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.
To cut a long story short, he told me that the bloke was actually selling the cars and not paying the finance out. The bloke also had a friend who came into the premises, put his own stock on the floor then they’d sell it and split the profit, completely bypassing me. All of that stuff was going on and I had no idea until I got that phone call. I came back and sold the businesses, which were now pretty much broke. My mate simply did the wrong thing by me. I gave him the best opportunity in the world but he got greedy.
I had people to give me advice, managers and the like to guide me through a whole bunch of things. Managers like Harry M Miller and James Erskine, who never really produced much but were happy to put their hands out when I brought something to the table.
I probably needed a bit more from Beverley, like I get from Amanda now. We had a very nice house with the tennis court and all the gear, and she always had a brand new car and she never worked. Our relationship in the end was only tolerable, and despite what she said in divorce court she didn’t play that much of a role in me getting to where I got. It would have been good if I could have bounced things off her. It’s good these days – Amanda pulls me into gear. She does my books and she is very successful in her own right working with IT in aged care and health, which I think is the big difference.
Around the end of 1984 I knew a deal with Beatrice Haas was around the corner. I wasn’t getting much from Harry M Miller, so I went to him to cancel our deal. He wanted 20 grand to let me walk away, which I paid. Then later on I did the deal to go back into Formula One.
I still get approaches today for various things, and I am a lot less tolerant and open these days. But if someone walked in and I thought he was a nice guy and he had a good concept, I could possibly be conned again. At least I’ve got Amanda to shut me down.
Some people think they can get something for nothing out of me, that by offering me a good time I’ll endorse their products. Australian businesses can really be so naive. I’m not interested in going to another function – you’ll need to pay. And then they go on about plane flights and hotels and the like – seriously, they’re the last things I want. I’d much rather stay home with my family.
One thing I did enjoy post-racing was my time on the board of the Australian Grand Prix after it moved to Melbourne. Ron Walker was the chairman and asked me to join because they wanted an ex-driver that could give them some information on what the drivers and teams want and need. There were some great people on the board: Dean Wills, who headed up Coca-Cola Amatil, James Strong who was then with Qantas and Brocky was there too.
That was a good time for me. I wasn’t doing the TV at that stage because when it moved to Ten they didn’t want any of the Nine people involved. Then Ten asked me to fill in for one telecast, when Craig Baird was unavailable. We did that out of Melbourne one night and it quickly turned into a regular job that is still going today.
I’ve worked there with both Greg Rust and Mattie White – both great blokes to work with and both very professional. With RPM I get to do some stuff with Mark Larkham, and he is very passionate about it all. You get in the car from the airport with him to go to the studio and by the time you get there he’s on about 100 decibels because he revs himself up – he’s self-revving. He studies, he draws, he gets totally into it. He’ll spend the whole weekend doing diagrams. Technically he’s very switched on, and he puts a lot of time and effort into staying on top of it all.
I love cars for the look and the way they drive and that’s about it. If you took the body off and started going through the chassis, I couldn’t care less. He’ll come and explain how the twin turbo Merc works … He is genuinely passionate about motor sport and where he’d like to see it going – and anything else you’d like to talk about. He’s a good bloke, I really like him.
Mark wanted to do Formula One, and today he lends a helping hand to anyone who he thinks has talent trying to get there. I’ve put money into drivers before, but I never had the time or the aptitude to mentor people like him. And we need that: we are not going to get our next Formula One driver from driving Supercars.
Barry Sheene
Barry was right up there with James in living life to the fullest. He is so much fun to be around. In many ways, it was no surprise they used to hang around with each other while Barry was still living in England, they were two peas in a pod.
He was an unbelievable character, no airs and graces about him at all, which was a bit like James too. He couldn’t care how he dressed; if he was in jeans and a T-shirt he was happy. Barry was a mad smoker. He used to buy these cigarettes that were filtered because they were stronger than the unfiltered ones, and then he’d bite the filter off and smoke it. He had had a hole drilled into his helmet so he could keep smoking for longer until the race started.
I knew him when I lived in England and he used to come around to my house and ask me questions about Australia. What’s it like here, what’s it like there, what’s it like in November, and just all these little bits and pieces. Even then he was sizing up Australia, maybe he knew with all his injuries a warmer climate was going to be better as he got older.
I bought a helicopter thanks to Barry. I was at Brands Hatch testing the Williams, and he flew up in his chopper. Knowing Barry as I do now, there was obviously a good commission in there for him, and he went into sales mode. We had a 45-minute or so break in testing, I jumped in the helicopter and he took me over the hills to one of the paddocks in Kent and then he let me fly it up and down in a straight line.
‘I can get you one of these cheap, AJ.’ I enjoyed helicopters more than planes, so I bought one. I got an Enstrom 280C Shark, which had a turbo-charged piston engine in it and I bought it off Barry’s mates, who would insure it over the water. I thought it was going to be a great way to get around. Not so sure it was in hindsight, but I did enjoy it.
When he moved out here he moved to the Gold Coast and we had a great time together. He’d fly back with me on a Monday morning after we’d done something with Channel Nine or after a touring car race when he was commentating. We’d hop in a taxi and out would come the bloody fags and the butt was bitten off and it was lit up. I’d say, ‘Barry, you can’t do it, mate.’ ‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ was what he would say.
Sure enough, the taxi driver would turn around, ‘Excuse me, sir, you can’t smoke in here.’ ‘Yeah, what’s up? Haven’t I got windows down?’ Oh, then of course the arguments would happen, that and the smell of things was enough for me and I ended getting my own taxi.
In keeping with his lifestyle, he ended up marrying a Penthouse pet, Stephanie. He would proudly overshare his exploits the morning after. ‘Thanks, Baz, thanks for sharing that with me.’
Women loved him, he could walk up and be cheeky and they’d pinch his cheeks and say you’re a cheeky boy. Whereas, if I did it I’d get a slap over the face. He just had this way of coming across as a cheeky little boy. He got away with murder.