WHEN THE SEASON started in Buenos Aires, Argentina in January, we were still in the old car while plenty of others had jumped into new ground-effects cars and the season would be decided by when and how well each team introduced its new Lotus-busting cars. Lotus were the leaders of ground effects, and while Ligier and Tyrrell were really good at the start of the season, the rest of us would switch as the year progressed.
Some others had much-improved engines even if they didn’t have new cars yet, so we just had to be patient, which is not a virtue of mine. We were miles off the pace. Jackie the Foot in a Ligier smashed the qualifying record as we qualified down in 15th.
There was a big crash on the first lap, which took a whole bunch of the quick qualifiers out of the race and it was red-flagged. I managed to pull up on the grid while others went into the pit lane, so I just sat there in my car as I liked to do until I realised the wait was going to be more than an hour. The second part of the race was nothing special for me and I finished a lap down on Jacques Laffite in ninth.
Two weeks later we were back at the Interlagos circuit in Brazil, which is a great track that I never went well at. No idea why; it should have suited me, but it didn’t. Filling in time with the old car still, 13th on the grid turned into a DNF with fuel-pressure problems.
A month later we made it to South Africa after the battle between FOCA and FISA threatened the race for a while. Jean-Marie Balestre, the Frenchman who headed FISA, was rearing his ugly head and taking the focus off the racing and putting it firmly on himself. Ferrari had its new ground-effects car in South Africa and dominated the race with a one-two. Renault in its little way also showed turbo power was going to become a threat to all of us with a pole position, but as ever the engines weren’t that strong and detonated in the races.
My weekend was a miserable 19th on the grid and a DNF when the rear suspension failed in the race, and to me it was simply a matter of when could I get into the new car. Unfortunately that answer was when the European season started for round 5 in Spain, but not after we bid farewell to the FW06 with a podium in Long Beach.
That was just one of those days, and it was the sort of track where I could muscle my way around the track. Tenth in qualifying was certainly OK compared with where we had been. There were three attempts to start the race, which is not good for a Formula One car. The Ferraris of Villeneuve and Jody Scheckter were in another league that day and they sprinted away for an easy one-two, but behind them it was on.
I showed enough patience to get the old girl into a good position, then I harried those in front and jumped at any gap. First it was Patrick Depailler, then Mario and then Jarier … and with less than 20 laps to run I had climbed to third. I stayed there comfortably clear of Mario, far enough behind Jody not to even dream of challenging for second.
Straight after this race we went to Ontario Motor Speedway to test the new FW07 for the first time. This day changed my world. I’d sat in the car before, but it had never turned a wheel.
I went out for those first few laps and I just couldn’t believe it. I came back and said, ‘Jesus, it’s no wonder Andretti’s winning these races. I tell you. It stuck like shit to a blanket.’ The downforce was unbelievable. I was staggered at how deep I could go into the corners and how early I could get onto the power.
As a driver I needed to start reassessing a few things. Commitment into the corner was one, because this was so different – you could almost brake into the apex with the car, and then you’re no sooner off the brakes and you’re on it. I thought I had a weapon to unleash on the Formula One world when we got back to Europe.
I still to this day don’t know if it was just a car that suited me and my aggressive driving style, or if it really was just that good a car. Perhaps it was both, but regardless I was now excited about the rest of the season, even if I was starting from well behind the pack. Jacques and Gilles both had two wins by that stage of the season and Gilles led with 20 points. I had four. Mind you, at this stage of the season my new teammate, Clay Regazzoni, had no points and I was out-qualifying and out-racing him, which was my first measurable.
I knew I could do it as a driver. We would have won races in the FW06 if those Lotuses hadn’t have been around and we didn’t have so many mechanical problems. But 07 was just such a good car I knew if we could make it last we could win some races. Sometimes you hop in a car and you just feel at home … this was one of those cars.
My first race in the 07 was at Jarama in Spain, but we weren’t the only team with new cars to start the European part of the season. Lotus and Renault also had new cars and McLaren had made massive changes to its car after it was hopelessly off the pace.
It was a tough weekend with issues all over the place and my qualifying position was no better than I was getting in the old car, and then I had trouble with the gearbox in the race. Clay started one spot behind me on the grid and retired a few laps earlier than I did, so it wasn’t the best way to debut a new car, especially compared with Lotus, who got both cars on the podium.
Zolder was better a couple of weeks later. I qualified fourth which was my best ever qualifying result. It was a strange field in some ways with people changing cars around all the time. Mario, for instance, went back to the old Lotus for this race. Jacques had pole with his teammate Depailler beside him. Nelson Piquet was in third and on the second row with me.
Laffite got away poorly and I jumped both him and Piquet off the start. The front row got away and Patrick and I went into first and second, with Jacques dropping down to fourth, he soon passed Nelson and closed in on me. With Jacques closing in on me, I needed to get past Patrick. I pulled beside him in front of the pits but just couldn’t clear him going into Earste. I got onto the kerbs a bit on the outside and I left it open for Jacques, who went by and dropped me to third.
Jacques took the lead a few laps later and then I eventually got by Patrick. We were so quick when there was no traffic that I closed in on Jackie the Foot quite quickly. My tyres were in pretty good shape and I think the Ligiers were struggling. Jacques was struggling for grip and twitching. I think he missed a gear and that was enough for me and I swept by into the lead. The two Ligiers weren’t helping each other and I pulled a really good lead.
I led for 16 laps and was extending the lead on each lap when some stupid little mechanical and electrical problem stopped the car on the exit to Bolderberg. Our team had sent a message that we were quick. It was a shame; that would have been Frank’s first grand prix victory, without a doubt.
Remember, at this stage the team was really only a year old and was a minnow compared with teams like Lotus, Ferrari, Ligier and the like. After that day in Belgium it wasn’t just the other teams we sent a message to – we sent one to ourselves as well … we knew we now had the equipment to do the job.
The 50th running of the Monaco Grand Prix was the next race. We qualified only ninth. I was second by mid-race when I clipped a wall and broke the steering. Clay was having a great run in the other car, and by the last lap he was challenging for the lead despite having a gearbox issue. Perhaps without that he could have passed Scheckter’s Ferrari and won the race, but second was a great result for the team. After Monaco, James Hunt quit the sport. He was replaced by Keke Rosberg.
The Swedish Grand Prix was supposed to be next, but the organisers ran out of money. With Ronnie’s death last season and local hero Gunnar Nilsson dead from cancer (there was a time trial event at Donington in his honour around that time, which I won), the Swedish appetite for our sport waned fast. So the French Grand Prix at Dijon was next. Patrick Depailler, meanwhile, had broken both his legs in a hang-gliding crash.
Because the gap between the two races was a good month, we went and did some testing at Dijon. Frank organised for Frank Ifield, the singer, to come down with us in a Beechcraft King Air plane hired for the trip. We came in over the road to land at the grass field, and the pilot put the bloody thing in reverse thrust before it even touched the ground. That’s how short the runway was. I was too busy playing with my new Rolex at that stage to notice though. I was so happy I couldn’t have given a rat’s about anything else.
When race weekend came around, I reckon Renault had invested everything it had to win. The cars were rockets and Jean-Pierre Jabouille won the race from pole. He didn’t have it all his way, my old mate Gilles Villeneuve heading him for most of the race. Gilles joined the two Renaults on the podium and I was fourth, more than 20 seconds away from the wheel-banging last lap by René Arnoux and Gilles.
It was the first win for a turbo-charged car in Formula One. Those Renaults were so fast in a straight line – it was just as well they were so unreliable.
After France, Patrick Head had found a little aluminium thing – I told you I wasn’t technically minded – that he put at the back of the car. I could feel an immediate difference in the downforce, and it chopped 0.4 seconds off my lap time at Silverstone. Leading into the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, which in the absence of a race in Australia I rated as my home grand prix, we were quickest in testing.
I got my first pole position in Formula One by six-tenths of a second over Jabouille in a Renault. That kind of gap was pretty rare and it kind of came from nowhere. If we thought the FW07 was quick before, now it was a real weapon.
The Renaults at that stage were turning up the wick for qualifying and then winding it back to try and survive a race, which made the gap even more significant. They were amazingly quick in that qualifying trim, and on a fast track like Silverstone we had thought going in we had no chance for pole. At most tracks they would out-qualify us and have their own little battle for pole. Which never worried us, because we knew they’d have to come back to us in the races, and there are no points for pole.
For me getting my first pole was a strange feeling. By that stage, without wanting to sound big-headed, I was where I thought I should have been. I wasn’t all that elated. I remember Frank saying to me, ‘AJ, you don’t seem very excited. You don’t …’ I said, ‘Frank, it’s because I should have had more of these.’
Any driver must believe that given the same equipment he can beat anybody else, otherwise why do it? I had that belief, but I always tried not to mouth off, not to show that belief as arrogance – because I don’t like mouths. But deep down you know, and maybe within your family circles you’ll talk, but that’s all. These days a lot of sportsmen like to mouth off – like that tennis player Nick Kyrgios. They piss me off. I would be mortified if anyone ever thought of me like that.
Yet I was accused of arrogance. There used to be prizes given out by the French journalists – the Prix Orange and the Prix Citron. The Prix Orange was given to the driver that was the most cooperative with the press; the Prix Citron was for the one who wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t provide a headline, who left them with a sour taste. I was awarded the Prix Orange in 1979 and then the Citron in 1980. Problem was, I just didn’t have the time in 1980. My attitude didn’t change, but the amount of time I had at the track did.
I wasn’t there for fun. I was there to win. I never used to take golf clubs or lounge around by the pool (I couldn’t risk sunburn like I had in Brazil all those years ago). I was there to go motor racing.
My whole persona used to change from the minute I left the front door of my house. I turned into a racing driver – and a prick. I was in race mode until I got home Sunday or Monday. Then I’d go down to the pub and have a few beers with the boys. None of them were really into motorsport all that much, which suited me fine as it does today. They knew who I was, but I’d go down there and have a game of pool with them, have a few beers and preferably not talk about motorsport.
That was it. I used to separate my two lives, because as Alan Jones the racing driver, I really wasn’t a nice person. I was there to do a job. I’d made the conscious decision to move from Australia 12,000 miles away, and I wasn’t doing that for fun. I was there to get the job done. I was willing to do anything to anybody who got in the way.
So there I was in 1980 focusing on my racing and they fire stupid questions at me and get upset if I didn’t sit with them for four hours. ‘Look, mate, sorry, I haven’t got time. You’ll have to catch up later.’ Then you become arrogant in their eyes.
I could not tolerate anybody that didn’t know their subject either. Some journalists would ask you the most inane and stupid questions, and it was immediately obvious they knew nothing about motorsport; they were just simply given a job to come and interview you. I used to just wipe them. I was not arrogant, but I was intolerant.
We were fastest again in the warm-up, in my eyes everything was set for me to win the British GP. Even when I didn’t get a good start and dropped to third, I still had the lead back by the end of the first lap. I passed both Clay and Jabouille in the one move at Stowe, which was a pretty good feeling. Jabouille stayed with me for a bit, then I started to pull away and built up a 20-second lead. Then the bloody heat exchanger cracked and I lost all my water and had to retire.
I was filthy, not just because it was going to be a grand prix win, but it would have been Williams’ first grand prix win. That honour went to my teammate, Clay Regazzoni – and I was really happy for him, Frank and the team. But still, I jumped in my car and screamed back to London, with Beverley sitting in the passenger seat shitting herself. I didn’t even wait around. I should have at least waited there to congratulate my teammate. I wasn’t that sort of a person though; I was too competitive. They could all get fucked, I was going back to London. As far as I was concerned, the heat exchanger just shouldn’t have cracked … I was foul.
It is great when the circuit gets to Europe because you pretty much get a race every fortnight. Hockenheim was a big power track, so even with our new-found speed we were not really likely to challenge the Renaults for pole, but I did get a front-row start that I turned into first place going into the first corner of the race and then I just led the entire race.
Late in the race I was losing a bit of speed from a slow puncture, but I had more than enough to stay in front of Clay, who was second. There was talk that he was told to stay in second, but I dispute that. If I was him and I had been told not to pass, I would have finished half a second behind me. That would have spelled out to the world that I could have done it. But when you’re three seconds behind it’s very debatable whether you got those orders or not.
Regazzoni, and later Reutemann, wasn’t averse to saying that I got preferential treatment or better equipment, which was absolute crap, because Williams were in a position to give equal equipment to both drivers. When they can do that, I don’t think any team favours one driver; it is just too hard to manage and too risky. Lewis Hamilton was talking about that in 2016, almost claiming his car was being made to fail while Nico Rosberg was allowed to go on and win … it was as much crap then as it was in the 70s. You don’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars and employ thousands of people to sabotage your driver. The whole reason of running a two-car team is if one breaks down or has trouble, hopefully the other one will come through and win a grand prix for you.
Jabouille was my biggest threat that day. He had a lot of speed down the straights but he had to work hard to stay with me in the corners and into the stadium area early in the race he locked up and spun himself out of the race.
The German was my second grand prix victory, almost two years on from my first, and with a one-two I thought it was pretty clear we had a great car now and so long as it held together, we would be a contender every time we hit the track. I remember watching some of the footage after the race and hearing Murray Walker say when talking about one-two finishes that this was ‘the first for Saudia Williams, but probably not the last’. I was hoping he was right.
I got to shake the champagne after my first grand prix win, but not for the rest of them. The bottle remained at my feet this time. I can’t recall whether Frank specifically asked for us not to do it, but it was out of respect for our Muslim sponsors.
If we were lucky enough to win a grand prix it was almost compulsory viewing in Saudi Arabia that week, to show their people how technically fabulous they were. Never mind that they didn’t know one end of a wrench from the other, but just poured the money in. Anyway, spraying alcohol all over the place was very naughty, because our sponsors supposedly didn’t drink alcohol. Of course that wasn’t the case, but we did need to show respect on the podium. We did things like shake orange juice, which was a piss-take on our part, but never any alcohol. We made up for it when the doors were closed …
In Austria I qualified second, this time to René Arnoux in his Renault. I thought I got a good start and was going to lead into the first corner when Gilles blasted past me in that Ferrari. He had plenty of straight-line speed, but my car was the better handling and by the start of the third lap I had the lead back – and I held it to the end. Back-to-back grand prix wins felt real good.
That weekend I was seeing my future. The Renaults with their turbo engines would always be hard to beat in qualifying, but then they’d dial it back to try to last the distance in the race. The Ferrari and Alfa Romeo V12s were fast in a straight line, but the handling for each of Ferrari and Brabham was nowhere near ours. The FW07 was kind on its tyres and definitely had the edge in racing terms.
My win in Austria was by nearly 40 seconds over Gilles – and they had the Australian national anthem ready now. I was now fourth in the World Championship, but with the stupid points system for that year it was very unlikely that I could win the title … even if I won every race, which was my intention at that point. We could count our best four results from the first seven rounds – it was eight until Sweden pulled out – and then the best four from the final eight.
What that meant was that I had four points for my podium in Long Beach from the first half of the season and then could add only another 36 points if I won four races in the back half. I had already won two. I left Austria on 25 points chasing Jody on 38 points and the chances of him not getting another three points in the final three rounds was pretty slim.
Bloody René Arnoux beat me to pole at Zandvoort and I was again second, though I beat him off the start and had a good battle with Gilles for the lead. René crashed into Clay off the start and knocked one of his wheels off, so I think I was lucky to be clear of him that day. Early in the race I started to get gearbox problems and Gilles was able to go around the outside of me at Tarzan on lap 11.
It was a great battle up to that point, but Gilles, as ever, was going as hard as he could and eventually spun off the track and gave me back the lead, which I turned into my third win in a row. Jody was second after dropping to last, and that was enough to mean I could not win the championship, which was now a battle between him and Jacques Laffite, who hadn’t won since the second round after we all developed better cars.
With three wins in a row, my head was at 42,000 feet now. Big-headed Alan Jones. You do start to feel bulletproof when you are on a roll like that. Firstly, you know you can do it, and secondly everyone else now knows too. Given the right car and the right opportunity, I knew I could win a lot more grands prix.
Some things still rankled though. Every time I out-qualified the Ferrari I’d drive down pit lane and give them a little wave, just so they knew. ‘I’m the bloke you didn’t sign, you dickheads.’ Even though I was still shitty, it worked out much better for me that Ferrari didn’t sign me.
In that era you would have cars more suited to one track than another – and on a power track we were not so good.
Enter Monza. I remember that race quite clearly because Frank was ropeable with me after I had a little incident that left me injured for the race.
I was driving down Chiswick High Road back in London and had a bit of an altercation with a van driver. We both got out of our vehicles. Turns out the other driver was a big black gentleman. When he uncoiled himself, he stood before me a man mountain and proceeded to bounce me up and down Chiswick High Road for about three minutes.
The bloke who was in the car with me locked the doors. Thanks a lot. Anyway, he broke my finger. So the next race was Monza and I had to race with two fingers bandaged up. When Frank asked what happened, stupidly, I told him. I had to have some injections in the finger to stop the pain, as I did in Canada too.
The funny thing was Beverley and I were looking at adopting a second child and I was on my way home to meet the lady from the adoption centre when this incident happened. She was there with Beverley when I opened the door with blood all over my ripped shirt.
Beverley looked at me with one of those looks, and dragged me upstairs. I thought I was about to get another hiding. We had a three-storey house and the main lounge room was on the middle and the bedrooms and bathrooms up top, so I had to go past the lounge to clean myself up. I was spotted, and the adoption lady asked what happened. Jones, king of bullshit, rolled out a good one. ‘I’ve been hit by a motor scooter on a pedestrian crossing.’
She said, ‘Oh my god, they’re so irresponsible.’
I couldn’t think of anything else. ‘I won’t be a moment,’ I added. ‘I’ll just go clean myself up.’ I went back down after I cleaned myself up. She thought I was very brave for continuing on with the meeting considering my injuries. Beverley was giving me dirty looks and threatening to kill me.
We never did adopt that second child.
Monza was a shit weekend, the bulletproof feeling had well and truly gone. At one stage I was wobbling around down the back of the field with ignition problems and I finished one lap down on Jody who won, and secured the championship. I was the fastest on the track though and without that niggle I could have beaten the Ferraris that day. Clay was much more competitive than me and finished third, which moved Williams into second on the Constructors’ Championship.
Thankfully, Canada was better for me. This was the second race on the Circuit Île Notre-Dame, which is a great track on a man-made island in the middle of a river. It has places you can overtake, especially at the hairpin and other parts of it that are just great to race on. I grabbed pole from Gilles, who had massive support given he was a local and had won the previous year, and that set up a great race.
Before the start, Frank said to me, ‘Don’t do anything silly. Don’t try and race too much too early, because you’ll screw your tyres. Wait until your fuel load gets down and then have a go.’ And to Gilles’ credit, it wasn’t me just sort of hanging back, I just couldn’t pass the little bugger. I was trying since I’d forgotten most of what Frank said as soon as the race started, although I was trying to limit the wheelspin coming out of the hairpin.
We were nose to tail for about three-quarters of the race. Of course all the grandstand were on their feet cheering for him. Lap after lap I looked, but he was so hard to pass even when he didn’t have much of a power advantage. On lap 51 I got a great run on him coming out of the chicane down the back of the track. He left the door open just a little and I went for it. I screamed down the inside and was completely beside him, which meant I had the corner, but we banged wheels, which was a bit silly on his part. He was on the outside and he could have had both of us off and neither of us would have won.
He didn’t need to hit me. I had him well beaten in that corner. James Hunt, who had slipped into doing commentary for the BBC, was quite critical of him, but I didn’t really care too much. I had the lead and was able to pull a small gap. James had driven for Wolf that year until he quit. From the commentary box he watched Jody Scheckter win the title for Ferrari – the drive that he had been offered, but knocked back. James’ commentary was great – he didn’t hold back. Just as well we were friends.
After I got into the lead I thought I’d be able to pull away, but I couldn’t. Gilles stuck right on my gearbox until the end of the race. It didn’t help when I had to lap his teammate, but that was all part of it. It was just a bloody good race. It was just two cars. You could have thrown a blanket over us for virtually the whole grand prix.
I finished one second in front of Gilles – and we were more than a minute clear of Clay in third. You can still watch the race on the internet – and it still looks good. The fans got their money’s worth that day, even if they were pissed off that their man didn’t win.
So there I was, I had four wins in the second half of the season, so no matter what happened at Watkins Glen for the final round, the silly scoring system meant no more points for me. I had pole position again, this time by more than a second from Nelson Piquet, and again I was beaten off the line by Gilles. That Ferrari was such a good starter. It was a wet race to start with and Gilles opened up a gap on me, but as it started to dry I was pulling him in at up to two seconds a lap – he was never good at looking after his tyres.
On lap 31 I went into the lead and then had that out to nearly four seconds when Gilles pitted for slicks. A couple of laps later when I had finally knocked the edges off the wet-weather tyres, I pitted. They had trouble with my right rear tyre, and while I was being waved away the mechanic back there was still trying to get it on. At the start of the back straight, it fell off and I was out of the race while leading.
Even with that I finished the season in third. If only we’d got the new car earlier, and if only we’d got on top of our reliability quicker, who knows what could have happened. As it turned out, the year was a battle of new ground-effects cars, of when they arrived and who mastered them quickest. Ligier was on top of the game for the first two races, with Jackie the Foot winning the first two races. Then Ferrari introduced its wing car and Gilles won two races from Jody, who then won two of the next three.
Patrick Depailler took a win in the Ligier and then broke his legs, Jean-Pierre Jabouille won for Renault in France and then it was us. The FW07 came for round 5, Patrick found a demon tweak for Britain three races later and then we were easily the best car on the track. I won four races from that point and Clay won in Britain, giving us five from seven and that could easily have been all seven.
Heading back to Australia for Christmas, I felt good, and not just because we flew home first class. We now had Christian and we had bought a modern house in Kew overlooking the old Skipping Girl Vinegar factory, so we had great views of Melbourne.
We had also bought a farm just outside Yea, but I quickly worked out I wasn’t a farmer and put in a manager for that. I did buy the pub up there too though. I was much better at going to the pub after a day on the farm than I was on the farm itself. In hindsight, I was better on the customer side of the bar too.
I thought I’d remodel the pub. Influenced by being in Europe for so long, I started with black, red and white checked tablecloths. I put a veranda on it, painted it and put shutters on … I thought it was great. I was hoping to get the passing snow traffic in winter, let people come in and cook their own steaks.
Anyway the locals weren’t happy. ‘Are you turning this into a poofta’s pub?’
‘Fuck no,’ I said, ‘I’m just trying to turn it into a nice place everyone can enjoy.’ I caught a bloke one night in a ute with a rope around one of the veranda stays trying to pull the bloody thing down. He was banned for life.
Then I started seeing dust that I never saw before I owned it, and that wasn’t a good sign. I had a succession of idiots through there as managers – it was just a bloody nightmare. I couldn’t wait to get out of it after a while.
On the farm I decided to breed Simmentals, which are cows from the Simme Valley in Switzerland. They’re half a milking cow and half a beef cow. They’re beautiful. They’re really good cattle and I was breeding polls without horns. They were good because when you take them to the market in trucks, there were no horns to bruise each other with.
I bought a new Mercedes truck and had it all done up with Meraleste Pastoral Company on the side of it. I thought I was going to be the big pastoralist, pretty much as I had told people when scamming in my early days in England. I had a guy from Switzerland as my herd master, Fritz, who was a bit of a Simmental expert. He lived in one of the houses on the property, which was nearly 2500 acres, 80 kilometres northeast of Melbourne. The setting was great. I put in a tennis court and trees lining the driveway.
After Fritz had the cattle all settled in for me he headed back to Switzerland and I gave him a going-away party at the pub. We all went down there and when it was time to close I said, ‘Right, close the doors. We’re continuing on.’ The manager came up and said I couldn’t do that. ‘It’s time to close,’ he said. I said, ‘Look. It’s my fucking pub. I’m staying here and this party’s going on.’
He said it was his licence we were using, so I told him to fuck off and I sacked him on the spot. He got in the car and left. This was about midnight.
Then I thought, ‘Okay, now what are you going to do, dick-head?’ Someone had to open up the next day and someone had to stay with the takings. I got Beverley to go back to the farm and get a shotgun for me, and I stayed there with the bloody gun next to me, with the smell of cigarettes and beer that you get only in a country pub.
Then I had to go like buggery to get a new manager for the joint. Once again I had to pay for a spontaneous stupid act. I couldn’t wait to get out of the bloody joint. Every boy’s dream is to have a pub and a farm – and his second dream is to get rid of them. But, anyway, it’s another box ticked.
Regardless of that, I was in a good place. The days of worrying over Christmas about what I was doing the next year were now well behind me. I was firmly ensconced at Williams and I knew we were building to something special. There were people sniffing around to see if I’d drive for them, but I was going nowhere in 1980. I was truly happy with Williams, and got on extremely well with Patrick, Frank, Charlie and everyone else too. My chief mechanic was an Australian named Wayne Eckersley, or ‘Wayne the Pain’ simply because it rhymed.
Strangely, even after the run we’d had I was looking at 1980 as just another year to race a car. 1980 was another 16 races and I wanted to win as many as I could. I never really thought, ‘I’m going to win the 1980 World Championship.’ I thought I was going to give it a fair old nudge, but the thing in Formula One is you never know who’s got what.
Chapman could have had some super-duper bloody thing coming out of the garage at Lotus. Or Renault might have got some reliability. Anything could happen … and it is not easy to win that championship. 1980 was the 31st championship year, and up to then out of the hundreds who had tried only 17 had won titles and maybe only 50 or so had even won races.
Yes, I thought I had a chance, but to use an old cliché, it really was one race at a time.
James Hunt
James was a character, one of those guys that you never knew what he was going to do next. A really nice guy he was, very kind-hearted. James was one of the few drivers I actually liked. I respected him as a driver too. It should never be forgotten just how bloody good he was.
He didn’t give a shit about anything. He’d go and buy a brand new Mercedes when he was living in Spain, and he had this whacking big Alsatian. He’d take him down to the beach, straight off the beach, sand and everything, into the back seat of the Merc. It was completely rooted after a month. He didn’t care.
He also used to run up to some of the functions barefooted. He got off a plane once in Brazil and a bloke stood on his foot. He said, ‘You fucking mongrel,’ or something like that. It cost Marlboro a wing at the local hospital to get the incident all hushed up.
He used to call me ‘Big Al’. ‘Come on, Big Al, we’ll go and do this and we’ll do that.’ But shit, could he get me into trouble … I blame him.
I went around to visit him one day when he was living in Wimbledon with his second wife, Sarah. I used to ride my bike up to see him on the pretence of training. I lived on a park and I used to ride quite a bit, so I didn’t need that trip at all. But Wimbledon wasn’t that far, so I’d ride up there for a beer or two. As ever, he was out the back with his budgerigars. He loved those birds, and because they were Australian he’d always say, ‘Bunch of Aussies, Big Al.’ I went out there and was on the hoochie coochie. He used to tell the wife he was going out to train the budgies and he’d get stuck into the hooch. I’m sure those budgies must have been high most of the time.
The things he used to get up to were just unbelievable. We went to the official opening of the brand new Nürburgring in 1984 and all the living world champions had been invited to race identical Mercedes 190e 2.3-16s. Which means James and I were in the field and so too was Ayrton Senna, since Mario and Emerson couldn’t make it. Anyway, the race itself is quite famous. I was leading with seven laps remaining when the power steering broke and Senna went on to win. Senna’s car is now in the Mercedes museum; I would have loved for it to be mine.
Anyway, Lufthansa was catering the event in a huge tent, and straight after the race it started pissing with rain and all the drivers went for cover. We started drinking, and soon we were placing bets on who could get back to the hotel first. We were racing hard, passing bloody trams on the wrong side and wheels on the grass and Christ knows what. I’ve no idea who won, and it’s not really the point, is it. We got back there and James said, ‘Big Al, come up to the room.’
When we got into his room, Sarah, his second wife, was in bed sick, not that it bothered James to invite someone in. We started on the beer and then after a couple he handed me a joint. I’d tried a bit of cocaine once and some other soft drugs too, and marijuana actually did little for me … or so I thought. ‘This is good stuff, Big Al, try it.’
I’ve had a taste of this thing and since I’ve got no idea what I’m doing and I’m a few beers into a big night, it didn’t stop there. Anyway, obviously it’s got the better of me. I said, James, I’ve got to go down for dinner and I headed off. Then James took me aside and said, ‘Big Al, there’s a waitress there and I’ve got a good shot with her. She’s going to meet me in the car park. I’ve worded her up about you, when she comes over, can you give her the nod and tell her that I’m out in the car park?’ I said, ‘Yeah, no dramas.’
James’ partners knew of his ways and no-one could ever change that about him. He was an upfront character and we were used to it. He’s still one of the most celebrated personalities in the sport of Formula One.
I knew I was sitting at the table with the managing director from Mercedes-Benz Australia, and as I was heading there I couldn’t stop laughing. I didn’t know what was going on, and I was out of it. I thought, ‘I know what I’ll do. So they won’t be able to see my face, I’ll walk down the stairs backwards.’ Well, that got everyone’s attention.
Every word uttered at that table was hilarious. I laughed at everything. My sides were in knots. My face muscles hurt. Then I picked up the dinner menu and began shaking it up and down. All sense of control was lost by this stage.
Anyway, the waitress has come up and given me half a nod. I thought, ‘Jesus, she fancies me,’ completely forgetting that it was the deal with James. ‘She’s trying to pull me.’ I started with the legendary Jones’ charm. James was by now bobbing up and down in the car park, slinking between cars waiting for her to appear. At that point, all the directors of Mercedes-Benz started to arrive in their armoured cars with bodyguards – they were all security-conscious because one of their directors had been kidnapped previously and they weren’t taking any chances. So they move in packs and had the guards on hand. Anyway, they fronted up to this hotel and there’s this bloke bobbing up and down between the parked cars. One of the bodyguards has seen him and it was on.
Inside, I continued to eye off the waitress, thinking that I was in with a chance. Then I saw security from the entire venue rush out the door to meet up with the others responding to the threat. They chased this bloke for a good minute before crash-tackling him to the ground. They pinned him down and turned him over to find that they’d captured James Hunt, ex-Formula One driver. I think as soon as they discovered who he was they let him go. It was just a nightmare. I didn’t get the waitress. Nor did James.
Later on, he abused the shit out of me. I stood my ground, telling him that he should never have influenced me to suck a big puff out of that joint.
My adventures with James also broke through the darkness that could descend after losing a race. I remember once going back on the plane to England with him when he was absolutely blind drunk. James made the plane his own by playing around on the public address system and hanging out with the pilot in the cockpit. It was a long flight and all I can remember is how he made the trip one heck of a good time. It felt like a party.
Meeting Alan Jones
One night at a party in London, I met Alan Jones the racing driver. That was a highlight for me. There were a lot of Aussies at this pub and I was talking to this bloke and he said, ‘I race cars.’ I said, ‘Really? What’s your name?’
He said, ‘Alan Jones.’
‘Really?’ I just let him go, hoping to Christ that someone would tap him on the shoulder and say, ‘Guess what.’
I had some fun with him for the rest of the night, introduced him to my mates.