Alan Jones obituary: Williams F1 world championship hero

Stan Jones, in failing health, had relocated to the UK to be with his son. He passed away on March 16, and two days later Alan took victory in a Lombard North Central F3 round at Silverstone; the laurel wreath for winning was placed in his father’s coffin. Jones won a second Lombard counter at Silverstone, but the biggest championship was the John Player series. Jones rose to the top of this points table with wins at Mallory Park, Zandvoort and Oulton Park, and led the standings going into the double-points final round at Brands. Here, his engine failed in practice and, with a below-par replacement unit for the race, he could not prevent Tony Brise overhauling him in the final standings.

At this time, Formula Atlantic was growing in strength in the UK, and this is where Jones headed for 1974 after Dobbie lost interest in his team. Initially he raced a two-year-old March, but was under no illusions that its owner was unable to put in the preparation required – despite a win at Silverstone in a race of high attrition. Meanwhile, 1960s F3 champion-turned-race team proprietor Harry Stiller was not getting the results his brand-new March deserved with driver Bev Bond. A deal was worked out whereby Bond moved into the role of team manager, with Jones filling the cockpit. Jones went on to win the prestige British Grand Prix support race at Brands and also at Oulton as he climbed to fourth in the championship, and came close to winning the secondary Southern Organs series with one win, at Mallory.

Stiller had big ambitions for his team and Jones, and in 1975 did a deal with Hesketh for his protégé to race a car campaigned the previous season by James Hunt. His F1 debut netted a promising seventh place in the International Trophy at Silverstone, and Jones went on to race the Hesketh at four world championship grands prix, starting with the infamous Spanish round at Montjuich Park. Stiller, however, had to head to the US for tax reasons, but Jones was picked up by the team of Graham Hill, who needed a replacement for Rolf Stommelen, injured in the tragic Spanish GP accident.

Now Jones was paired with his great F3/FAtlantic rival Brise. It was the Englishman who created the bigger impression, but the Aussie got the best result: fifth in the German GP at the Nürburgring. That was his last race with Hill, because Stommelen had regained fitness. “Having been world champion, Graham felt he knew better than his drivers how to set up the car,” Jones told Taylor in 2008. “He was stubborn and inflexible. A great ambassador for motor racing, but a wretched man to work for.”

Jones had contested a one-off Formula 5000 race in late 1974 and now returned to that category to see out the ’75 season, with the RAM team of John MacDonald. Using the 3.4-litre Cosworth GA engine fitted to an F1 March 751 chassis, Jones was a revelation, with victories at Brands and Silverstone.

For 1976, it was another year of racing in F1 and F5000. John Surtees pushed Jones into signing – in a Heathrow airport departure lounge, just before they boarded a flight to South Africa for Kyalami testing! – a two-year contract for F1. Jones’s first race in the Surtees TS19 was the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, infamously pulled by the BBC from the TV screens because the car bore Durex sponsorship. He raced it to a superb second place, but scored points in only three world championship races, peaking with fourth in the Japanese GP at Fuji. Jones had tired of the team, and did not want to continue into 1977: “John said to me once, ‘The reason why the car isn’t quick enough is because the chassis is too good, it’s not putting enough heat in the tyres.’ So I said, ‘Well John, why don’t you just f**k it up a little?’”

Ferrari invited Jones to Maranello, where he signed a deal for 1978. The proviso was that, should a North American driver – vital for Ferrari’s market, and the inference being that it would be Mario Andretti – become available to partner Carlos Reutemann, then Jones would be surplus to requirements. Jones had also been courted by Williams. When he discovered in the motor sporting press that Andretti had elected to stay put at Lotus, he called Ferrari, only to be told that the ‘North American’ seat had been filled by Gilles Villeneuve. He got back in touch with Williams, met Frank in an M1 layby, then went with him to the team’s factory, where he met Head and the Williams FW06. The rest is history… “By signing Villeneuve, Ferrari had done me the biggest favour of my life,” he mused.

The sad irony is that Jones’s old pal McGuire, who had become the first driver to win a race in an F1 Williams when he piloted his ex-Laffite FW04 to a ShellSport victory at Thruxton in 1976, had been killed when he crashed his second FW04 – reworked into the McGuire BM1 – at Brands, a couple of weeks after Jones’s Austrian GP triumph with Shadow.

Jones was a perfect fit at Williams, and the FW06 was a huge step forward for the team. He believed he could have won in Long Beach, fourth time out, had a misfire not struck while he was hunting down race winner Reutemann’s Ferrari. The season later peaked on the other side of the States, at Watkins Glen, where he placed second. He also drove a Lola for Carl Haas in the Can-Am series, and claimed the title with five wins from nine races. Due to Jones’s extensive transatlantic travel commitments, the boss of Haas Can-Am sponsor Citicorp insisted – and paid for – his driver to fly on Concorde…

Jones scaled back his Can-Am activities in 1979, although still took a win at Mid-Ohio in June. This was just after Williams had introduced the FW07, which proved to be a sensation. The team had taken the ground-effect ball introduced by Lotus and run with it. It was perfected by the British GP at Silverstone, where Jones set a scintillating pole position lap and should have won, but for a water pump breakage. Team-mate Clay Regazzoni took the chequered flag instead, but Jones bounced back to win the consecutive German, Austrian and Dutch GPs, before adding another in Canada. This form came too late to deny Ferrari pair Scheckter and Villeneuve in the championship, but Jones and Williams were hot favourites for 1980.

They certainly delivered on that. Now partnered by Reutemann, Jones won the first GP of the season in Argentina, but had to wait until the European season was in full swing before adding to his tally. Victories then came in the Spanish GP (albeit this race was stripped of championship status amid F1’s political war of the time), French and British (at Brands) GPs. As the circus headed to North America for the final two races, the only opposition was Brabham’s new star Nelson Piquet. A win in Montreal put the title to bed, and Jones added honours at Watkins Glen for good measure.

“Patrick and I had a fantastic relationship,” Jones said of Head. “We understood each other so well that he could almost double-guess me. If I wanted an adjustment on the grid after doing the warm-up lap, he’d know precisely what I wanted almost before I asked for it. Frank is the best bloke I ever drove for, because he was such a great motivator. He was a bloody racer.”

With Group C on the rise, there were occasional sportscar outings. As an up-and-comer, Jones had competed in a few world championship events in the mid-1970s in two-litre Lola and Chevron, and he’d also been a regular in the BMW M1 Procar series of 1979 and ’80 – strangely, he never won a race in the German cars, but was championship runner-up in ’80. Shortly after his Arrows races, he was fifth in the 1983 Silverstone 1000km in a Kremer Porsche 956, and the following year he claimed sixth in the Le Mans 24 Hours with the same team, sharing with compatriot Vern Schuppan and Jean-Pierre Jarier. He also had a one-off in ’85 at the Brands 1000km with the TWR Jaguar team, and would have a frustrating – and brief – liaison with the TOM’S Toyota squad in Japan.

Jones was settling nicely into the 1985 Australian Touring Car Championship season, helming an Alfa Romeo GTV6, when a bold new F1 project began to come together. He had been called by Charlie Crichton-Stuart, an old mate from Williams times, who was helping out with what would become known as the Beatrice Lola team. Ford was on board to supply V6 turbo engines, ex-McLaren man Teddy Mayer was team manager, former Williams engineer Neil Oatley was designer, there were two young aerodynamicists at the team by the names of Ross Brawn and Adrian Newey, and the show was being run by Jones’s successful Can-Am collaborator Haas.

Jones got himself back into the single-seater groove with a highly impressive Indycar outing for the Newman/Haas Lola team at Elkhart Lake in place of Andretti, who had broken his collarbone in a crash at Michigan, finishing in third place. The Beatrice/Haas team joined the F1 grid for the final three races of 1985, using Hart turbo power while the Ford units were readied. Then came the disastrous full season in ’86. The Ford engine was underpowered and unreliable, Jones did not get on with Mayer, and the team scored points in just two races: fourth and fifth for Jones and Patrick Tambay respectively in Austria; sixth for Jones at Monza. Haas withdrew from F1, and the season finale in Australia was the final GP start for both Jones and Tambay. “All the ingredients to bake the cake, but they couldn’t turn the oven on,” snorted Jones of the episode.

From 1990 onwards, Jones became a regular in Australian Touring Cars, taking five race wins through the decade. His best season was ’93, when he claimed three victories on his way to completing a 1-2 in the championship with the Ford Falcon operation of team boss/champion driver Glenn Seton.

For 1996, Jones set up his own team – Pack Leader Racing – with Kiwi engineering gurus Ross and Jim Stone, before they bought Jones out at the end of ’97 and renamed the squad Stone Brothers Racing. Jones’s last serious campaign was in ’98, but he continued racing as a co-driver in the Aussie enduros until 2002. He also made an emotional return to the Williams team when he was named aboard one of its Renault Lagunas for the 1997 Bathurst 1000 for Super Touring cars. He did well to get the car into the top 10 qualifying shootout, but crashed out on a “mongrel patch of oil” during his second stint. Jones, who had made his debut in the Mount Panorama classic two weeks before the ’81 Las Vegas GP, scored a best result in Australia’s ‘Great Race’ of second in ’95, with Allan Grice in a Falcon.

Jones had been made an MBE in 1980 for services to motor sport, enjoyed a career as an F1 analyst for Australian television, and was a leading force behind Team Australia in the A1GP ‘world cup’ series, where son Christian was one of the drivers. But it is as a Williams hero that he will be best remembered. As Keke Rosberg, who replaced Jones for 1982 and won that year’s world championship, once remarked of Williams and Head: “I always had the feeling that they couldn’t quite forgive me for not being Alan Jones.”