was late making the grid and while he was taking his place Riccardo Patrese’s Arrows stopped. A Formula One car is great at many things; sitting stationary with the engine running is not one of those things. As he was waving his arms to stop the start sequences, one of his mechanics jumped the fence to start his car. The race started while the mechanic was still on the track behind Riccardo and right in front of me. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I managed to clear both the mechanic and the car, but as ever with a start you jump at gaps you see appearing. Siegfried Stohr in the second Arrows saw a gap and went for it only to plough straight into the back of the stranded car, cleaning up the mechanic at the same time.
When the field came around for the end of the first lap we could see the carnage, then on the second lap they were still clearing it up. Nelson in the lead didn’t slow one little bit, and then the rest of us decided to stop. This was bloody dangerous, so we in effect did our own red flag while Nelson kept racing until he came around the next time to find us all stopped. The mechanic, Dave Luckett, survived with just a few broken bones, but it could have been so much worse – and it didn’t need to happen at all.
When the race restarted I was really strong and I worked my way into the lead battle with Pironi and Piquet. Pironi’s Ferrari was so fast in a straight line he could keep a gap, but both Nelson and I were faster than him over the whole lap. We just had to fight him. I put a move on Nelson on the 10th lap and we had contact, which sent him off the track and into the catch-fencing and out of the race. He came in after the race for a fight, but if that is what he wanted he picked the wrong bloke. I simply didn’t give a fuck if he was upset.
Once he was out of the way, Didier was no problem for me, and I was leading by the end of lap 12. I was in a great rhythm and started to pull a gap before settling down the pace a little. Seven laps later, after running through the fast right at the same speed in the same gear and with the same line, the side skirt on the car got stuck and I lost all downforce. I had no grip and went off the track and into a wall, ever so gently but with just enough force to cause damage. The radiator burst and scalded my thigh, but I was more pissed at losing the race, which I felt I really needed to win at that stage of the season. To make it worse, I had given Carlos, who won the race, nine points that should have been mine.
This race in Belgium combined with the Monaco Grand Prix, up next, turned out to be critical events in my title defence. Both races should have and could have been wins, 18 points in total; instead, all I got was six points from a second place at Monaco.
Firstly, I really needed to get on top of my qualifying pace. Seventh was just not good enough when the car had speed, but I was still trying to work out the single lap on Michelin tyres. It was purely me, Carlos was out-qualifying me and I didn’t like that at all. In the races though, I had speed and race craft to help me out. I always felt I was a better racer than qualifier, but I was making my life hard here.
And seventh on the grid at Monaco was much worse than it sounds; it was a tough place to pass people. But we did. I picked off a couple, including Gilles in the cumbersome but quick Ferrari, and then took second when Carlos retired with gearbox dramas. I closed in on Nelson and put the pressure on, and then he cracked and spun when he couldn’t lap the slower cars easily enough. No contact from me, Nelson, but same result for you.
Then I was walking away with the race despite the discomfort of my burns from Zolder. This was probably the worst place to have an injury like that, you’re turning left, right, left, right and putting pressure on it constantly. I nearly had to have a skin graft on the burns, but they put all this oily gauzy stuff on it and wrapped it up and I just got into the car and made myself as tight as I possibly could to stop the movement and it was working well in the race.
I had a 20-second lead over Gilles when fuel vaporisation problems started to affect my lap times. It was inconsistent and hard to drive, but we held on for many laps. It only got worse and eventually Gilles passed me like I was standing still on the pit straight. I watched the highlights later and Murray Walker was shouting, ‘What a fantastic overtaking manoeuvre!’ He passed me down the bloody straight, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like he went past me sideways down the inside into Mirabeau.
Then I thought I was running low on fuel and a top-up would help, so I pitted and got back on the track still in second, which is where I finished. That was my best-ever finish in the most prestigious race on the calendar, and typically under Jones’ Law this was the only podium on the calendar where only the winner was present.
So straight back to the garage, this time without the shitfight in the media. Not only did I not win, but I didn’t have a chance to go up onto the podium and have a look at Princess Grace, who was alive and kicking in those days. That was Monaco. As much as I didn’t like Monaco, I really wanted to win there.
We went to Jarama in Spain for the last time three weeks after Monaco. Quite funny really – it was felt Jarama was too narrow with the speed of a modern Formula One car, but Monaco was OK. There was a sense of Spain being the sacrificial lamb. After the disaster of the 1980 race being removed from the calendar, the crowd was tiny, but at least the politics were kept to a minimum.
I finally had some qualifying form back and put it on the front row beside Jacques Laffite. In the race I got away best and was leading by more than ten seconds over Gilles Villeneuve when I fell off the track. It only took a fraction of a second of not driving at 100 per cent for it to happen. I lost a heap of time and had to pit for some minor repairs. I stayed on the lead lap but I missed out on being in a great battle for the lead of the race.
Gilles was in the turbo Ferrari, which looked like a dog to drive but it had so much power it was hard to pass. His lap times weren’t that great, but he was leading and one by one the challengers lined up. In the end, the first five cars finished within 1.24 seconds of him. I finished seventh, so no points again … three races in a row which all could have been wins.
Carlos finished fourth and pulled out a 13-point lead over me. The pressure was mounting now, and this was going to be interesting. There is no way I was going to let him take my title that easily.
The Renaults were again great in France, and that is about all I’d like to say about that race. Only a few laps into the race I was in the pits with several issues, the worst was overheating. I lost four laps and was the last car home in a rain-interrupted race.
If I thought my season was tough so far, there was more to come, and my enjoyment of the sport was fast waning. At Silverstone I got caught in a Villeneuve incident when I couldn’t avoid his spinning Ferrari, so that was another retirement for me. John Watson won the race in the first carbon-fibre car, which McLaren had released ea
rlier in the year.
My qualifying form was now OK, but the turbos were just dominating that part of a weekend. They’d turn the wick up and get another 50 horsepower and take pole, second, third and whatever else was available. If we could get onto the first or second row that was a great achievement. In qualifying the rest of us were fighting over the scraps knowing they’d come back to us in race trim.
When we got to Germany I wasn’t in the best of moods; when I left it was worse. Carlos and I managed to qualify on the second row behind the Renaults. I got a good start and ran third for the opening laps, Nelson hit Arnoux on the opening lap and the Renault had to pit to replace a punctured tyre. So that made it Prost in his Renault from Carlos, me and Nelson.
Carlos was relatively easy to pass, Prost not so. I was all over him in any corner – Hockenheim doesn’t have many – and then he’d blast away in the straights – of which Hockenheim has plenty. Lap after lap I ducked and weaved in the stadium section, only to watch him pull away when we got out of it. I tried a couple of moves at the end of the back straight. I had to go so late on the brakes the car would twitch and buck as I went in, but I just couldn’t get through cleanly.
Around 20 laps into the race we were coming up to lap Arnoux in the second Renault, and I figured he’d let Alain through easily and then hoped he would get out of my way. As it turned out, we caught him at the stadium section, and while Prost was being cautious I dived between the two of them at Sachs Curve.
It was real balls-in-the-mouth stuff, but with my mood that weekend I was going into that gap. I pulled it off and then walked away from Prost, who dropped a spot to Piquet when it started to rain. With around 10 laps to go my car started to misfire and I started to drop heaps of time. When I was passed by Piquet and Prost I headed to the pits with steam coming out of my ears. I finished a lap down and with another win handed to someone else. This could have been my fifth win in a row, I was leading all of them except for Silverstone, when some mechanical gremlin cruelled my day.
