THE PHONE RANG one day back in London and it was Luca di Montezemolo, then the manager of the Scuderia Ferrari, its Formula One team. He asked me if I wanted to come down to Italy and talk about driving for Ferrari. I think you know the answer.
He said, ‘We must keep this very secret because we don’t want people to know.’ That is – he didn’t want the nineteen other drivers he was talking to to find out. ‘You will meet Mr Ferrari,’ he told me, ‘and he will ask you a series of questions, starting with why you want to drive for him. You will need to have your answer ready.’ Personally, I thought it was pretty obvious what my answer would be.
The whole world knew Ferrari was looking for a new driver to replace Niki, who was leaving to join Brabham, so when I arrived at Milan airport people were looking at me and pointing. At that stage the championship was still running, but Niki was looking good and eventually did win it.
Knowing they wanted it secret, I was all prepared for some cloak-and-dagger stuff – remember, I was a Shadow driver. I walked into the airport hall – and there was a driver waiting for me in blue overalls with a sign over his head saying ‘Alan Jones’. He led me to a Ferrari outside with Prova number plates – which meant it was some sort of experimental model. This was the Italian way of keeping something secret!
There are two things about Italy that make it such a great place. One is that Formula One is a national pastime; two, nothing stirs their hearts more than Ferrari. People were whispering as I passed them. Driving for Ferrari was important to the nation – which only made my desire for this drive grow.
So I’ve jumped into the passenger seat of the Ferrari and he’s taken off like a rocket, passing trams and trains on the wrong side. I am not a good passenger at the best of times, but I was quite looking forward to actually meeting Mr Ferrari and in the end I said, ‘Mate, slow down.’
You could just hear him thinking, ‘What is this fucking Australian doing here? Like I should be going to talk about a test drive. I’ll show him I can drive.’
Amazingly, we did make it to Maranello, which is normally a good two-and-a-half hour drive, in what felt like ninety minutes. At the factory I was met by Piero Lardi, who I didn’t realise then was Ferrari’s illegitimate son to an actress named Lina Lardi. He was driving a little Fiat so I just thought he was some shitkicker from the factory there to entertain me for a bit. Turns out he was Ferrari’s only son, the other having died long ago. So when the old man died, Piero inherited 10 per cent – which was worth US $1.1 billion when the company went public in 2015.
Anyway, Piero took me for a tour and it blew me away. Once I saw all their facilities, I just couldn’t believe that they didn’t win every race: with their own foundry, their own private circuit, their megabucks. It was so different from the teams I had been with that were just scratching around trying to get enough new bits to go racing.
Yes, I did want this drive.
From there we went over the road to the private track, Fiorano, to meet the Old Man. We went in through the security gates and up to his casa. There were big double doors, and I was left there waiting outside for a bit. In the end the doors opened and he was sitting behind his desk with all the mementos on the wall, and dramatically lit, like a movie. To me, he was this god-like figure known as Enzo Ferrari. My first impression was how very pale he looked. ‘He’s dead,’ I thought. ‘They’ve propped him up and they’ve got a recording of his voice coming from behind a curtain.’ If I hadn’t known he was Enzo Ferrari, I don’t think I would have been greatly impressed.
He was friendly enough in the ten minutes we spent together, but the only question of his I remember was, ‘Why do you want to drive for Ferrari?’
‘Please sir, I’d like to be World Champion, that’s why.’ May as well get to the point.
After I had my ten minutes with him, we went for a look at Fiorano. I mean Ferrari had its own test track! I knew it, but I couldn’t get over it. At that stage they were the only Formula One team that had anything like telemetry – remote monitoring of all performance data – in as far as they had lights at the beginning of the corner, the middle of the corner, and the exit. They could measure when they made a change on the car whether it changed the speed on entering, leaving or going through the corner. Again, I thought, ‘How do they ever get beaten?’
All they had to do to win was bring every driver down there for a look and they’d be psyched out.
‘So, Alan, if you get the drive, would you be prepared to live in Italy?’ I wasn’t sure if Piero was just making idle chat and if it was important to answer him at all. I felt like saying, ‘Listen, I’ll live at the North Pole if I can race for a team like this.’ I was a little more straight with my response.
My last visit was to the accounting department where we discussed the terms of a contract and so on and they gave me a contract to sign, which I did. Then they told me, ‘We must warn you that we are looking to hire a North American driver because it helps our sales in North America. We are talking to Mr Andretti. But if we can’t get Mr Andretti, you will be our driver.’
‘OK, I understand.’
So now all I had to do was wait. And wait I did. When I picked up a copy of Motoring News and the headline on the front cover read ‘Andretti Re-signs to Lotus’, I thought, ‘Yes, I’m a Ferrari driver.’ I went back home and started packing, well, mentally at least. A couple of days went by. I didn’t hear from them, and I started to wonder.
I eventually rang them to see when I was expected in Italy. The response was sharp. ‘Well, you know how we told you we wanted a North American driver?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, we have signed Mr Villeneuve.’
‘But, hang on, you told me that if Mr Andretti didn’t sign …’
‘Yes, but we also told you we wanted a North American driver.’
I said, ‘Well, what do I do with my contract?’ I think the response was as clear as ‘I’d stuff it up your backside’. I wish I still had that contract!
Gilles actually ran the last two races of the season with Ferrari. I knew I had to work out something from my other options. Don Nichols was keen to keep me at Shadow, and I would do that if I didn’t get something better. I liked it there, but we weren’t going to beat Ferrari in a fair fight. If I didn’t know that before, I did now.
The conversations between Don and myself had reached the point where I had to tell him, ‘Never mind arguing about how much money I’m going to get next year. How about paying me what you owe me from this year?’
The other serious option was Williams. My chats with Frank Williams were hush-hush too, because he was talking to others, like Gunnar Nilsson, and he wanted to be in control. He also knew I’d been in discussions with Ferrari, and he said to me, ‘If you can drive for Ferrari, I think you should, because I can’t offer you that sort of drive at the moment; but if it all falls through, come back to me.’
Frank had plans. They’d been a struggling team up to this point, but he had a plan that I liked, and he was right, he wasn’t Ferrari. No-one was. As soon as Ferrari told me that they’d signed Villeneuve, I was on the phone to him – not that I told him I’d missed out there. We arranged to meet on the side of the motorway so he could take me up to the factory at Didcot. It’s one of those typical small English villages near Oxford, only this one had an industrial area and a power plant. We used to call it Dead Cat.
Frank took me on a tour and then I met the team’s designer, Patrick Head, who showed me the FW06, which was the first car that Patrick and Frank built together. It was a pretty little car, very straightforward with Cosworth power. But the thing that impressed me more than anything was that it had Saudia written all over it. At that point petro-dollars were swilling all around Europe, and anything Saudi was the flavour of the month – they were the boys with the money.
The plan for 1978 was to run as a one-car team and then in 1979 add an extra car. We were all about the same age, and I really got on well with Patrick. He impressed me like you wouldn’t believe. He was very down to earth. It felt right – we could be honest with each other and get this thing moving. His ego was under control, even if mine wasn’t.
When we were looking at the drawings I did the old, ‘Ah, it’s beautiful. Jesus, I reckon this thing could win races.’ I could see Patrick’s chest getting bigger. Then I left and went home with my fingers crossed … I had a good feeling and I wanted to get that drive.
I don’t know whether it was days or weeks, but Frank rang and said, ‘Do you want to come up and talk terms?’ So I did, and I was a Williams driver for 1978 and beyond. It felt right. By signing Villeneuve, Ferrari had done me the biggest favour of my life.
AJ by Frank Williams, 1981
The first thing I had on my mind when I formed Williams Grand Prix Engineering was to find a good professional driver. We weren’t over-ambitious; we couldn’t afford to be. We didn’t go after Niki Lauda or Jody Scheckter: they were beyond our reach, both financially and in terms of their status in what we conceived of as a small, highly-professional team.
We wanted work rather than glamour; we wanted the sort of pro who, if the car finished races, would bring us results. AJ was on the list; so were Gunnar Nilsson and Jochen Mass. All three of them good, solid drivers.
It was no piece of exceptional judgement or foresight or intuition on my part. AJ knows perfectly well I didn’t rate him that highly when he joined us; I acknowledge that we were lucky he became available at just the right moment. But I had no idea he would be as good as he is. His brief from me was simple: ‘Don’t crash our cars, for we can’t afford that many spares; finish in the points and work hard to help us develop our new car.’
I admit, too, that I had almost no picture of his character when he joined us: I’d neither really spoken to him, beyond saying hello, nor spent any time with him. It wasn’t until September of 1977, when we started negotiating with him, that I got a picture of his true character: he was as thorough in that as he has been in everything else. And as honest.
I wasn’t at his first race in Argentina, but at the second, in Brazil, he was already eighth on the grid. I was both surprised and pleased by that. But it was at Long Beach that I first saw how ultra-competitive he was. He’d had a bad practice and was 17th on the grid, but when the race started, he passed car after car.
I remember turning to Patrick and saying, ‘I don’t mind if we don’t finish; I’ve had my money’s worth, because he’s not just a good driver, he’s an exciting driver.’ And I hadn’t been excited by a driver’s performance in many years. He could have won that race if his car hadn’t broken down. But I found out then what he has since confirmed time and time again: that he’s the sort of driver who puts in the fast laps you need. He responds best when he’s really got to hang it out.
It soon became obvious that AJ would be a frontrunner and that we’d got more than we bargained for. Being the good businessman he is, AJ realised that too: at the end of the season, he put his price up. I won’t say I didn’t mind paying more, but I will say he’s been worth every penny.
As the team has matured, so has AJ; he’s always been a stable driver but he has become quicker and better; it isn’t merely that he has more experience, it’s also that his mental attitude is much more suited to the task at hand and his intelligence begins to prevail over his instincts. There isn’t time in running a team, raising its money, overseeing a manufacturing force and maintaining contact with our sponsors, for AJ and I to socialise that much. I enjoy seeing him and he’s always good for laughs. Being in America a while improved his one-liners and he’s a funny man anyway; but also a private one, which is perhaps why he hasn’t yet hit the public consciousness the way James Hunt did.
I soon enough found out I had the best driver in the world, the most complete, the most competitive and the most meticulous. He also has this natural force when it comes to driving: he’s on the mark from the start, he’s single-minded about being best. He doesn’t waste our time and I think our job is not to waste his.