AJ

by Alan Jones

  To not get the nine points was a bitter, disheartening blow, confirming my low opinion of politics in the sport and my even lower opinion of Balestre.

  As far as I was concerned, I went there on the Thursday, I went there and practised on the Friday, I qualified on the Saturday. I got on to the grid. I did the start. I won the race. I was presented with a trophy by King Carlos, and I went home with the Spanish Grand Prix trophy. But Balestre made it null and void, because of this bloody fight between FOCA and FIA that no-one understood.

  And who knows why he chose Spain? They probably didn’t have a seat for his wife or something.

  Balestre was heavily backing the factory teams and perhaps it was because he knew that those of us with the Ford engines were winning the races and that his beloved Renaults were dropping off the pace. He used to call Lotus, Williams or anybody that didn’t have a manufacturer behind them, garagists. They were just little garagists, operating out of a little garage somewhere. Whereas the other boys were big manufacturers. The garagists were essentially FOCA and aligned with Bernie Ecclestone, and to that mad Frenchman we needed to be defeated.

  Bernie has got an ego, but is no fool. Balestre had a bigger ego, but he was an absolute fool. Up until this point in my career, he’d just been a bombastic tool opening his mouth at drivers’ briefings and proving how little he knew about car racing. Now he was a major embarrassment for the sport and for the life of me I couldn’t work out why the Europeans would align themselves with such a man.

  Knowing that Renault had backed Balestre over Spain and that the French had combined with the Italians to put the season, and my title, into jeopardy, I went to France in a fighting mood. I not only wanted badly to win that race; I wanted my win to be a personal gesture of defiance. The Ligiers were far superior in qualifying, with Laffite and Pironi (always a dangerous rival) first and third on the grid; I was fourth.

  I made a good start, raced against Arnoux and Pironi in the early stages and got past them. I settled down into second place and started to haul in Laffite. Eventually Laffite’s front tyres began to go off and I managed to pass him and win. It was one of my most satisfying races ever – there was the emotional pleasure of beating the French on their own ground, but also, I think I drove one of my best ever races.

  I had great delight in getting the Union Jack from one of the team as I was pulling up – and there it was flying high above the crowd that swamped me. Then I got to the podium and Balestre was there. I told the organisers I was not going on the podium as long as he was there. Because of the TV coverage they couldn’t afford a long argument, so they kicked him off so I could get my trophy. I knew there would be consequences, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like him and I wanted to make a statement.

  There was also a comical scene when they brought a horse up to the winner’s podium at the end of the race – which I felt looked a bit like Balestre. There I was with this wreath around my neck and the usual celebrations going on and I thought, ‘That’s funny, bringing a horse to the podium.’ Then they asked me if I would sit on it, and I said, ‘Not on your life. I don’t want to sit on a bloody horse.’ What I didn’t know was that I’d won the horse! Well, after my lap of honour, I was having a beer or two in the motorhome, winding down, when this man came back and said, ‘Mr Jones, where would you like me to tie your horse up?’ I thought the man was joking, so I said, ‘Just tie it up to the bumper!’

  Ten minutes later, I emerged from the motorhome and there was this horse tied up to the bumper as instructed! Eventually, I had to ship it from Marseilles to Holland, then from Holland to London and then eventually back to Australia; it did a few kilometres, that horse! But I reckon it won the lottery. If Jody Scheckter had won it, it would be pasturing in a Monaco penthouse, and, if a Frog had won it, it would have wound up on a plate! Instead, it made it to Australia as a thoroughbred’s companion on the plane.

  We all know that what’s good for the goose … The British Grand Prix was next, and what we’d done to the French at Ricard they could do to us at Brands Hatch. When the two Ligiers qualified first and second, we thought it possible the French would indeed take their revenge.

  Luckily for us, the Ligiers turned out to have a problem with their wheels. Pironi started well and was leading handsomely when his tyre started coming off the rim. That left Laffite in the lead, and I think he made a tactical error. He knew his tyre was going down – he could have stopped and changed it, but he opted to soldier on. The inevitable happened: coming into Hawthorn, the tyre came completely off the rim and he went off the track. Caution is part of the driver’s stock of skills.

  I spent most of the race with Piquet on my tail, and he kept me honest in a very good race. You come out of a corner, look in the mirror, and you think, ‘Oh, I’ve gained a bit,’ or ‘I’ve lost a bit.’ That’s getting back to what I said about there being no replacement for laps under your belt: because when you see the other bloke has lost ground on where he was the lap before, you know that all you’ve got to do is what you did the lap before. Then you should be right.

  After Laffite had dropped out, I kept the lead handsomely and won the grand prix I most wanted to win. England had become a second home for me; at home you like to prove you’re a winner. I now had a six-point lead in the championship too over my fellow garagist, the rebel Nelson Piquet.

  At this stage of the season things were settling down and we knew who our challengers were … not that I was thinking about anything other than just winning the next race. Nelson was going to be my biggest challenger: he was fast and consistent and was banking points. The Ligiers and Renaults were fast, but they weren’t finishing consistently and that was hurting them. No-one else was a chance.

  But there was always the looming spectre of Jean Mary, as I called Balestre. There was talk about Watkins Glen getting cancelled. Would I need that race? This is why I never did anything other than worry about each race as it came.

  Germany and the Hockenheimring was a bit disappointing for me. It was worse for Patrick Depailler – he was killed there while testing in the lead-up to the race when he went off at the Ostkurve after the suspension failed in his Alfa Romeo. It was not long after this that they changed that corner to slow it down, which altered the nature of the track quite a lot. I felt danger was part of why we were there, so I never cried at a death on the track, I just got on with it. I mean, if you start to worry about that you shouldn’t be there.

  Drivers sometimes joke about death and people might think we are cold bastards. Patrick bought it last week. What does that mean? He bought it. We knew what it means. We seemed callous, but it was our way of dealing with his death. Or, potentially, our own.

  Neither Patrick nor any other driver I’ve known who died haunts me. They are not ghosts. Nor are they forgotten. But when I went to Hockenheim after Patrick’s death, I had a good look at the corner where he crashed. I analysed it. I knew I would be coming up against the same corner and I wanted to know where and how he lost it. And I decided if they didn’t put some catch-fencing up there, I wasn’t racing. The least we can do is learn from what went wrong for another driver.

  It’s only right that death in racing should be talked about, if only because more deaths could be avoided – by stronger cars, safer circuits, quicker medical attention, better marshalling. The cars do get safer and safer, but death is part of our job and you can’t pretend it does not exist.

  As a driver, you need to have confidence and even a misplaced sense of belief that it can’t happen to you – but it can’t be a blind confidence. As for fear – if it gets to that stage, it is time to pack up your gear and head back to the farm.

  In 1980 Hockenheim was still a difficult track to get the set-up right; there was plenty of high-speed stuff to master and the tight and twisty stadium section, which was critical because of the passing opportunities. I quite enjoyed the track, and I liked it even more when I got pole position right at the very end of practice. In the race we just couldn�
�t match the straight-line speed and acceleration of the Renaults and I spent 26 laps watching Jabouille run away from me in a straight line only for me to close in under brakes and through the chicanes.

  Then his engine blew and the lead was mine. But what the gods give, they also take away, and I suffered a puncture with only ten laps to go. But this was one of many places where the discipline and spirit of the Williams crew showed to advantage: they did a lightning tyre change in the pits, I was able to come back onto the track in third place and I kept that to the end, and the four points that came with it. But the disappointment remained. Victory had been in the bag. Another proof of the old adage that you have not won until you see the chequered flag.

  I finished one spot in front of Nelson, which extended my championship lead ever so slightly, and now Williams was well out in front in the constructors’ title. People always think Frank would have been happy with that, and I am sure he was, but if we were doing well there we were also doing well in the drivers’ championship, and that is from where prize money and start money is allocated.

  I had won the two previous Austrian grands prix, so I was quite looking forward to heading back to Osterreichring. The truth is though that while I find the circuit very beautiful, it is also one of the most dangerous, and, while the circuit is very quick, it is also subject to unpredictable weather. So I didn’t really like it all that much, despite my success.

  As you might expect for a track up in the Styrian mountains, the Renaults were very quick and beat me to the front row, but again I was the best of the non-turbo cars. I made a very good start and led for the first two laps, but the Renault turbos just hauled me in and passed me on the straight as though I were parked. Eventually, Arnoux’s tyres went off, but Jabouille still had an excellent lead.

  And here I think we made a mistake. The pits didn’t really keep me well-enough informed of the progress I was making against Jabouille. I was catching up – not spectacularly, but slowly – and eventually, he beat me to the finish by less than a second. If I’d been told a bit earlier, I might have launched an attack and quite possibly won. As it was, another six points helped consolidate my position – Piquet could do no better than fifth, while the Ligiers were now virtually out of the championship.

  The Dutch Grand Prix was a complete disaster for me. I was a bit twitchy because everyone was going round saying, ‘Hello champ!’ There was only 11 points in it with four races left, and that wasn’t a big enough margin to have any confidence.

  I was highly annoyed at everyone’s presumption. Goodyear wanted me to sit on a pile of tyres with my thumbs up, getting their advertisements ready for the next year. I kept on telling them they were being ridiculous. ‘If I don’t finish the race and Piquet wins,’ I said, ‘that’s going to make the title very, very tight.’ And so it transpired. Perhaps because I was thinking of the possibility, because it was making me nervy. I could see all the Goodyear people tearing up their photos and their copy and replacing me with Nelson Piquet.

  In this game, as long as anyone is in with a mathematical chance, nothing is really over. So many things can go wrong. I knew I wasn’t champ, but the rest of the world didn’t seem to want to recognise that fact. So when people came up and called me champ, I’d glare at them. They weren’t thinking; they didn’t realise they were putting extra pressure on me. If I didn’t become champion, the same people would be saying, ‘Oh, old AJ really blew that one, didn’t he!’

  A driver creates his own pressure. But he is the best judge of what is weighing on him and how to cope with it. That doesn’t prevent many drivers from making something out of nothing and making additional pressure for themselves – and I was not immune to that. We come in different types. There are philosophical drivers who take things as they come; there are others who will hit the roof at the drop of a hat. Even the calmest driver will have a day when things upset him that normally wouldn’t at all. The strain is in trying to be the same person every time you’re on the track.

  The sort of person I am on the track, however, is totally different from my other personality. On the farm for instance, any resemblance between myself and a racing driver was pure coincidence. I was relaxed and couldn’t care about anything in the world. But when I got up and had to race that day, I was a driver again. I approached my whole day differently. I was a different being and, as I have said, not necessarily a nice one.

  As if to prove me right and the rest wrong, I had a thoroughly nasty shunt in practice when my throttle stuck coming into the Hanzerug.

  Come the race I was fourth on the grid and made a tremendous start, passing the Renault on the outside going into the first right-hander. At the end of the first lap I was two seconds clear in the lead. But then, coming back to the Hanzerug, I let the car drift a bit too wide and went off. When I came off I hit a rut, the car sank down and damaged the side skirts. These skirts were ceramic devices attached to the side pods of the car to maintain the vacuum. They had little springs that allowed them to move up and down to compensate for body roll. When you break one, you lose a lot of downforce and the car is very unpleasant to drive. They were one of Patrick’s innovations. I pitted for some skirts, but my race and my points were gone. And, as I’d feared, Piquet won the race and was now only two points behind me with three races to go.

  Imola, which came next, was definitely not one of my favourite circuits and that weekend it was high on my list of places to hate. The Brabham was going very well indeed and I only qualified fifth, but was ahead of Nelson on the grid, although I just couldn’t match him for race pace. Gilles had a huge crash in the new turbo-charged Ferrari. Jody had crashed in practice and announced he was retiring, but Gilles, who I always said was never going to die in bed, kept charging on and raced the old 12-cylinder car. He had a tyre failure at Tosa and went head first into the Armco, tearing his car to pieces but somehow walking away. It was a bad season for Ferrari – they did not get one podium finish, after starting the season as favourites.

  I had an ordinary start and dropped back to seventh, but Carlos led the field away until his clutch started giving him trouble. As people struck tyre issues and other problems, Nelson eventually walked into the lead and I had to fight my way to second nearly 30 seconds behind him.

  So now, for all the ‘champ’ talk, we headed to North America with two races to round out the season trailing Nelson by one point. Bloody wished I’d studied harder at school sometimes, because now people were throwing maths around about the race to the title. Here is essentially how it was going to work.

  We could count our best five finishes from the first seven rounds – should have been eight but for Spain – and that meant I had 28 (instead of the 37 I should have had) there to Nelson on 25, and we both had two retirements so we had no points to drop from the first half. Then we could count our best five finishes from the final seven races. Heading into Canada, I only had one retirement for the second half and Nelson had none, so we were both looking at dropping the points from one or two races to win the title.

  So I had my retirement in Holland and the third place at Germany as my worst two races – so potentially I could drop four points. Nelson had a fourth and fifth to drop if he was going OK, so five points in total. Effectively, in my eyes, we were equal and that meant my task was simple – just win the bloody races.

  So first of all, finish. Drive on instinct, go for the gaps when they appear and don’t second-guess yourself. Don’t take unnecessary risks, just do what comes naturally. I was calm and in control and I went to Montreal in a marvellous and serene mood, absolutely full of confidence. I was quickest on the first day, quickest on the second morning, and then – out of the blue, literally – Piquet found an extra second and a half! That surprised everybody, to put it mildly.

  In those days, you could run a couple of chassis at a race meeting and swap between them as you needed. Nelson’s car for that qualifying session was bent, no doubt. We think it had a trick with the combustion and they had to use
a special fuel to stop it detonating. I wasn’t too concerned because I knew he’d have to race in a car that was significantly slower.

  So we lined up for the race alongside each other, the two title contenders on the front row. I always used to stop on the grid after the formation lap and do a couple of burnouts to leave a bit of rubber on the road, then when I came around to take the start, I’d make sure my rear tyres were on that rubber. I lined it up well and got a pretty good start – if you find the footage you can see I was spot on and Nelson wasn’t. He got wheelspin when he changed into second, and I was away.

  In Montreal, after the start, you have a series of corners and, if you want to go through those corners flat, as you should, you have to take exactly the right line. The start at Montreal will always be questioned by some people, but here’s my version – and it’s the truth. I out-dragged Piquet and, as far as I was concerned, I was in the lead and had the right to choose my line. If you get even half a wheel in front of someone else, you have a right to take your own line; it’s up to the man behind to look out for you. If I’m behind someone – it could be the slowest driver on the circuit or the fastest – and I try to out-brake him and he cuts me off, that’s his right and it’s up to me to back off. (If you look at a restart of Montreal, you’ll see that Piquet did exactly the same thing to Pironi, only Pironi had the brains to back off. He knew there were another 75 laps to go and that nobody wins a grand prix on the first lap.)

  So in Montreal, turn 1, lap 1, I was in the lead and I couldn’t see Nelson alongside me, so I took the line I needed to get through those corners as fast as possible. This wasn’t a bluff; I could not see him. He didn’t back off and we touched, which surprised me. It bounced him around a bit and kicked off a spectacular multi-car shunt. I had my rear engine cover, I think, come off, but apart from that, I was happy to continue. I opened up a lead only to be confronted by a red flag at the end of the lap. Bugger.