AJ

by Alan Jones

  In touring racing in Australia at the time there were just too many idiots. People like Peter Wollerman. I just didn’t see why I had to be answerable to someone like him. I had a slight case of diarrhoea at Winton – you could say Winton gave me the shits but this time that would be unfair. I went into Benalla to get some tablets and I missed the drivers briefing because of that and he fined me. I threw the old force majeure at him, I was either going to shit my pants or I was going to go to Benalla to get the appropriate tablets. He didn’t care, he still fined me. A year or two later when we were having an argument over something else, he said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’ I had! He’s still around.

  It wasn’t like this in Europe. Mostly you’d get great people who were involved for the love of the sport – but then you’d get the dickheads.

  Anyway, I didn’t even get off the grid at Sandown 500 and the car sat there for the entire race at the side of the track. I was able to jump the fence to the pits and get out of the shit weather. We got 58 laps done at Bathurst after qualifying 11th. We weren’t really going all that well after a couple of extra pitstops when I was coming down to Forrest Elbow when I got stuck in the middle of a five-car crash. That was that.

  I walked away from that season and from full-time racing. I still enjoyed racing and I enjoyed driving fast, but as ever I didn’t enjoy it when it was a shitfight. I did three sets of endurance races with Anthony Tratt and that included a couple of extra races in the championship to get ready. We had no speed in 1999 and finished the Queensland 500 but then retired at Bathurst in the closing laps of the race. We finished neither race in 2000 and then finished both in 2001 – but we weren’t racing, we were making up the numbers.

  My final opportunity in V8 Supercars came up with Dick Johnson Racing and the chance to drive a Falcon with Greg Ritter while Paul Radisich and Steve Johnson ran the lead car. It was good to be back in a serious team. This was 2002, at the end of the era where the team was a powerhouse of the sport. Greg’s aspirations sometimes got a little bit in front of his ability, but we finished eighth at Queensland and seventh at Bathurst. Greg actually fell off the track near the end when he was trying to pass my old mate Larry Perkins, then he fell off again and lost a chunk of time, before deciding he wasn’t going to win and he just needed to get home before he put it in a wall.

  I never announced or even declared a retirement proper from racing. I would never close the door to a good opportunity if it came up, but I was now in my late 50s and knew I was stretching it. I just walked away from it, no fanfare, no farewell tour, just me being me and doing it my way.

  So in a very quiet and private way, that was it for my motor racing career as a driver.

  Weekend warriors

  One of the good things about Formula One is that you are removed from some of the day-to-day stuff, like scrutineering.

  When I was racing the Porsche with Alan Hamilton, we raced at Adelaide International Raceway and they scrutineered the car and deemed it to be something like a millimetre longer on one side than the other, and therefore illegal. I just shook my head and thought, ‘Fuck me, here we go, welcome to Australia.’

  Another time the splitter on my car was too sharp. The splitter is the aluminium part that comes out from underneath to create down force. You can take it out and put it in and that affects grip. It means you can play around with the car’s balance in corners. It was too sharp.

  I said, ‘Listen, if I hit you at a hundred and twenty miles an hour with a blunt one would that be better?’ Straight over his head, he had no idea. It was too sharp. Nowhere in the book does it say the degree of sharpness that your splitter must be. Once again it was old mate, with white overalls on saying, ‘By Christ, I’ve got some power this weekend.’

  I just shook my head. I think I might have even dropped the clutch and gone towards him, my foot must have slipped. And anyway, there’s nothing in the book to say you can’t do that, so long as I don’t hit him.

  At the time it felt like some of them just wanted to put me back in my box, and to say to their mates down at the pub, ‘I did this to Alan Jones, he’s such a wanker. Yep, put him in his place.’

  I had a few run-ins with that type of person. I don’t suffer fools, and I’ve met plenty of them.

  Vanilla

  I’d hate being a Formula One driver today. There’s too many corporate games, too much bullshit.

  I’ll give you an example. When I went to Shanghai for the very first Chinese Grand Prix in 2004 I did some laps. After I came back, I was speaking to a few of the drivers and I said, ‘It’s too samey. It’s got one hairpin, after hairpin, after hairpin, after hairpin.’ They agreed, it was a bit ordinary.

  Then you see them on TV. ‘Oh wonderful facility, great circuit.’ So I’d ask them why they said that. ‘Mate, I drive for X manufacturer and if I told the truth they’re going to get the shits because they’re trying to sell cars into China.’ I didn’t have to worry about any of that crap. You just told it the way it was. I think there’s not enough of that at the moment.

  Even when they get interviewed there’s always a girl next to them recording what they say. It’s got to that stage.

  Then if you do show a bit of personality, everyone gets stuck into you. It is all very controlled and wouldn’t suit me.

  You don’t see a lot of personality in any motorsport these days. Nelson Piquet jumped out of the car at Hockenheim and tried to kick Eliseo Salazar in the balls, which given his Brazilian background is not entirely surprising. Twenty years ago you had Tony Longhurst jumping out of his car to punch his teammate through the car window in Australian touring cars. It just doesn’t happen anymore.

  See, Bernie Ecclestone loved all that. The best thing that could have happened to Formula One in 2016 would have been a major blue on the podium between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. I mean a big punch-up. Bernie would have been over the moon.

  There’s just not enough controversy or personality to give it life outside the cars and the racing. It is all there, they’re just frightened to open their mouths. There’s some great personalities under those facades and that is the tragedy of it all.

  21

  Not a Racing Driver, Not a Journalist

  ONCE I CLOSED the door after getting out of a Formula One cockpit for the last time, plenty of other doors opened. One of those was to move straight into TV commentary in 1987 to work with the Nine Network on its motorsport, especially its Formula One coverage.

  I got to work with some characters there. That’s where I got to know Barry Sheene. And Big Daz, Darrell Eastlake. Daz was terrific to work with, a really nice bloke. He was bigger than big; he loved what he was doing and that came across in his commentary.

  Baz had you in fits of laughter all the time, he was such a character. For example, our studio set had all this sporting memorabilia in the background behind us. One day he draped a black bra over a tennis racquet and it was there for the duration of the show. That was typical of the pranks he used to get up to.

  I didn’t see myself as a journalist, I would never admit to that even if I was one. I was there for special comments and analysis. I really enjoyed it, which is why I still do it today. It combines really well with my work as an FIA steward at various grands prix, which keeps me in touch with people face-to-face a few times a year. You never want to be forgotten. I still enjoy going back to England for the Goodwood Festival of Speed, especially the two-kilometre Hillclimb race up Lord March’s driveway.

  There was always travel involved, but the travel was never anything like being a Formula One driver. A quick flight to Melbourne or Sydney is easy and generally involves at most one night away from home – and it’s in the same time zone.

  It was Channel Nine that really got this going, even though I am with Ten now. I got a phone call out of the blue from some suit at Nine, and I went down and met Kerry Packer. He had plans for the coverage with a lounge room with an open fire, and so we all ended up sitting around in these
chairs for a fireside chat – which worked well given it was the dead of winter and the middle of the night for most places in Australia. It’s a wonder he didn’t want us to smoke a pipe or something too.

  My task was, and remains, simple. My job is not to say that the red car passed the green car, or the blue car passed the white car. You can see that. My job is to try and explain why and how it happened. The other part of the job is to be able to furnish some extra information that no-one else knows, which might be information about a driver – like some habit or superstition he has – or a peculiarity of a track – like the sheets of rain across the top of Bathurst – or about the car – for example, that the driver is now trying to extend the life of the tyres rather than going for all out speed, which will cost him time if he has to make a pit stop to change tyres. Hopefully people can say more often than not, ‘I didn’t know that.’ If they do, I’ve done my job.

  It is also not my job to sit on the fence: I say it as I see it. Like Bathurst in 2016: for me Jamie Whincup just went for an open door. I would have done that every day of the week. Scott McLaughlin left the door open, Whincup’s going down there. Might have gone in a tad quick, might have slid a little bit more than what he would have liked to. Did go into the side of McLaughlin, but that’s human error; that’s called a mistake. Does he hold back and say I’d better not go for that gap just in case my car slides a little bit more than I anticipate? No way, you go in for it. Formula One’s heading a bit in this direction now. Everyone’s too shit scared to do anything for fear of a penalty. It’s all just ring-up-your-mother stuff. Just get on and do it.

  I think you have to ask what sort of motor racing do you want. I know what I want: racers, not people tippy-toeing around a track frightened to have a go.

  The sanitising of the sport gives me the shits almost as much as the politics. To some degree, the politics is inevitable. Apart from the paddock being made up of incredibly competitive people, there is so much money involved that there will always be people playing games. There was, and still is, and always will be, a them and an us. When I was racing it was probably a little bit more nationalistic; the French against the English, for example.

  Technically now the cars are a lot more sophisticated. Electronics is probably the biggest single difference. They’ve still got wishbones; they’ve still got discs; they’ve still got brake pedals. Some things do change: you brake with your left foot instead of your right foot, and you change gears with the things behind the steering wheel. Some things don’t: you’ve still got to take a 250 kilometres per hour corner at 250 kilometres per hour. If you take it at 251 you’re off into the boonies, and if you take it at 249 you lose time to your rivals.

  I think there is no doubt the modern Formula One car is easier to drive. But I’ll never find out, because I’ll never fit in one. Everyone tells me that they’re a lot easier to drive; in fact, they’re too easy. They get around faster; the times prove that. Take Monza which hasn’t changed much since my time: they are qualifying around 15 per cent faster than I was, and the race takes 10 minutes less over the same distance. A modern Formula One car has turned bigger circuits into what must feel like Monaco, because everything’s coming up that much more quickly.

  Even though the cars are that much faster, and they do it all on skinny little rubber too, they’re infinitely safer. There’s no doubt in my mind that if Fernando Alonso was in an aluminium monocoque car – as we were – at Albert Park, Melbourne at the beginning of 2016 he wouldn’t be with us now. The car would be a crumpled up piece of tissue paper; instead he was shaken a bit and able to climb out of it. The carbon-fibre cars are just amazing. In some cases now it is just whether the body and brain can cope with some of the g-loads in a crash.

  People were getting killed when I raced. Eight drivers I raced with or against lost their lives in a Formula One car. That’s my mate Brian McGuire, Tom Pryce, Mark Donohue, Ronnie Peterson, Patrick Depailler, Gilles Villeneuve, Elio De Angelis and Ayrton Senna. And my era was safer than the one before, when drivers died virtually every year and often more than one a year. Now, we’ve only had one death since Senna back in 1994.

  But I don’t ever sit back and think it would be nicer to race now, or it would have been better in the 1960s. I had my day in the sun and I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t change it for anything. I’ll always remember Stirling Moss coming up to me once and saying, ‘Oh you blokes are getting paid so much money now,’ blah, blah, blah. I thought, ‘Jesus, don’t ever let me turn into one of those.’ I love Stirling, don’t get me wrong, and me and Amanda, my second wife, get on really well with both him and Susie, but it made me think I never wanted to become one of those people who lamented what they had or didn’t have.

  And it balances out. If money is what counts, we were pretty much earning the equivalent of the guys today when you take everything into account. Formula One, for me, was never about the money. Overall my career may have been about money – whose isn’t – but not Formula One.

  When I was there I was going to make as much as possible, but money was not the motivation. Sure I would have jumped ship in 1981 if Frank Williams hadn’t agreed to what I wanted, but I wasn’t going to the back of the field to earn more money. Renault was up for it, and they had a good car. I always wanted a good and competitive car, and then I wanted as much money as I could get.

  Let’s keep things in perspective. I loved Frank, and I think he thought I was OK. But if I had killed myself in race three of the championship, Frank would have been looking for a driver for round 4. That’s it. That’s mercenary. That’s the business. They call it a sport, but it’s a bloody business. I always used to justify my stance because I thought Frank, like anyone else in pit lane, would be hunting for a new driver before they even thought of calling Bev.

  Bev and Christian were my responsibility and I wanted to make sure they were protected as much as possible. At Kyalami there’s a really quick right-hander coming onto the straight where Tom Pryce got killed. My left-hand rear wheel came off there once and I spun down the straight ending up almost where Frank was behind the pit wall. After I climbed out of the car I went up to him and said, ‘That’s why I want my money on time. If I’d just been killed then, would you have paid Beverley?’ I added, ‘Frank, no more, no less, just what I’m owed and on time.’

  I had a good wage in my later years of Formula One and I had some fabulous endorsements. ‘Akai’s okay, OK!’ I never understood, but as the cheques arrived it made enough sense. I was a member of the Marlboro World Championship team and that was a good earn too. And you never had to pay for much either; tennis racquets, watches, anything like that.

  In some ways I wasn’t ready for the money that came. George Robinson from Vegantune told me to get myself set up. ‘Get a solicitor, get a company all organised because if you go as well as I think you’re going to go, the money will come in very quick and you’ve got to be ready for it.’ I thought, yeah OK whatever, but he was right. I did get myself set up. I had a company that I drove for and that company had a bank account in Switzerland. The money used to be sent there and then went from there to another bank, and eventually got lost in the valleys of Switzerland. It was money earned overseas, so I wasn’t subject to tax when I came back to Australia. Life was pretty good.

  But people started taking advantage of me. Like Dad, I liked to help people. It started with Bob Jane and that T-Mart, when I naively thought we were doing each other a favour. He was giving me a T-Mart and I was giving him publicity.

  Of course to some people that’s not enough. They’ve got to screw you, that’s just their nature. I found plenty of people who would do that and I never really watched my back as much as I should have. Never got advice when I could have. Very impetuous, went into things probably a little too quickly. All the worst traits you can have in a businessman – I had them.

  If I died tomorrow without a penny to my name – and that won’t happen – I would not be the first ex-driver to go that way.
James Hunt died broke, for instance. He probably got scammed by some of the same people as me. Then somebody they scammed using your name comes knocking …

  Limited edition cars and boats, watches, jewellery and so on. I had a marine business called AJM, Alan Jones Marine, and we used to make boats called Fast Lane 40. For that they gave me a 40-foot boat, which was pretty slick. But I didn’t make anywhere near as much out of it as the others did.

  Another guy talked me into going into a business called Alan Jones Pit Stop, in competition with Bob Jane T-Mart. They bought a big ocean-going boat they called ‘AJ’ and kept in Sydney. When I went down to Sydney I had somewhere to stay and it was used to entertain … a completely unnecessary asset though. People like that were getting a lot of benefits out of the association, and using me.

  After I came back home in 1982 I had car dealerships. I had a Porsche and Alfa dealership as well, one of only two Honda ones in Australia that had power products, bikes, and cars. When I had the opportunity to go back to Formula One, I got a childhood mate of mine to come in and run it. I gave him a percentage of the business too, and the opportunity to work his way up to 49 per cent. All he had to do was keep his horns in and keep it flowing. This Honda dealership in particular was going to grow, even if Porsche and Alfa might have struggled.

  Then as soon as I went overseas he went berserk and ended up getting himself a race car. He bought a Ferrari and said he got it cheap and he’d be able to sell it for a profit, when in actual fact it was for him to prance around the Gold Coast in. Then I got a phone call from a guy who I had befriended at Borg Warner Finance, who financed all our stock. He called up one day and started with, ‘I don’t want to worry you, but …’ The last thing I wanted to do was worry. When I did that deal I didn’t want to be worried about business while I was over there racing in Formula One.