AJ

by Alan Jones

  Glenn did win the Sandown 500 after switching out of the car he was sharing with me, which broke early in the race, but that is not an aero track and we struggled overall for speed. Bathurst was different altogether, the first two rows of the grid were Holdens and we started from the third row alongside Dick. The only other Falcon in the top 10 was Paul Radisich in Dick’s second car – otherwise it was all Holden and that is the way the race was run too.

  Our car died on top of the mountain in the closing stages when we were running fifth, which was as good as we could have expected after what they did to us. Glenn was a great driver, but he wasn’t a politician and he had been totally outmanoeuvred.

  For the next season, 1994, both brands of car had new aero packages, and we were still a little off the pace but it was nowhere near as bad. We had these little vanes on the front splitter, and that had the Holden teams complaining again, but they had the better packages and dominated early.

  I had a puncture at Amaroo to open the season and Sandown was OK but no-one in a Ford could touch the Holdens there. I was mid-field in Tasmania when I developed a misfire in the heat and that left me down the order for the main race.

  The next race was the non-championship support race for the IndyCar Grand Prix on the Gold Coast. I was having a really good weekend, finishing second in the main race on the Saturday, and was then leading the Sunday sprint race until the closing laps. I clipped a wall with two laps left I think, and drove over the top of one of those stupid tyre bundles, where it got stuck and that was it. Darrel Eastlake was commentating that race, and as the cameras showed me walking back to the pits he said, ‘That will be a terrible place to be when he gets back, let me tell you, he gets cranky.’ He was right, but only because it was my fault.

  We did OK in the wet at Phillip Island – I won the Dash after starting last, so I felt good for the race. The rain made it all a gamble. The first race was good, but then I slipped off the track in the second. This was kind of how this season was going for me, we struggled and then when we had a track that suited us, something went wrong.

  I got caught up in a tangle between a few other drivers in the first race at Lakeside and then slipped off on some oil in the second. I led at Winton, Australia’s Monaco, before I spun and handed the race and the round win to Glenn, but I was happy because we had found our speed. Eastern Creek wiped the smile from my face, as I just had no speed. Mallala we were no match for the Holdens, and that took us to Barbagallo Raceway in Perth.

  I had a run-in with a bloke on the gate at Barbagallo, and maybe that revved me up enough to have a good weekend. I was running late on Saturday and this bloke wouldn’t let me in the gate, I couldn’t find my pass and that was it for him. Now I’m not shitcanning the volunteers at the track – most of them do a wonderful job, but you do get the odd weekend warrior who says to himself, ‘Right, this is my moment of power … I don’t give a damn who you are.’ Or, even worse, ‘I know who you are, and I know you’ve got to go racing, but you can’t come in because you haven’t got a pass.’

  Who knows, maybe this bloke was a Holden fan. Anyway, the argument grew and because I’m an idiot, one thing led to another and I biffed him. I had to go before the stewards and I copped a whack for that, but I did end up winning the meeting, so maybe it was good for me to get fired up.

  That would be my last round-win ever.

  In the final of the season, I had a retirement in the first race and then charged into third in the final. That was a great race, I really enjoyed that. It was enough for me to finish fifth in the championship, which I thought was a pretty amazing result. Glenn and I were the only two Fords in there.

  I was pretty philosophical about my racing at that time. It was always nice to win, but I wasn’t going to go home and slash my wrists if something went wrong. I really just wanted to get paid and enjoy myself and take the good with the bad. In that sense Big Daz was wrong, but he was also right. I didn’t like it when I made a mistake, and maybe Beatrice softened me up to retirements, but they didn’t hurt the same.

  Which was just as well because Sandown and Bathurst were both retirements for me. Sandown was with Glenn, and I think they were hedging their bets at Bathurst and split us over the two cars, and I drove with David Parsons. Both cars failed.

  The next year, 1995, started OK when I won the Eastern Creek Triple Challenge in January with an old EB Falcon, but then a rough year started when the championship began with no points at Sandown in the updated EF Falcon. Out of the 10 rounds, I had two races with no points and only two third places to my name – the rest were somewhere in-between. Glenn had a good run in the other car and nearly won the championship, but there were issues starting to grow inside the team.

  Glenn and his father Bo were arguing and it was affecting the team, and particularly my car. As things were bubbling away, the guys at Philip Morris were getting pissed off. At Sandown I ran to a retirement with Parsons, and then for Bathurst I was paired with Allan Grice.

  My relationship with the Philip Morris people was really good, and the guys there offered me a bonus if I finished on the podium. Glenn had that race in his control and then the engine died with nine laps to go, and that gave us the famous footage of him and the talk he gave to the TV while sitting in the car, I really felt for him that day. We saw a lot about the character of Glenn Seton that day – the failure was ripping his heart but he still sat there in the car doing a TV interview. Bo was in tears in the pits.

  I was a little bit pissed off at the team because I was actually leading at one stage and my brakes were starting to go. I was changing down early and probably, if anything, slightly over-revving it, going into the corners, using the engine as a brake. I didn’t realise that, of all people, Larry Perkins was catching me at a great rate of knots. They weren’t giving me that information. Before I knew what was going on in that final stint, he was right up my arse, out-braked me and went on to win. If they had told me what was going on I would have pushed a bit harder. I was a bit disappointed in that. I think they’d just forgotten they had a second car out there while Glenn was leading.

  So I was in the car at the end and I was a second or two behind Larry when Glenn’s car stopped. I couldn’t catch him, even though I’d have dearly loved to remind him of the Formula Three race way back when by taking that race off him, I couldn’t. Second was a great result, and I got my bonus.

  After that weekend things began to change fast. The relationship issues between Glenn and Bo were having a big impact on the team and Philip Morris was looking at exiting the team. They approached me to see if I would be interested in running a team. I made it very clear that yes, I would be, but I didn’t want to be seen to be pulling the rug from under Glenn. I would only do it if they were definitely not going to sponsor Glenn. They guaranteed me that was the case and we formed Pack Leader Racing.

  I think Glenn knew what the deal was, so we didn’t really have any issues. Since I was in charge of getting as much money as possible for the team, I went to talk with the CEO of Ford Australia, who offered me sweet FA, probably because of the way the media were portraying the set-up of the new team as shafting Glenn.

  Everyone in Australia thinks I’m a Ford man – I’m not. It’s just purely coincidental that every single team, with the exception of the BMWs, was either a Ford Sierra or a Ford Falcon. I always wanted to race a Holden, because I thought they were a better race car. They had a smaller frontal area and they always seemed to handle a bit better than the Falcon. So I was pretty pissed off with Ford for what I saw as a token amount. I was so pissed off that I went onto the grid at Bathurst wearing a Holden cap just to show them what I thought.

  Regardless of Ford’s effort, Philip Morris supplied enough money to set up a workshop and get all the equipment, transporter, engines, dyno … the whole deal. I then contacted Ross Stone, who always prepared a good car, and got him and his brother Jimmy on board to look after it all. I knew Jimmy because he was working as a fabricator at Norwel
l when I was with the BMWs. Notice I use that word, fabricator, because he was not an engineer.

  I knew I wasn’t mechanically minded enough to run the cars and I didn’t want to worry about the small things, I just wanted to race. The Stone brothers looked to be the perfect solution. I offered them a percentage of the team if they were to come across as an incentive in addition to wages. Which they agreed to and we were off and running. We also got Campbell Little to build our engines and he was, and still is, a really good operator.

  Jimmy came across and was trying to be an engineer, which he’s not. The proof of the pudding is that not long after they established Stone Brothers Racing, Jimmy ceased to be the engineer. They got engineers in, I mean proper engineers. I was always having trouble with the rear grip and Jimmy was no help at all.

  We ended up with sponsorship issues when the government blocked cigarette sponsorship on cars – bloody Jones’ Law, here was a good sponsor and the relationship was already terminal. That is when we switched to Pack Leader with a colour scheme that evoked the Peter Jackson brand.

  The government cracked it with us – but they did say we could take the sponsorship money but not market products. Eventually we weren’t allowed to take their money, even if we were driving a plain white car with no stickers, which I just find extraordinary. What do they think, that some kid doing a project was going to find out on Google that a car is sponsored by Marlboro and then immediately go out and buy a packet of fags?

  Anyway, the relationship lasted a couple of years until they closed that door on us. At that point I was in a bit of trouble. We had the team and all the equipment. I had a factory up and running and I had my office at the front and the Stone brothers were operating the workshop at the back. Because I was having trouble getting sponsorship for 1998, I sold them the team. They didn’t have all the money they needed at the time, so they agreed to pay extra rent to make up the difference of the purchase of the team. I thought I was pretty generous, but I’m sure they think differently.

  So I was running the business side and they were supposed to be running the motorsport side. I was involved with them as far as the major decisions in regards to the financial situation and what we spent money on, but in terms of what engine went on what dyno and when we went testing, it was up to the Stones. I didn’t really want to get involved in the day-to-day things. If people came around to the factory, I would take them through as a tour.

  Paul Romano joined the team as a second driver and he brought some cash, and in the endurance races we had Allan Grice and Andrew Miedecke, who was very thick with the Stone brothers. The first half of the season was tough, Jimmy just wasn’t able to help me get the car sorted and it took until the middle of the season to get any results and any sort of flow. I finished second in two of the final four rounds and felt we were getting somewhere.

  Paul and Andrew got 10th at Sandown, where I got a retirement with Allan. At Bathurst we were fast. I qualified third with a really good run in the Top 10 Shootout, where I was nearly a second quicker than I was in qualifying. That was very satisfying when most dropped time. On the 15th lap of that race I passed Peter Brock in the wet to take the lead and I was pulling away from him and opening a gap at more than a second a lap when the car caught fire going through turn 2 going up the mountain.

  In the wet the car was fantastic. Going across the top there’s little rivers that run across the track and you’ve really got to be prepared for them. You need to make sure your steering angle is straight when you hit them. I loved the challenge of that sort of thing, and to race like that and open a gap was very rewarding. I enjoyed the small amount of time I had in the car that day. And there was only another 140 laps to go, so it was anyone’s race at that stage. If I didn’t own the team I would have been most of the way home by the time the race finished, but I hung around to see our second car finish in 11th.

  To round out the year we ran the two races in New Zealand and I had Paul Radisich in the other car. At Pukekohe we both retired in the final, and in Wellington I missed the final two races of the weekend. I was in the box calling the final race with Darrell Eastlake, which I enjoyed through gritted teeth.

  Can I say the 1997 championship was just 10 rounds of frustration? While in 1996 we were a consistent top 10 car, this season we were not. The thing handled like a bloody blancmange most of the time. It wouldn’t put its power down. I would dearly have loved to have gotten a decent engineer into that team. I was pulling in one direction and the Stone brothers were headed in another.

  I battled my way through the season for just one race win at Oran Park. There were too many retirements, especially in the first race of the weekend, which makes it hard.

  When the car was good I really enjoyed myself. Barbagallo Raceway in Perth and Oran Park in the last round were two of those. Perth was great, I fought my way through the pack, picking them off after our tyres hung in well – I’d like to think it was my clever driving, but I was never that patient – and we were able to make ground late in the dry races there.

  At Oran Park I wanted the round win after winning the second race, and the car was really good. I got a good start in the final race only to have Greg Murphy pass me like I was standing still. After a couple of laps I was on his tail and constantly looking for a way past. I put the pressure on pretty hard but he held steady. Lap after lap I stuck my nose down the inside at the end of the main straight and then coming onto the straight, which were two great overtaking spots. With only five laps to go I pulled right inside Murphy at the last turn, he squeezed me, as was his right, and I went onto the kerb and ended up clipping him. I took the lead but then went off at the next corner. I damaged the front suspension and that was it.

  So with the sprint races done, we could think about how to salvage the season with good runs at Sandown and Bathurst. Sandown with Jason Bright was pretty good, the first Falcon home, in third. Mark Larkham – Larko – in the other car had speed too and he qualified second while I was fourth. In terms of this season, we couldn’t have gone to Bathurst with any more confidence, which was actually my second run in a Bathurst 1000 in 1997 after running a Renault in the Super Tourer a couple of weeks prior.

  For that race I kind of reunited with Williams to run a Renault with Graham Moore. Graham put the deal together and while I was over in England I went and had a sit in it and got it all under control. Very nice team and the Renault was a front-wheel drive Laguna – I hated it. We ran two cars, one for me and Graham and the other for Alain Menu who was the British Touring Car Champion that year, and Jason Plato, both good blokes.

  I came through The Cutting about 40 laps into the race and there was some oil there and being front-wheel drive, the bloody tyres have hit that and they’ve just spun. I’ve gone straight into the wall and that was it.

  It was good to be back with Williams, even if it wasn’t the real team – people like Frank Williams and Patrick Head had nothing to do with it. But it was a European team and they had all the right computers. Everything had a place and there was a place for everything. It was a well-oiled machine, which made me think a little more about my team.

  For the V8 Supercar race, Conrad Casino put some money into the team for us to use Scott Pruett, who’d been out for the Indy at the Gold Coast. They had some sort of relationship with him and they wanted him to do Bathurst, so they put up some money and I banked it for the Stone brothers to spend. Being American, he struggled with the right-hand drive and changing gears with his left, and it didn’t help when we started the weekend with a really poor car. We got the car OK and I made the Shootout, but it wasn’t an easy car to drive, which wasn’t good with 1000 kilometres in front of us.

  We were there or thereabouts for most of the day, running in the top three or four for the first half of the race and settling into second for the run home. Then things started to go wrong and a series of pitstops cost us eight laps and we finished 11th. Larko brought his car home in third.

  I was up and down lik
e a yo-yo with everything that happened in 1997, and when Ross and Jimmy came to me with a deal I didn’t have to think too long. I sold it to them with probably too much haste and joined with my old mate Tony Longhurst for 1998, while the Stone brothers went on to win Bathurst, since they made the changes they should have made when working with me.

  Racing for Tony was a way of using his spare parts, which wasn’t the best, given I had brought sponsorship from Komatsu with me. If the gearbox had a few too many kays, put it in AJ’s car. I missed the first two rounds and then did the remainder of the series, which was actually a bit of a waste of time. I don’t remember being competitive anywhere, so we’ll just move on. Finishing 16th in the Australian Touring Car Championship was not a career highlight for me.

  I was going through the motions. It was pointless getting bothered by it. Just grin and bear it, or as my wife would say, smile and wave.

  I’ve never worried about my reputation, so that didn’t bug me. All I really cared about at that time was my immediate family and that’s about it. It’s like when I went back to Formula One – people were saying, ‘You left on such a high note, you’re the only driver to have ever won his last Formula One race. Then you came back and spoiled it.’

  Yeah, so what? So what if I had a shit season in in 1998. Who really cares? I guarantee I don’t go to bed thinking, ‘Oh, 1998, Christ, oh Jesus. I wish I hadn’t done that.’

  There were times when people probably perceived me as arrogant during my touring car years. I remember when AVESCO was formed and they started all these things we had to go to, and you’d get a fine if you didn’t go. I scored a $1000 fine for one non-attendance at something, and I worked out I could just pay for the whole season and do none of them. So I did.