NOT LONG AFTER winning the World Championship I came home for the Australian Grand Prix at Calder Park.
As the season was progressing, my old boss Bob Jane was on the phone to get me to bring the Williams down for the Australian Grand Prix, which he was hosting at Calder Park, which he owned. My winning the championship had generated plenty of interest in Formula One in Australia and Bob was working on a plan to get Calder Park onto the World Championship schedule.
One would hope he had plans to change the track. Australia is a funny place with car racing: there is all the land in the world and then they – or we – build these dinky little tracks that are just not fun to drive. Calder Park was one of those. It was very Mickey Mouse and not complex – it claims to have 11 corners, but there are only three with three chicanes.
Just before I left London to come home, Bob said the media wanted a press conference and we could do it at his place if I wanted. So we did, and it was well branded for the Bob Jane Corporation. During the conference, he stood up and said, ‘I’ve got a really successful Bob Jane T-Mart in my outlet, I’ll give it to you for a dollar.’ Then he proceeded to put a great big picture of myself with the laurel wreath around my neck on the wall at the centre in Melbourne, at that big busy round about at the top of Elizabeth Street, at the CBD’s north-west edge.
So I got that for a buck, and let me tell you he got much more of a return out of it than I did. He ran his businesses as franchises, and now that Alan Jones had become a franchisee, Bob Jane had a great promotional tool, which he rolled out at every opportunity. I didn’t see a penny out of ‘my’ Bob Jane T-Mart though, then he sold it, and I got even less. I felt completely screwed.
Anyway, the idea of racing in and even winning the Australian Grand Prix held a bit of romance for me, and if you’ve been paying attention you’ll know there’s not much that does. This was my home race, my father had won it and no other father-son combination had ever won the Australian Grand Prix. If I could win, it would mean a great deal to me.
I would imagine Bob had to pay a significant fee to Frank to get the championship-winning car. We brought that down with Wayne Eckersley and my other mechanic John Jackson – Skinny John – who used to put up with Wayne, which was amazing.
The only other Formula One car Bob could get was an Alfa for Giacomelli, but he had a brand new ground-effects Elfin F5000 car lined up for Didier Pironi. As it turned out the brand new car wasn’t ready and he had to drive an older car alongside his teammate, John Bowe.
The weekend was big. Channel Nine was covering it with Jackie Stewart leading the commentary team with Ken Sparkes, who I would eventually get to know really well when I started with Nine. He was a really nice bloke.
I got on pole a fraction ahead of Bruno, which is probably all you would ever get with a 36-second lap, and we were nearly two seconds clear of Alfie Costanzo, who was the fastest of the Formula 5000 cars. There were 15 Formula 5000 cars in the field, the slowest of which was six seconds behind me, and then a couple of Formula Pacific cars with little 1.6 litre engines that were 6.5 and 7.4 seconds off the qualifying pace. With a 95-lap race scheduled, there was going to be a lot of lapping cars. I donated my pole position money to a local charity, which I did because it felt right not because of the publicity it could get, but it went down well.
The temperature on race day climbed above 40 degrees Celsius – that’s bloody hot anywhere, let alone in the cockpit – but the crowd was huge. I don’t reckon they could have fitted another person in the place.
Off the start Bruno and I had a good battle, then going down the back straight we rubbed wheels and fell off the track together. He got back on before me and led the race, but I wasn’t going to let that little Italian win the Australian Grand Prix in front of me. He didn’t hold the lead for long and once I cleared him I sprinted away. No-one was going to beat me that day. Eventually I even lapped him too, so I won the race by more than a lap and had my own little way to honour my father.
It was also a final stamp on my championship year too.
We had a big party up at the farm to round out the year and get ready for a bit of downtime before the title defence. For years I enjoyed anonymity in Australia; this was no longer the case. There was a lot more attention now on Formula One, and while Bob’s push for a World Championship was unsuccessful, there was a really good bid coming from Adelaide, about 700 kilometres west of Melbourne, that would succeed in getting a race for the 1985 season.
I had a few corporate things to do while in Melbourne, and I had to start managing my commercial interests and sponsors in general. I was part of the Marlboro World Championship team and that paid well, as did Akai, even if I didn’t understand the slogan … ‘Akai’s Okay, OK!’
There was AGV helmets, the good old Italians. I was wearing a Bell helmet with an AGV sticker on it because I preferred the Bell, who then got dirty with me because they didn’t want an AGV sticker on one of their helmets. They could have paid, so bugger them. But AGV was bloody hopeless, they took forever to pay. One time they said, ‘The exchange rate’s not right.’ I said, ‘For you or for me?’
Just pay me what you owe me. As I’ve said, I don’t want any more and I don’t want any less than what we agreed to. I just want the deal. The deal is the deal. If you weren’t happy with it then don’t do the deal in the first place.
Even with their slow payments, I wasn’t short of dough though, that’s for sure.
Opportunities were popping up everywhere. The old Aussie wasn’t bad at coming out of the woodwork when you’re a winner; it was just the opposite when I was trying to climb the ranks. I had all these would-be entrepreneurs wanting me to go into business with them or endorse things.
I reckon sixty per cent of them were probably shonky. When you’re in a semi-protected commercial environment, living in England, then you get home to all these people giving you these weird and wonderful ideas and solutions, you think, ‘Oh, maybe I should have a go at that,’ or ‘Maybe this looks interesting,’ such as Bob Jane with the T-Mart.
Getting a T-Mart for a dollar, I thought, ‘That can’t be bad.’ The old adage, nothing for nothing. I’ve learned the hard way. I’m still learning.
At least I was OK when negotiating with Frank. I had signed a two-year deal with Williams covering 1980 and ’81 and Frank thought that I already agreed a drive for 1981 for £600,000, but I didn’t think I had. It became a psychological thing, I wanted to earn more than any other Formula One driver because of the competitiveness of it all, and I felt like I was the best.
There were plenty of people sniffing around, and while I didn’t want to go anywhere else, I would have. Renault and Alfa were keen, but joining the loyalists would have been interesting. Renault even sent a lawyer to Montreal to do a deal with me. I made sure Frank knew about that. I knew I could make more than US$1.2 million at other teams, and that is what Jody Scheckter was getting, so I told Frank that was my price.
He said it was nearly the same on exchange rates anyway, but I dug in. Eventually we signed just after Montreal, Frank begrudgingly and me happily. I got what I wanted. Keeping the number 1 for his car was a good carrot too, because that went with the driver. Imagine a Renault with the number 1 – great marketing.
After I won at Watkins Glen, I went up to Frank and said, ‘Well, there you go. The money hasn’t slowed me down.’ He just said, ‘Piss off.’
So by the time I made it to Australia everything was sorted, and let me tell you now, that 1.2 mil is probably the same as 18 or 20 now. It was a lot of money. Unfortunately for me, plenty of people knew that too.