Alan Jones

WHY ALAN SHOULD NOT RIDE A BIKE

The Alan Jones Story

At his retirement he had shown perfect style. Both his comebacks at Arrows in 1983 and at Beatrice Lola (1985 & 1986) were at a lower level. Alan Jones, world champion 1980 in a Williams Ford, had finished his career with a fine win at Las Vegas the year before so far, with a lawrel wreath on his head like the winner of a Roman chariot race, taking the new world champion Nelson Piquet into his arms, before returning to his home country of Australia.

He is the son of famous racing driver and automobile enterpreneur Stan Jones, who had been of the same popularity as Sir Jack Brabham had been, he had been educated as a car merchant in the companies of his father, before they had gone bankrupt, to graduate as an architect some years later. But when he came to England together with his wife Beverly and a friend, he looked like a backpacker. Those early days money always had been short, and for that reason Jones had started a small inn with bed & breakfast and also a motorhome business. Both could not be very successful, because "we had paid the debts of one credit card with another one. I had been an awful husband and sometimes we had talked about serparation," like he remembered the things later. There he was on the climax of his career, and when he wanted to buy a stereo unit once, he negotiated for a little discount, to sign a well-paid AKAI sponsor contract the same time. Rob Walker had discovered him for Grand Prix Racing, together with Harry Stiller, with a single entry of a privately owned Hesketh Ford 308B in the tradional dark-blue livery. Then Graham Hill offered him the cockpit of Rolf Stommelen, who had to recover from many fractures sustained at Barcelona earlier that year caused by a broken rear wing, when being in the lead of the Spanish Grand Prix. In 1976, when Jones had dominated designate world champion James Hunt at the Brands Hatch held Race of Champions until half distance, only the Surtees Ford TS19´s sponsor, condom manufacturer Durex made the rival teams getting frustrated, because Aids had not yet been discussed so far. But that had not been Jones´breakthrough, as well as his first ever win at Zeltweg´s 1977 Austrian Grand Prix, where he had beaten local heroe Niki Lauda in the Ferrari with a Shadow Ford, that´s cockpit the Australian had taken over from Welshman Tom Pryce, who had been killed at Kyalami the same year.

That year Frank Williams had separated from Walter Wolf, had re-organized himself and signed a contract with his meanwhile famous Arabian sponsors to construct a car of his own for 1978, that should be driven by Alan Jones. "We were very happy about the fact, that nobody had experienced before, what a good driver Jones really was," he and his technical director Patrick Head enthuse about him until today.

But during the 1981 season Alan Jones became more and more frustrated about the wing cars and also about his unpopular team mate Carlos Reutemann. In contrast to Jones´friend Clay Regazzoni the year before, the Argentinian not always was loyal to the man from Down Under, who also was tired of permanent travelling. He wanted to go back to his farm near Melbourne with the uncountable sheep and so many windmills, where he could make his business wearing Bermuda shorts but no shoes, and drinking a can of Foster´s already in the morning without having a quarell with the Arabian sponsors. One day I had watched a Williams mechanic taking cans of beer out of the freezer in the front part of the transporter, hidden by some layers of Coca Cola and Fanta cans, carefully turning around, if there had been no Arab watching him doing so, in spite of the fact, that the powerful TAG boss Mansour Ojieh conceeded to drink a glass of wine sometimes as he had said in an interview with newsmagazine DER SPIEGEL - Jones meanwhile discreetely had escaped to the camp of Arrows sponsor Warsteiner, a great German brewery.

Now, when he finally found some time to relax, some curios but also dangerous incidents happened, making him getting hurt more serious than in two decades of professional motor racing never suffering under the slightest injuries. Aside from the necessary involvement in the Australian Touring Car Championship and sporadic, easily taken jobs in his office, Jones used to go hunting. Also that Jones did the relaxed way, when he leant his gun against a tree, the weapon was charged, but not secured, so the shot coming out of it made Mr Jones loose one of his fingertips.

Another day the master of the house wanted to inspect the hard work done by his gardener by bike. Everything went right, until this man met him halfway, also riding a bike and, of course, on the wrong side. The crash following made Jones break some ribs.

And we should not forget that horse named Jimmy, who did not take care so much about the orders of his master. This way Jimmy caused a complicated broken thighbone putting a lot of pins into one of Jones´legs. More funny had been the reason for Jones´pit stop during the 1980 Argentine Grand Prix at Buenos Aires. A plastic bag entering the sidepods had gone ahead the radiator, making the engine temperatures rise, but in spite the halt Jones had won the race as the first stopper since Dan Gurney in the Eagle Weslake in Spa 1967, before Brabham´s Gordon Murray made the pit stops necessary for nearly all competitors in the middle of the eighties. Others were out of that luck. At Carlos Pace the Brabham mechanics had taken away a spanner from the pedals. At Riccardo Patrese they had to take away the drinking bottle the same place. At one of Denny Hulme´s CanAm McLarens a Coca Cola can was found there. Later the New Zealander had suffered under a loose steering wheel at the 230 km/h Jochen Rindt Curve, because his boss Teddy Mayer had forgotten to fix it properly again, after he had demonstrated the system to some journalists. And in the cockpit of Clay Regazzoni´s Ensign Ford a very poisonous snake was found in Jacarepagua, the mechanics killed with a hammer. And Ronnie Peterson only had been able to return to the pits on the 22.8 kilometres long Nuerburgring Nordschleife, when running out of fuel with his Lotus Ford 72, by the help of an inhabitant of a nearby village. The man gave him 10 litres free from the spare can of his road car.

The only thing left to be mentioned, would be the trouble, that made the adoption of a second child impossible for the Jones, after they had grown up their adopted son Christian "with eggs and a lot of raw meet." But when the clerk of the youth welfare department sat in Beverly Jones´ living room to check to household and to do the formalities, at that time Mr Jones entered the flat, shaking and with a bleeding wound on his head, officially coming from a business dinner, making the lady asking a critical question: "Is your husband really an alcoholic? "

Klaus Ewald

Graphics: project * 2000

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