Alan Stanley Jones (born 2 November 1946) is an Australian former racing driver and broadcaster, who competed in Formula One between 1975 and 1986. Jones won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1980 with Williams, and won 12 Grands Prix across ten seasons.
Jones was the first driver to win a Formula One World Championship with the Williams team, becoming the 1980 World Drivers' Champion and the second Australian to do so following triple World Champion Sir Jack Brabham. He competed in a total of 117 Grands Prix, winning 12 and achieving 24 podium finishes. Jones also won the 1978 Can-Am championship driving a Lola.
Jones is also the last Australian driver to win the Australian Grand Prix, winning the 1980 event at Calder Park Raceway, having lapped the field consisting mostly of Formula 5000 cars while he was driving his Formula One Championship winning Williams FW07B.
Alan Stanley Jones was born on 2 November 1946 in Melbourne, Victoria.
Jones attended Xavier College and is the son of Stan Jones, an Australian racing driver and winner of the 1959 Australian Grand Prix, and wanted to follow in his footsteps. Jones initially worked in his father's Holden dealership while racing a Mini and a Cooper. The younger Jones left for Europe in 1967, to make a name for himself, but found that he could not afford even a Formula Ford drive. He therefore returned home but was back in the UK in 1970 and set about building his career in company with compatriot Brian McGuire.
The two men bought and sold second-hand cars and Jones was eventually able to afford a Formula Three, Lotus 41 which he intended to adapt to Formula Two specification and take back to Australia to sell, in order to finance a season of Formula Three. However, the machine was written off in a testing accident at Brands Hatch in which Jones suffered a broken leg.
In late 1970, Jones signed with a firm for whom McGuire was working, designed to promote drivers' interests and was selected to compete in a series of races in Brazil. However, in his first two races the engine failed and in the third the gearbox broke, which meant the opportunity ended.
For 1971, Jones campaigned a Brabham BT 28 converted to BT35 specification, in Formula Three and had a moderately successful season which led to a series of tests for March at Silverstone. However, despite the success of the test, Jones was not offered a drive by March and for 1972, drove a GRD in Formula Three. Jones did enough that season to be kept on by GRD for the next year with a new sponsor and only lost the 1973 championship due to a misfiring engine in the last round at Brands Hatch. In 1974, Jones began the season in Formula Atlantic but felt it was a very amateurish effort, but a chance meeting with Harry Stiller led to a drive in the latter's March 74. At the end of the season, Jones made his F5000 debut for Stiller in the final round of the European Championship at Brands Hatch in a Chevron B24/28 owned by John MacDonald. It was planned to enter Formula 5000 for 1975. However, Stiller's initial plans fell through but after some delay, during which Jones was effectively unemployed, Stiller arranged to purchase a Formula One Hesketh 308 and signed Jones to drive the car.
1975–1977: Hesketh, Hill, Surtees and Shadow
Jones' first race was the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix at the fast Montjuïc circuit in the purchased Hesketh although the weekend turned out to be one of the most tragic in Formula One history
when Rolf Stommelen's crash caused the death of five spectators. After four races in Formula One the team ceased racing after Stiller moved abroad. However, Jones was named as a replacement for the injured Stommelen in Graham Hill's team. His best finish with Hill, in four races for the team, was fifth at the Nürburgring.
Jones earned his first full-time Formula One drive in 1976, in John Surtees' team. Jones' car was known for its infamous Durex sponsorship which led the BBC refusing to cover Formula One races during the season. He managed several good finishes in the TS19, a fourth in Japan in the final race of the season being the best of them. Jones refused to drive for Surtees in 1977, preferring to sit out a season than continue with the team.
Jones was racing in America when he was signed by the Shadow team as a replacement for Tom Pryce, who had been killed in a freak racing accident in South Africa. He made the most of the opportunity and won at the Österreichring for his maiden victory, finishing seventh in the championship, with 22 points.
By late 1977, he had caught the attention of Frank Williams as well as Enzo Ferrari. Ferrari had a meeting with him at Maranello, but in the end, Gilles Villeneuve got the drive. Williams, who was looking to rebuild his Formula One racing team. Williams Grand Prix had struggled for success in its first years and after Williams had restarted his team in 1977, Jones was entrusted to give them their first taste of it. As well as Williams, he also signed with Haas-Hall for 1978, and competed in a Lola 333CS in the Can-Am series, winning the title. Jones took nine poles in ten races but missed the Laguna Seca race due to a Formula One scheduling conflict. Stand-in Brian Redman finished twelfth in that race after the kill wire was crimped under a valve cover, resulting in intermittent ignition. Of the nine races in which he competed, Jones won five (Atlanta, Mosport, Road America, Mid-Ohio, and Riverside.) He finished second to Elliott Forbes-Robinson at Charlotte after hitting a chicane and losing a spark plug wire, retired through accident at St Jovite and lost a radiator at Watkins Glen. He finished third at Trois-Rivières after losing a shift fork and being stuck with only second and fifth gears on the tight road circuit. At that race, water-injected brakes were first used in Can-Am, developed by the Haas team and copied with varying degrees of success by others. Jones ran one Can-Am race in 1979 (Mid-Ohio), where he and Keke Rosberg finished 1–2, with Jones winning his last Can-Am start. For Williams, his best result that season was a second-place finish at Watkins Glen. Jones helped put the team on the Formula One map in 1979 using the Williams FW07, after winning four races in the span of five events near the end of the season. Jones finished third in the championship that year, and it was the springboard to an excellent 1980 campaign. Jones's best years in Formula One had just begun, in the middle of the ground-effect era.
Jones won seven races in 1980, although the Spanish Grand Prix was later removed from the championship and the Australian Grand Prix was a non-championship race, so only five counted towards the Championship. Throughout the season he had a car which consistently made the podium, and he achieved ten during the year. At the end of the season he had beaten Nelson Piquet by 13 points in the standings, becoming Australia's first World Champion since Sir Jack Brabham. He had a good chance to repeat his success in 1981, but a very combative relationship with Carlos Reutemann led to an intense rivalry that possibly cost both drivers a chance at the championship. He finished four points behind Piquet for the championship and three behind Reutemann.
After winning the championship in 1980, Jones and Williams competed in the then non-championship Australian Grand Prix at Calder Park in November. Driving his FW07B against a field consisting mostly of Formula 5000's (and Bruno Giacomelli's Alfa Romeo 179), Jones, who had previously finished 4th in the race in 1977 (he was penalised 60 seconds for a jumped start, and officially finished just 20 seconds behind winner Warwick Brown showing that if not for the penalty he would have won by 40 seconds), joined his father Stan as a winner of the Australian Grand Prix.
From 1979 to 1981, Jones was awarded the No. 1 driver of the season by the editor of the Autocourse annual. During his championship year in 1980, the editor awarded Jones the No.1 slot not just because he was World Champion but because in the editor's opinion "Jones extracted every ounce of potential from the Williams FW07 -and more importantly, he did it consistently. All season Jones never gave anything less than his best." In 1981 despite missing the championship, the Autocourse editor still gave the No.1 driver award to Jones because "in 1981 Alan Jones was outstanding, his racing instincts sharper than ever, his driving aggressive and confident."