This is Formula 1's most underrated world champion - he's one of the best we've ever seen

Alan Jones celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday, November 2, and there can therefore be no more appropriate moment for me to tell you that in my opinion he was and is the most underrated world champion in the history of Formula 1. Indeed, for three successive seasons, 1979, 1980, and 1981, he was the best driver in the world. He was not the most polished, nor the most politically adroit, nor the most naturally inclined to charm a roomful of hangers-on; but the best. He possessed a combination of strength, stamina, courage, belligerence, and raw speed that made him, at his peak, a magnificently formidable competitor.

If we look only at drivers who raced in F1 during all of those three seasons — 1979, 1980, and 1981 — there were of course other candidates for the unofficial ‘best driver in the world’ accolade: in strictly alphabetical order Jacques Laffite, Nelson Piquet, Didier Pironi, Carlos Reutemann, Gilles Villeneuve, and John Watson were all truly excellent drivers, yet none combined Jones’ portfolio of attributes quite so completely. He was a race driver in the most elemental sense: powerful, unsentimental, and fiercely competitive, just as his father Stan had been in their native Australia in the 1950s, when he raced a home-honed Maybach Special then an ex-works Maserati 250F with redoubtable ferocity. You did not mess with Stan Jones, and you did not mess with his son either. Late one night in September 1981, outside a pub in London’s Putney High Street, four burly men tried it. Jones gave as good as he got; he arrived at Monza with a badly broken and heavily bandaged finger; undeterred, he raced his Williams to a gutsy second place.

He was never a romantic figure in the manner of Villeneuve, whose inexhaustible popularity with journalists and fans alike flourished in his tireless attempts to drive in defiance of the laws of physics, and he was the antithesis of Reutemann, a cerebral stylist who was sometimes electrifyingly quick despite caressing wheel and pedals as deftly as a ballerina might execute a pirouette en point, whom incidentally he hated. He was as fast as Piquet and Pironi, tougher than both, and faster than Laffite and Watson. He was rough and ready, and over the past half-century that approach has not been conducive to F1 myth making.

Before 1979, spotting quite how good he was required care and attention. In Formula 3, Formula 5000, and Formula Atlantic he had been good but not great, and, when he finally badgered his way into F1, in 1975, he raced a Hesketh then a Hill, neither of which was a remotely competitive car. In 1976 he moved to Surtees, by that time a mid-grid outfit at best, although he drove its Durex-sponsored cars to solid points-scoring finishes at Zolder, Brands Hatch, and Fuji. In 1977 he inherited Tom Pryce’s Shadow after that great lost talent had been killed at Kyalami – but, again, it was rarely a genuinely competitive machine. Nonetheless, Jones scored points with it at Monaco, Zolder, Monza, Mosport, Fuji, and Österreichring, which race he won, beating Niki Lauda’s pole-sitting Ferrari fair and square. The result was derided in some quarters as a freak, and quite a few contemporaneous race reports described it as such. It was nothing of the sort. Jones drove brilliantly, and his victory should have been recognised for what it was: a warning. Here was a man who, given even half a chance, could beat the very best.

In 1978, now at Williams, his reputation at last began to grow. That year’s Patrick Head-designed Williams FW06 was a neat and well balanced machine, and Jones might well have raced it to victory at Long Beach had a sagging front wing then a high-revs misfire not intervened while he was challenging Reutemann’s Ferrari for the win. In the end he faded to seventh, the race’s fastest lap a meagre consolation. At Brands Hatch transmission failure denied him another potential winning opportunity – and again Reutemann won instead. At Watkins Glen he finished second, yet again to Reutemann, a fine result that reinforced the impression that something more substantial than a succession of isolated flashes was developing at Williams.

Then, in 1979, came the Williams FW07, and with it arrived the means to turn promise into glory. Williams’ first ground-effect car was a masterpiece of aerodynamic efficiency – it was beautiful, too – and Jones was perfectly suited to it. He was much quicker in it than was his more experienced team-mate Clay Regazzoni, and he was ready and willing to exploit its pace without waiting for invitations. At Silverstone he took the pole by a country mile, and he categorically dominated the race the next day, only for a water pump failure to end his run. He then won four of the season’s remaining six grands prix: Hockenheim, Österreichring, Zandvoort, and Montreal. At Watkins Glen, the season’s final race, he took the pole by an astonishing 1.299sec, and the next day he was leading by almost 40 seconds when a botched pitstop caused him to exit the pitlane on three wheels: end of race. He finished third in the 1979 F1 drivers’ world championship, behind the Ferrari duo of Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve, but the points standings did not tell the true story. Jones and the FW07 had become the combo to beat.

In 1980, now in an upgraded FW07B, he removed any remaining doubt, becoming Williams’ first F1 world champion, and, although he failed to finish at Kyalami, Long Beach, and Monaco, while accident damage ruined his chances at Zandvoort, in chronological order his other results were first, third, second, first, first, third, second, second, first, and first. Jones’ world title represented success for Williams – of course – but it was also a triumph for a driver who could be frank, combative, and palpably unbothered by a desire to win friends and influence people. On track those qualities were assets. He was difficult to cow and harder still to dislodge.

Yet 1981 may have been his finest season of all. Williams won the F1 constructors’ world championship, but the F1 drivers’ world championship went elsewhere, to Brabham’s Nelson Piquet. Even so, Jones’ driving demonstrated an even more aggressive edge that year. At Jarama, Dijon, Silverstone, and Zandvoort his pugnacity contributed to DNFs, for sometimes his appetite to impose his will on a race led to the sort of overreach that gives opponents an unexpected reprieve. But on other occasions the same quality made him unbeatable. With better luck he could have won at Zolder, Monaco, and Hockenheim, and his victories at Long Beach and, especially, Las Vegas were flawless demonstrations of precision and assertiveness.

In truth he was mesmerisingly impressive that day at Las Vegas, in the Caesars Palace Grand Prix, hurling his Williams FW07C around that unlovely circuit – a serpentine layout coiled within the confines of a casino’s car park, believe it or not – to score his 12th and final F1 grand prix win, after which success he announced his retirement from F1 at the age of just 34. He left at the very top of his form, and his decision seemed perverse. However, his retirement did not last, for, although he lay low in 1982, he returned for a single grand prix with Arrows in 1983, he skipped 1984, then he reappeared with Beatrice-Haas in 1985, contesting three grands prix before embarking on a full season in 1986. But his results were lacklustre: he scored points only twice in those final years, both times in 1986, fourth at Österreichring and sixth at Monza. There were reasons for that shortfall, not least the limitations of the machinery at his disposal, but the damage to his reputation was significant. F1 is an unforgiving sport in its treatment of returning heroes, for it tends to remember their final chapters more vividly than their earlier ones, as though the deterioration of a great driver’s powers invalidates the brilliance that preceded it.

I have often wondered what might have happened had he not retired at Las Vegas in 1981. Keke Rosberg won the F1 drivers’ world championship in 1982 in a Williams FW08, the car that Jones would have driven had he continued. No-one can say with any certainty that he would have won the world title in 1982, for F1 is complicated by too many conflicting variables for that sort of guesstimation to be robust. But he would have been a mightily formidable contender. After all, he was not yet 35, and his retirement had not been prompted by an inability to compete; quite the opposite in fact. Instead, his eventual return left the impression of a decent driver who had outstayed his moment, whereas the more accurate description was of a great driver who had chosen to leave a moment too early then returned to discover that the world he had once bestrode imperiously had irrevocably changed.