by Alan Jones
We went out to Calder and did a test day. It was a lot of fun. You could turn the boost up, and being a rear-engined car you could almost lift the front wheels of the bloody thing under acceleration. After that test we agreed to do the series and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was terrific.
Along with Colin, there was Peter Brock – who was a big deal in Australia back then – in a Chev Monza for Bob Jane. That car was a beast and wasn’t short of horsepower. I thought the biggest threat, however, should have been from Rusty French, who also had a Porsche 935. Brock beat me at Sandown in a non-Championship race, but I won all the rounds of the Championship to take the title comfortably. I wasn’t averse to the concept of cruise and collect.
But with such a powerful and tough car to drive, I could never relax. I nearly had a big one at Symmons Plains down in Tasmania. I got a wheel on the outside, she flicked sideways on me and threw me off the track. That got my attention back and I said to myself, ‘I think you’d better start concentrating a bit.’
The week after that we raced at a place called Baskerville, in Hobart, which was a bit different – spectators could watch from the comfort of their cars. It was so tight in one of those race cars, in fact it would have been tight in anything, so I really had to be on my game.
In the middle of the year we raced at Lakeside – and that was the catalyst for making my mind up to move to Queensland. Not because I liked Lakeside mind you, because I didn’t. But it was a cold, miserable, overcast, windy day when I left the farm, and then I landed in Brisbane to a stunning day and I was in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. That was much more me.
I went to the Gold Coast for a look and bought a penthouse in Main Beach. I started going home less and spending more time up north, then I thought I’d ration myself with three months straight. I didn’t want to fall into the false holiday atmosphere that was prevalent there – lounge by the pool, drink champagne and basically just remove yourself from the world. And then one day check the bank balance and think, ‘Shit, I’d better do something.’
Funny you know, when I stopped racing, I was really looking forward to Australia’s weather – and then promptly moved to the farm in Victoria. In winter you sat next to the heater freezing your arse off. It took me only that one winter to realise I wasn’t a farmer. The countryside was beautiful, but winter was freezing and in summer you slept with one eye open waiting for the bloody bushfires to scream through.
That was in a place called Glenburn, halfway between Yarra Glen and Yea. I remember the manager coming in one day and saying, ‘Alan, we’ve got a fox in paddock three.’ I remember saying, ‘Who gives a fuck? If he wants to take a couple of sheep, he can have them, I’m not getting out of bed.’
He was disgusted. ‘What sort of a farmer are you?’
I said, ‘I’ll tell you what sort of a fucking farmer I am, I’m not.’ I’d always come back in the European winter when it was summer in Australia and the weather was great – aside from the bushfire risk. You’d be making hay and going down to the local pub and having a well-earned beer afterwards. I thought, ‘This is not a bad life.’
Of course, the first winter I spent there, I thought, ‘Jesus, come back, England, all is forgiven.’
Then I did a deal with Kubota for some tractors that had climate control and a radio. I was out slashing a 100-acre paddock, and I was about a quarter of the way through it when I started to second-guess myself. ‘Jesus, what am I doing here? I’m cutting straw.’ The sum total when it’s all finished was about $2000 worth of hay. I could be down in Melbourne wheeling and dealing in cars and making more than that in a day.
Then a plane flew over and I thought, ‘I wonder where that’s going.’ Yet a year earlier, I vowed and declared I didn’t want to see an airport ever again. After the experience of the winter and my life as a ‘non’ farmer, I had started to think about Europe again and serious racing. Maybe deep down I hoped the Gold Coast was going to settle that down.
At the end of three months, I’d decided, I was going to go back to Melbourne and the farm to sell everything and move to the Gold Coast permanently. It took a while to get it all done, but eventually I had shed myself of the cold.
Then I was happy. I was enjoying my C&C, but not the tracks. Most of them were, and still are, shitholes. There’s only one permanent track in Australia that is any good, which is Phillip Island. Lakeside, Winton and Calder Park just weren’t interesting and with all the space in Australia, you wonder why they kept building these Mickey Mouse circuits.
You go to America and you have places like Road America and Watkins Glen, beautiful, big, long circuits with challenging sweeping corners. They’re all proper European style circuits, great to drive on. In Australia though, not only do we make them small and tight, we build them near emerging suburbia, so we know they won’t last. When the houses are built near the track the new residents start complaining about the noise and get the track blown up. It’s a joke.
Or we build a place like Mallala on the edge of a desert north of Adelaide with wind and sand like you could never believe. It was really funny, we went there many years later testing with the Stone brothers when Paul Romano was driving for me. I went down to the local convenience store to get some sandwiches or something, and the woman behind the counter said, ‘Alan Jones, what are you doing here?’
Well given the fact that it’s a Mallala race track and I’m a race driver and you’ve recognised me, one guess. Instead, I said, ‘I’m here for the holidays. I bring the wife and kids over once a year and we stay in a caravan out in the circuit, we love it.’
‘Really, you do?’
Not that I was too bothered by the quality of the tracks: I was winning and I quite enjoyed that. Alan gave me a great Porsche to race and it was really well prepared. I was challenged a few times, particularly by Brock, and I hopefully repaid Alan and crew for all that effort with the results.
I raced a little Ralt RT4 at Winton in late October for a second place, and that was it for my racing in 1982. I started the year thinking I was a farmer, and I ended it in a Gold Coast penthouse knowing I wasn’t a farmer and that I still had a motor-racing itch to scratch. If I hadn’t have been so silly, I might have been preparing for a year as a Ferrari driver, since Didier Pironi wasn’t coming back after he smashed up his legs at the German Grand Prix and Gilles Villeneuve was killed in Belgium during the final qualifying session, while Mario was a stop-gap at his age and Patrick Tambay was never going to make it. They eventually signed René Arnoux and he gave the title a real push in 1983.
I do wonder what life would be like if I’d won a Championship for Ferrari. I wonder if I could have done that. But I don’t wonder for too long though.
In March 1983 I was thrown off a horse on the farm – which I was still trying to offload – and I broke my femur. I was in hospital having it pinned when Jackie Oliver rang. He said he had a multi-billionaire ready to put money into the Arrows team and would I come and drive for them. Which was complete bullshit, he didn’t have any bloody billionaire; what he wanted was to be able to say that he’s just hired the ex-world champion, so he could snag a sponsor – hopefully a billionaire.
I was too stupid not to see through that, so I went back and drove the Arrows at Long Beach and then I did a race at Brands Hatch, the last ever Race of Champions. Remember, this was going to be a full-time drive with lots of money behind it. As soon as he has said ‘billionaire’ he got my attention and from there it took a few weeks to get my head straight.
We went and did a half a day’s practice at a little track east of LA to familiarise myself with the car. Because my left hip was still far from perfect, I remember getting a sledgehammer and bashing the inside left-hand side of the monocoque so I wouldn’t be rubbing my hip there. Then we raced at Long Beach.
I was replacing Chico Serra in the car. He had qualified 23rd in Brazil while I did 12th at Long Beach, so I figured I was proving some of my worth. In the race I was running inside the top 10 comfort
ably when I had to stop. The constant rubbing on the pins in my femur was causing too much pain to keep going, so it was a return with promise.
Bloody René Arnoux was on the podium in the Ferrari and his teammate Patrick Tambay had been on pole. So if I had done Ferrari, not only would I have not broken my leg because I would have been in Italy, I would have been driving a bloody fast car.
That was 27 March and two weeks later we ran at Brands Hatch. It wasn’t a full Formula One field but there were plenty of good drivers in good cars there. Keke Rosberg, who had won the 1982 World Championship, took pole from Arnoux, and then it was me, which felt pretty good. Arrows had a car there for Chico as well, and he was down in 11th and five seconds slower than me … Remember, the first target is to beat the bloke in the same car.
The race went OK for me and I ended up with third, which felt good with a crap engine. I thought the Arrows A6 had potential, but I wasn’t seeing this billionaire or his money. So I put the hard word on Jackie.
I got a lot of stalling and ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, so that was it for me. If I was going to do Formula One they were going to need to be as serious as me. I hadn’t changed my standards since the days of Mr Nestle Van.
Before I could get on a plane home, Ron Dennis had word of what was happening and said, ‘Niki’s not well, do you want to come down to Monaco? I can’t guarantee you’ll drive, but I’ll pay you 20 grand just for coming and I’ll pay you 50 if you do drive.’
I should have done that, I mean 20 grand for doing nothing wasn’t bad pay. I had twigged something was going on between Beverley and our horse trainer and that was on my mind when I turned him down. McLaren was all over the place in ’83 – at some places they were struggling to make the grid and at Long Beach, for instance, they finished first and second. As it turned out Niki did drive but he didn’t even qualify.
So I have two regrets from that time: I should have gone back and driven for Ferrari and I should have gone to Monaco as an emergency driver for McLaren.
When I walked away at the end of 1981, I didn’t miss it at all. Then while sitting on a tractor I started to have second thoughts. When I got the call from Jackie, his timing was just right – I was easy pickings.
While I was floating around England I got the chance to race a Porsche 956 for the Porsche Kremer Racing team – or the Brothers Kremer as I used to call them – at Silverstone. They turned up with the long-tailed car, which was a mistake. I think they thought with the high speeds of Silverstone that the Le Mans spec with its low downforce body would be better than the shorter car with the bigger wings.
That might have been true in the dry, but this weekend was wet. I led the race for a bit, but then started to get a few niggles in the car and came home in fifth with Vern Schuppan. I did quite enjoy driving the car though; some cars you hop in and you don’t even have to turn a wheel and you’re immediately comfortable. This was one of those cars. Of course it can be different when you start to drive, but this was a Porsche and that didn’t happen. It was a great car. We were lapping faster than a Formula One car.
I did Le Mans with the Brothers Kremer the next year, 1984, and while it was an experience it wasn’t really me. Yes, it was fast, but I cynically used to say my favourite place to be skilful was in a straight line. Whether you’re doing 600 Ks or 400 Ks, as long as nothing flies off, it’s not a big deal. All you’ve got to do is keep the steering wheel straight.
The thing at Le Mans, though, is that sharing the track with Frederick Fuckin’ Fucknasty in his cravat, driving his Sprite coming over from London to do his annual Le Mans, is dangerous. He’s going down there at about 160 and you’re doing 420. You’re just thinking, ‘Please look, don’t move.’ In the drivers’ briefing, they’re told not to move over or to make room for you, that you will find a way around them, but they either forget that when they’re out there under the pressure of driving a Sprite, or they just panic.
That’s bad enough in the dry, but when you get them at three in the morning in the rain, and all you see are some tail lights coming at you fast and you’ve got to second-guess them, that’s when it gets a bit dicey. In those days, Mulsanne Straight didn’t have the chicanes, just the kink. It was quick and straight for quite a distance.
I was sharing this car with Vern and Jean-Pierre Jarier, who both had many races at Le Sarthe under their belts. Vern even had a win – the first Aussie to do it in nearly 60 years – in 1983. I’d raced in the same team with him at Macau and I knew him in England, our paths had crossed many times. I was reasonably friendly with him, but then he is not a difficult man to be friendly with anyway, he’s a gentleman. A bloody good driver too.
Aussies were at a geographical disadvantage and he had done the hard roads in Europe a year or two before me. We both went there with a dream at a similar time. We got no support and we had to scratch around for both the money needed and the opportunities. He won Macau a couple of times and also had a British Formula Atlantic title, and he did race Formula One, but he found his real forte in sportscar racing.
We didn’t have the outright speed of the Lancias at Le Mans, but we were still rated as one of the favourites for the race and we qualified third – the best of the non-Lancias.
Less than an hour into the race, Vern had taken the lead. Twenty-two hours later we were still in contention when the engine gave way and we had a long spell in the pits. There was no way to repair the engine, but with 10 minutes left Vern went back out to complete a slow lap and take the chequered flag. We’d lost 23 laps and could have easily won the race from where we were; instead we were sixth.
I didn’t really enjoy the race though. Yes, I could tick it off my bucket list, but I figured I was never going back. I worked out I was a sprint driver, not an endurance one. I put in 110 per cent when I was in the car, and that left nothing for when I was out of it. To me, when the helmet came off it was beer time. I struggled with hopping out of the car knowing that I had to get back into it an hour or two later. I was also not that good with sharing the car with anybody; doing driver swaps just didn’t do it for me. I’d even struggle today at a grand prix when they have to get out of the car after the formation lap for the national anthem and all that carry-on.
My time with the Brothers Kremer was good. I liked the car and I really liked them and their approach to the sport. We thought the same way, we gelled. But that was it for me with them.
Later that year the World Sports Car Championship went to Australia for the first and only time, to race at Sandown – opposite the cemetery where Dad is buried. I was approached by Porsche in Germany to drive a works car in that race, again with Vern. I wasn’t as fit as I should have been for this sort of thing – I was up on the Gold Coast running car businesses. I said yes anyway.
I should have been on pole for that race, but I missed because of my own stupid mistake. They had the start-finish line in a different position to where they did the time for the laps. I’ve screamed past what I thought was the finish line, and then eased off with about another 150 metres to go to where they actually timed the lap. I ended up third quickest, which shows how quick I was. I was pretty shitty. I did take the lead off the start, but we had trouble during the race and dropped a few laps to finish in eighth.
For me, the race was more convenient than special. But I think it put a little wood under the fire – I knew I still had the urge. The question was always if I could apply myself. I felt I was now at that stage.
I had another run with Warren Cullen at Bathurst and I think the suspension was in the right way this time. We qualified just outside the top 10 and then had a trouble-free run into fourth behind the two biggest teams in the class – the Marlboro Holden Dealer Team (read Peter Brock) which got first and second and then Peter Stuyvesant International Racing (Allan Moffat). So that was a pretty good result, as was the brown paper bag.
I was selling Alfas on the Gold Coast and for 1985 an opportunity came up to race a V6 Alfa in the Australian Touring Car Championshi
p with Colin Bond. This was good for me, firstly because Colin is a great bloke and we got on so well, and secondly because it could blow the cobwebs out properly. You’re not in a Formula One car, but it’s better than just sitting in your lounge room, and I was doing it with number 27 on the door again.
We weren’t going to win the title, but we had a good shot at winning our class. Bondy had one GTV already and then he imported a second one for me from Luigi Racing, which always tickled my fancy a bit. It was a left-hooker while Colin drove the right-hand drive one – I figured mine came from Italy so it should have been better, but who knows.
The first two race meetings were at Winton and Sandown, two very different tracks. We started the season with a pair of fourths to many more powerful cars than us. The Alfa was a great car to drive for a touring car – you could throw it around and try all sorts of things. I had a great dice with Neville Crichton in a works BMW 635 at Wanneroo coming out of Kolb, which was the second last corner on the track and a big hairpin. He’d get about nine car lengths on me, but by the time he got down to turn 2 I was right up his arse again.
It was a real David and Goliath thing, which I really enjoyed as much as when I was running the V6 in Formula 5000 all those years ago. What it lacked in power it made up for under brakes and with handling. But quickly for me that season became a training run for a proper return to Formula One and I only did six of the nine rounds. I was leading my class when I bailed out and could have finished as high as third overall, which would have been amazing in that car and that field.
But no matter how much fun it was, it wasn’t Formula One. It wasn’t racing with big dollars and big stakes and uncompromised vehicles, and maybe I was ready for that again.
