by Alan Jones
I first met him when I was driving for Shadow and after I won in Austria I started doing Can-Am for them. Patrick Tampax – Tambay – was driving the Carl Haas Lola T332 or whatever it was. At Riverside in my second outing in the Shadow, I put it on the front row beside Patrick. I think I led for a while, the bodywork scraping and everything, and most people knew that it shouldn’t have been there in the lead.
I knew Patrick from doing a few other bits and pieces in Europe, so I went up to the motorhome, I was having some sandwiches with him and I said, ‘Patrick, another C&C, eh?’ They all looked up. I said, ‘Cruise and collect,’ and I said it loud enough for a reason.
When Patrick left Carl to do McLaren in 1978, Carl offered me the drive. I hadn’t signed a deal with Frank at the time and really only had Shadow as a firm offer, so I signed up and did a year of C&C with him. When I eventually signed with Frank I told him about the deal, and he was OK so long as I could manage it.
At the first race meeting in the car, the president of First National City, the chief sponsor, was there, and he was doing the barbecuing. Typical American, you could hear him from the other side of the river. He said, ‘Where are you from, boy?’ I said, ‘London.’
‘Oh, London, Ontario.’
‘No, London, England.’
‘Oh, my, God, how do you manage that?’
‘Well, it’s a bit of a hassle. It means I’ve got to fly over here and do a Can-Am race and I’ve got to fly back and do a grand prix.’
‘Why don’t you take Concorde?’
I had to explain to him I couldn’t afford that yet and he got on to Carl. ‘Hey, Carl, we got to get this boy on Concorde.’ Carl said, ‘Well, you pay for it, and we’ll do it no dramas.’
Of course, being a barbecue with 100 people around, ‘Yeah, whack this boy on Concorde.’
From that time on, I used to fly Concorde backwards and forwards. The Concorde lounge at Heathrow used to open up about an hour-and-a-half before departure. It was like the opening of a Myer sale, I’d be at the doors ready to go. They had three phones and you could phone anywhere in the world and they had all these little canapés full of caviar, which I love. I’d be on the starting blocks and as soon as the doors opened, whoosh, I was in. The flight itself was only three-and-a-half hours and then I’d get a connection to wherever, and then on Monday morning I’d fly back and get a connection home. It really did help a lot.
The Can-Am thing was quite small. We had Jim Hall, who was a very well-known engineer and designer in the States, Carl and Bernie, his wife, and the three mechanics. They had a nice transporter and the car was always immaculate and had very good engines, obviously, and we got the job done.
Like Frank, Carl was able to come to grips with the fact that his racing career was over. But he had knowledge, he knew what to do and he understood the driver and his role. We got the job done and I enjoyed my time with him then. I wasn’t so happy with the Beatrice thing, but it didn’t change my relationship with him.
Bernie Ecclestone
Bernie is a terrific bloke. He has a wonderful sense of humour, which is probably not apparent to the public. I like spending time with him.
He is a man of his word too, which I admire. If Bernie shakes your hand, that’s it, it’s binding, and he expects it to be the other way around as well. Which is good for me since that is the way I like the world to run.
There’s some great stories about Bernie, and as far as I can tell they are all true. I went to a function in Melbourne with Amanda and she said to him, pity the grand prix is on such and such a date, it clashes with something I’ve got to do in Queensland. Bernie said, ‘I’ll go change it for you. We’ll change the date.’ I think Amanda believed him for a little while, even though I was kicking her in the ankles. He was very convincing.
Not that changing a GP date was beyond him. For the first Hungarian Grand Prix, 1986, the country was still under Communist rule. When they had a date locked in some clowns over there saw an opportunity. They went out and booked all the hotel rooms of any note in Budapest, and then thought they’d charge a premium for each room and make a tidy little profit.
Bernie apparently found out about all of this, got his men to go to the hotels and say, ‘We had a conference here last year, we were very happy with it, very happy. If possible we’d like to book the whole hotel out to such and such a date.’ Which was a different week, and when he had all the hotels tied up he then changed the date of the Hungarian Grand Prix and left his communist mates with about a $150,000 bill for the rooms. He was very sharp in business, I’m not sure anyone could outdo him.
There’s another famous story. We were in Brazil, down by the pool and it was one of the rare times I was poolside since we often had a couple of weeks to kill before the race. A lot of the drivers were seeing how far they could swim underwater. Bernie just quietly piped up and said, ‘You’re all bloody idiots, I could do three laps underwater easily.’ Which was more than any of them.
I said, ‘You’re kidding, no way in the world.’ He said, ‘All right, I’ll bet you $100 each.’ As soon as he got the $100 from each of us in his hand, he said, ‘Herbie, go and get the snorkel and flippers.’ He was underwater, so we had to pay up. That’s the way he thinks, he is so clear and so quick. He’s a lateral thinker, that’s for sure. He won the bet and said thank you.
He was terrific for the sport too – he turned it into the biggest regular sporting event on the planet. The Olympic Games come around every four years, World Cup soccer the same. Grands prix come every couple of weeks and have just as many people watching. An extraordinary achievement.
He’s also the one that kept demanding that the promoters upgrade the facilities. Before that we used to operate out of a side-awning of the team truck. That wasn’t good enough for him. He’s been responsible for making Formula One what it is, and it will be interesting to see where it heads without him at the helm.
20
Racing After F1
I WANTED TO keep earning money after Formula One – I quite like the stuff. I lined up some TV work with the Nine Network doing special comments for its Formula One coverage, and I went racing in Japan.
Not long after I landed back in Australia I got a phone call from John Wickham. I knew John from my days fooling around with March and then from around the paddock with other Formula One teams in which he was involved. In 1987 he had taken up a position with TOM’S GB in the UK, which was like a division of Toyota that built the serious race cars.
Strangely, it was this arm of Toyota that was to run sportscars in the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship, and he wanted me to race for them. The thing that turned me on a bit there was that it’s only a seven-hour flight from the Gold Coast or Brisbane and there’s only a one-hour time difference, so there’s no jet lag. There was plenty of yen involved too.
So I went up and did a deal with them to race the Toyota 87C, and for a couple of races in the TOM’S Toyota Supra in touring cars. The thing that I both love and hate about the Japanese is that they are always looking for something new and a way to innovate. But not all new ideas are good ideas …
I turned up for my first race with the team at Fuji and I was partnering Geoff Lees. I don’t like sharing, but I do like yen. I looked at the car for the first time and the rear wing was down and forward, and I asked Geoff why the wing was there. ‘Isn’t it the same regs as Europe?’ He said, ‘Oh, AJ, don’t go there. If you can get them to shift that wing, you’re a better man than me.’
I went out and did some laps in the car and came in to chat with the engineer. ‘Why is the wing there?’
‘Designer,’ was the one word response.
‘Yeah, but why is it there?’
‘Designer.’
‘Hmm, okay.’ I said, ‘Can we try it up and back?’
Then, after much sucking through teeth and carrying on, which they’re given to do, I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay for the bracket.’ Of course, that was it, as soon a
s you might be seen to lose face they would burst into action. ‘Put the wing at the furthest point back that we’re allowed and the highest point up that we’re allowed. If it’s no quicker, or I don’t like it, you’ll never hear me utter a word about the rear wing again.’
Anyway, TOM’S made an aluminium wing stay and we were instantly quicker by some margin, and about nine times more comfortable to drive. The wing stayed in that position, for the domestic championship.
I finished third with Geoff at that first round, but we knew we had some work to do if we were going to beat the Porsches, even if they weren’t Brothers Kremer cars. We were a minute behind second after 500 kilometres, so that wasn’t too bad for a first race in a new car. A few weeks later we blitzed the field at Fuji and won a 1000-kilometre race by five laps from a Porsche spearheaded by Vern Schuppan. I still had Geoff with me for that race, but we also had Masanori Sekiya with us, which was good because it meant less work for me.
We also went to Le Mans for me to do what I said I would never do again – funny how money can make me do silly things. I started the car and before the first pitstop it ran out of fuel on the track and that was it … shower, change and out of there. We were more than 12 seconds off the top qualifying pace there, and qualified 14th, so we knew we had some work to do if we were going to match the best in the world when it came to hitting 420km/h. We didn’t.
Back in Japan we had trouble at the next Fuji race, which strangely was a 500-mile affair, and didn’t do enough laps to be classified. I missed the next race and the final race of the domestic series, but ran the World Sports Prototype Championship round at Fuji in October. I was given the heads-up before I arrived: ‘We have a special lightweight car for this.’ I gave them all the right words of encouragement because they knew as well as I did that we were racing against Jaguars and Porsches that made us look silly at Le Mans, but then we also knew Fuji was a different story.
So I front up to Fuji and look at my lightweight racer and guess where the rear wing was? Down and forward. I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Lightweight car.’ I know this sounds incredible to believe. I used to come back and tell stories and people would say, ‘Oh, Alan, that’s impossible. These are the people that make Sony and everything.’ But it was true.
I said, ‘Now hang on, it’s a lightweight car, but the aerodynamics …’ I mean, I couldn’t believe it. I’m not all that clever in any of this, but I just know that if the regulations allow you to take advantage of something, you do it. ‘Can you put the brackets on, please, and put it back where we had it before.’ ‘Hmm.’ Sucking through teeth, looking at each other. ‘The bracket’s back in Tokyo.’ I said, ‘Right. Well you’d better get somebody to go and get it, because I’m not driving, unless it’s on.’ I’m sure most of the guys in that team hated me, but I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself for them.
TOM’S duly went and got the brackets, and we led that race for a while after qualifying second, in front of all the works Porsches and Jaguars. Just before half distance we had electrical issues from something in the wiring loom. Carrying on the conversation from the start of the weekend, I told them they would need another gaijin for the next season, because I wasn’t going to do it. I put up with Surtees and his shit because it was Formula One, and I even walked away from that. This didn’t really matter that much to me and I didn’t need the aggravation.
But you don’t give them the arse, they give you the arse. Loss of face. They said, ‘You want more money.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I’d have to give half to a psychiatrist anyway.’ ‘You want a psychiatrist?’ I said, ‘No. See, this is what I mean? This is why I want to leave.’
Anyway, guess what? Next morning I turn up, there’s a sport psychiatrist there. I went, ‘Geez, this is ridiculous.’ I did the race, and at the end of that stint, I just said, ‘No. I’m out of here.’ I couldn’t stand it. You’d go to a debrief. There’d be 130 of them in a garage, all smoking. It was freezing cold outside, so they’d all have parkas on. Then you’d get the report from one of the 130 and it would take 10 minutes to say how he’s going to get down on his left knee and use his index finger and thumb to undo the valve cap. Like, who gives a fuck? You just wasted 10 minutes on explaining how he’s going to do the valve cap. Please, just say, ‘Matsu, you’re going to do the valve cap.’ That’s it.
In the end it was driving me nuts, I had to say, ‘I’ll be wherever, hopefully a warm motorhome, if you want my input or you want to just come and get me.’ That sort of ended my career with TOM’S.
What a nightmare. There were so many little things that I thought were holding them back. The lightweight car had a gull-wing door. I lifted up the gull-wing door to stand on the sill to hop in, as you do, and my foot’s gone straight through the sill. Light fucking weight? It was tissue paper. It’s gone straight through.
‘Oh, very big problem.’
We used to take the piss out of them, literally. You’d go to Fuji and you’d go to Suzuka and everything would be different. Go to Fuji, you’d have to stand on your right foot, with your left foot bent up with both hands over your eyes for five seconds before you got in the car, because that was what you did at Fuji. Then you had to do a urine test to check everything was OK, and then you had to grip something to prove to them that you’ve got power in your hands. That was just basically showing, I suppose, you could hang on to the steering wheel.
Then you go to Suzuka, and it’d be the left foot. We used to say, ‘Ah, Fuji, left foot circuit.’ For our urine test, we used to go into the toilet and all the gaijins, Geoff Lees and all the boys, we’d swap our piss and see if they worked it out.
Vern had a T-shirt made. They have these things on the back of their cars, particularly the touring cars. ‘We are friends joining hands over the bridge of freedom,’ or stuff along those lines. So Vern had this white T-shirt made with a red circle and all these teeth, saying ‘We are friends … We are across the water to be on the boat with you.’ We read it and would say, ‘Fuck, what is that?’ They were rapt though, they wanted to buy them.
You talk to anyone that raced there or for the Japanese you get the same stories. They’re excellent at building things, but no good for instant decisions: they’ll go to a board room with a hundred people and take four days to make a decision. The old gaijins will make a snap decision, say, ‘Right, that’s it, boys. Let’s get on with it. Let’s do it.’
It didn’t suit me and the way I liked to operate.
That said, the Supra was actually quite a nice car and because it was a touring car there were enough restrictions to not have the same issues as the sports prototype. I co-drove with Eje Elgh at Sugo and Geoff was running in another car with Kauro Hoshino. Sugo is a lovely circuit, on the northern island of Japan, nice big sweeping corners that suited me. We started on the front row and won the race from a BMW.
The internal politics were interesting. There was TRD and TOM’S, and while both cars were entered under the TOM’S banner, Eje and I actually raced the TRD-prepared car. When we beat the TOM’S car, which didn’t even finish, you’d reckon a Nissan had won by the level of drama. Anyway, we won and that was it.
We ran the next round of the Japanese touring cars at Suzuka, the Super Final as they called it. We finished sixth there and just couldn’t repeat the speed we had at Sugo. There was one final outing for me in that car, which was at Macau, and that was a very different story to the tracks in Japan. The Supra had such a long wheelbase I thought I was going to have to do a three-point turn at Melco.
Because the race was just a week after the final round of the World Touring Car Championship in Japan, all the big guns from Schnitzer BMW and the like were there, and that is a track that was great for those little M3s. The old Supra wasn’t the best car for that track, but I had fun until the turbo let go.
With Toyota done, I still wanted to keep my bum in a car. I still wanted to be waiting for the light or the flag to drop and racing. Then being able to come home on Monday. Whatever I did also
had to work with the TV commentary I was doing with Nine, which meant my only real option was touring car racing in Australia.
Now touring cars are pretty much the exact opposite of Formula One or sports prototypes. Those have been built specifically to do a job while the touring car has been altered to do a similar job. One is a thoroughbred race horse and the other is a draft horse. You can still ride them, but it’s just a little different.
The sensations are different and to me not as enjoyable, but when you are racing you almost forget the compromises in the machinery because it is all about the bloke next to you. You’re waiting for the lights to change, whizzing off the grid and you’re racing. You’ve got people around you and you’re racing them and when you win it’s very satisfying, no matter what car you’re in.
Or even what sort of vehicle, in fact. I won a celebrity lawn-mower race in the Czech Republic when we went there with the A1s. It was a big slalom course on a tarmac and I won a bloody big ride-on lawn mower, which I donated to charity. Anyway, I still enjoyed riding it and I was over the moon because I’d won.
I didn’t have much lined up for 1988, but I had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to race touring cars if I wanted to keep racing. It was the only thing in Australia where there was any money, and I was done with the international thing.
I drove a Ford Sierra with Colin Bond in the Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship late in the year where we finished second overall, even though we didn’t run at Fuji along with most of the rest of the Australian teams. The other three rounds were Bathurst, Wellington and Pukekohe.
