AJ

by Alan Jones

  After the win Don Nichols said he wanted me to go with him to the States and try the Can-Am car. I said, ‘I don’t know whether I want to do that.’ To which he replied, ‘Oh you fuckin idiot, I’ll pay you.’ I think he paid me something like 25 grand a race.

  In typical Jones’ fashion, I said, ‘Yep right. What flight am I on?’ He also flew me first class, which was pretty impressive and left me wondering how long that had been going on, and why wasn’t I in there all the time. I had a big bowl of pears floating in champagne. Amazing. No beds or anything back then, but it was pretty slick. I now had every intention of always turning to the pointy end when I got on a plane.

  My first Can-Am race was in the Shadow DN4B at Mosport Park in Canada. I’ll never forget it, the nose was scraping on the ground. It was a monster. It had a 5-litre Dodge engine in it and they were talking big numbers when referring to horsepower. It had a wing on it the size of a large dining table. It was black and a very aggressive looking thing.

  In all, I did three Can-Am races that season. I put that thing on the front row at Riverside in October right next to Patrick Tambay, who was leading the series and racing for Carl Haas. After that Carl offered me a drive for the 1978 season. I was keen, because that was the car and the team.

  I’m not belittling Patrick, but I used to say to Carl, ‘Jeez, this is C&C, cruise and collect.’ He had really good mechanics, he was the North American distributor for Lola and also for Hewland with the gearboxes, so his cars wanted for nothing. The two mechanics were fantastic. And the guy that was sort of working with him was Jim Hall, who was pretty famous stateside.

  Anyway, I did have to go back and drive Formula One first and finish the season, now as a race-winner. I had engine dramas in Holland just after getting back from Mosport Park and didn’t finish, which was almost as humbling after the win as was my 16th qualifying spot.

  But there was bad news when I got home.

  My old buddy Brian McGuire had been killed.

  He was testing at Brands Hatch when a fulcrum pin came out of the brake pedal, so when he went to brake the pedal just fell away. The car clipped the inside curve, I think it was at Stirlings Bend at Brands Hatch, and that launched it over the fence. He landed upside down at the marshal’s post – the crash killed a marshal as well.

  Brian was my best mate. We’d grown up together. Brian was my best friend, from way back in the days when his father was the spare parts manager at Dad’s Holden dealership in Essendon. We grew up together. He was a year older than me, but it didn’t matter. We’d go to Dad’s Holden dealership and get up in the spare parts loft and eat fish and chips. Our families went on holidays together. Our parents pulled us together, and from there it was all about motor racing and our dreams. We knew each other for a long, long time.

  We went to England with a shared dream, selling the mini-vans to fuel that dream. We’d both had a crack at Formula One. We were as thick as thieves – which maybe we were. He only got the one race and didn’t qualify, but I am sure he could have done more had he not been killed that day.

  I eventually concentrated more on racing than he did, while he stuck with the vans and built up a really good business. When I got my contract with GRD and gave up on the vans, we drifted apart a little and then even more when I started in Formula One. But he was the kind of mate that was always a mate, you don’t have to spend a lot of time with someone like that.

  The van business was doing well, and he bought a Williams FW04, and then another, giving him two cars to play with. He won a round of the Shellsport International Series at Thruxton Park and then entered in the 1977 British Grand Prix. He didn’t make the grid though, and a month later he was dead.

  When he died he was driving that Williams FW04 that he had modified and called McGuire BM1. We’d spoken about the need to prepare that sort of car properly. I remember during one of our chats in the pub, warning him to be careful with a Formula One car. The cars that I was driving at the time were being pulled apart after every single race, crack tested, and meticulously put back together again. Brian couldn’t afford to do that. He was basically in a Formula One car, even though it was maybe two or three seasons old. Who knows, had he done that would the pin have broken? He had so much more to do. He was killed in a practice session he didn’t need to run, but he just loved driving and loved racing.

  Brian had talent as a driver and he was keen, but you can’t be a businessman and/or caravan dealer for four or five days of the week and then a racing driver on the weekend. It doesn’t work. He couldn’t afford to concentrate on it 100 per cent because he had to rely on the business to fund the racing.

  I look back on this a bit to work out if I was luckier than him – you know, getting the right break – but I don’t think it was luck. I walked away from the business to give my racing 100 per cent, and he couldn’t or didn’t.

  I didn’t look on it at all as Brian getting killed motor racing; it was just Brian getting killed. It would have been the same if someone had called up and said Brian had been electrocuted. The fact was that Brian was dead. I was upset by his death, but not by the way he was killed.

  There’s no question his death hurt.

  At that time in car racing, death was always a factor. Losing a good friend didn’t change the way I viewed my sport. I dealt with it and prepared for Monza. That’s what I had to do, simple as that.

  I qualified no better than I had in Holland, but the car was good in the race and I fought my way into third, which was a very satisfying result.

  In those days I raced better than I qualified because I just couldn’t get the outright speed from some of those cars. Over the two-hour period of a race I could get the best out of whatever car I had, and that meant if it lasted I would climb up the order … the only question was how far. Making the podium at Monza was a great experience, especially being up there with a Ferrari driver.

  I had four races on consecutive weekends in North America, starting with the Can-Am car at Sears Point in a new Shadow DN6 and finishing with the same car at Riverside. The first of the grands prix was at Watkins Glen where it was wet, which normally would have made me smile, but I crashed out after only three laps. I got fourth in Canada a week later which was a really good result after my best-ever qualifying, a really nice seventh on the grid.

  So after the Can-Am race at Riverside, my racing year finished in Japan with another fourth place. What was funny that day was that James won the race, and he and Carlos Reutemann, who was second, left the track before the podium presentation. If it meant so little to them, I could have got up there for my fourth place, which did mean something to me.

  Better still, I had finished the championship season in seventh spot and had 22 of Shadow’s 23 points for the season. I felt it was a pretty good season in what was really not that great a car.

  Fortunately for me, others thought so too. Assuming they kept the Can-Am Series on separate weekends to the grands prix, I had that lined up, but in Formula One I was still talking to people. Frank Williams was first into serious discussions, then it was Ferrari.

  7

  Ferrari Driver / The Turning Point

  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 ru
nning, 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 d
river. 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.