Latest / Rusty's Garage / Re-Release: Alan Jones - part 2

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Re-Release: Alan Jones - part 2 · Rusty's Garage

0:02
listener.
0:04
G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of our re-release of the Alan Jones feature episode.
0:09
Remember the timestamp here if some of the stories seem a little dated.
0:13
We spoke with him in March 2022 and he joined our library in the run-up to that year's Australian Grand Prix.
0:19
As always, if you've landed here and somehow missed part one, jump back to the library and hit the gas on that one first.
0:26
Some early life reflections, memories of his dad racing and Stan's influence on his own career.
0:32
Going to the UK and the hard yards that Alan did to make a quit and eventually break into the scene.
0:38
Working with the likes of Patrick Head and Frank Williams, absolute legends, during an era when F1 really started to go mainstream.
0:46
Every once in a while I get a text from AJ now.
0:48
They always make me smile.
0:51
The intent of rerunning this episode is just to keep his story front of mind as a little 80th birthday celebration.
0:57
Let's get back to the convo now.
1:02
First of all, I love Bernie.
1:03
I mean, Bernie gets shit-canned like you wouldn't believe.
1:05
He has done some wonderful things for Formula One.
1:08
And Bernie is a man of his word, I can tell you.
1:11
If Bernie shakes your hands, that is it.
1:15
What happened was I fronted down to Kyle Army for the South African Grand Prix.
1:21
And when I arrived at the hotel and booked in, the bloke at the desk said, Mr. Eccleston would like to see you in his suite or his penthouse or wherever he stayed.
1:30
I said, shit, what have I done?
1:34
So I duly went up there and he said, I'll come in.
1:37
And the first thing he said when I went in, he said, how do you feel?
1:39
I said, yeah, fine.
1:40
Why?
1:41
He said, you don't look very well.
1:43
This is typical Bernie.
1:44
He has an unbelievable sense of humour.
1:46
And I said, no, I feel all right.
1:47
Why?
1:48
And then he explained to me what was going on, that this senator, what's his name, Jesse Jackson, had threatened Beatrice.
1:59
And when I used to drive the Beatrice, people had no idea who Beatrice was.
2:03
I mean, it was the eighth largest company in America.
2:05
I mean, it's bigger than BHP.
2:07
It's huge.
2:08
Anyway...
2:11
Jackson said that at that car races in Kyle Army, where I'm pulling every black person out of the workforce.
2:19
As you can imagine, there was thousands of them.
2:22
So then Beatrice shit themselves, of course, and didn't quite know what to do.
2:25
They didn't want to be seen to be bow-towing to this individual, and they didn't want all their workforce to be pulled out, which would have cost them absolute millions.
2:36
So typical Bernie, he's come up with a solution.
2:39
He said, well, I guess if the driver gets crook and the car can't race, no one can win.
2:47
I said, yeah, that sounds, yeah, yeah.
2:50
He said, what are your chances of winning?
2:52
I said, well, if I start now, it might be all right.
2:54
Because, I mean, the car was dreadful.
2:58
And he said, well, I'll tell you what.
3:00
How about we give you first place?
3:02
No one knew.
3:03
To this day, no one knows what Formula One, the prize money is.
3:07
And he said, you can wait until everyone goes to the circuit tomorrow, quietly check out.
3:14
go home and spend a week or two with your family in Australia and then just go back to England.
3:19
And I thought, that sounds all right to me.
3:21
I mean, because I definitely...
3:22
I mean, the car was very uncompetitive.
3:24
So to me, that sounded like a really good deal.
3:27
So...
3:28
That morning I waited until everyone went to the circuit and I checked out and Qantas being, well then, hypocrites, they wouldn't fly into South Africa because of the apartheid thing.
3:40
But they knew damn well the people were flying from Johannesburg up to Harare and then getting on their flight to come home.
3:47
which is what I did.
3:48
So I flew up to Harare, stayed Saturday night there, I think it was, jumped on the plane the following morning and flew home.
3:56
And then the press release was that I'd contracted this shocking virus and couldn't drive.
4:04
And, you know, great strategy from a Bernie sense to play the chess pieces in that manner.
4:11
He is such a lateral thinker.
4:13
And, like, he is just...
4:14
Someone said you've got to get up very early in the morning to beat Bernie.
4:17
I said, no, you just don't go to bed.
4:19
You know, he's an operator.
4:24
Another question from a fan here, Mark Jones.
4:27
The best car that you ever drove and recollections of it, is that the car we reflected on before?
4:32
Oh, I'd have to say the 07, FW 07B.
4:37
There's certain cars that you hop into, and a 935 Porsche, believe it or not, was one of them.
4:41
You hop into them and you just feel immediately at home.
4:44
You feel comfortable.
4:44
The ergonomics are there.
4:46
It just feels good, you know?
4:48
And nine times out of 10, that's how it turns out.
4:52
It's like you very rarely see an ugly car in the winner's circle.
4:57
And I just felt at home with the FW O7.
4:59
I could do anything with it.
5:00
I mean, I felt pretty good in the 06 as well.
5:03
And I probably prefer the 07 simply because it was more competitive.
5:08
But that was by far and away my favourite car.
5:11
You also drove, in a one-off sense, the six-wheeler that they made.
5:16
You went off and tested it, I think, four wheels at the back, two at the front.
5:19
What did you think of that car?
5:20
I think you'd been to maybe Las Vegas the weekend before and jumped on a plane and went back over and tested that in Europe, didn't you?
5:25
Yeah, I was at Las Vegas and I was lucky enough to win that Grand Prix.
5:30
And Frank said, I want you to come back and drive the six-wheeler at Donington.
5:33
Because at that stage, I told him that I wanted to knock it on the head.
5:37
And I said, oh, Frank, I don't want to go, mate.
5:39
I just want to go home, you know.
5:42
And particularly at that time of the year, I knew that England would be freezing bloody cold.
5:46
He said, oh, come on, come back and have a drive it and see what you think.
5:50
And I think he was hoping that I'd hop in it and think, oh, this thing's a bit of a tool, you know, blah, blah, blah.
5:56
Anyway, to be honest, I didn't feel any difference at all.
6:00
It's not like it had better grip.
6:01
It's not like it had put its power.
6:05
I just didn't feel any different.
6:06
The only thing I felt was the bloody motorhome was freezing cold.
6:10
I stayed at a motel where I had to put boiling water over the lock of the car so I could unlock it.
6:15
And I'm thinking, this is all the reasons I want to go home, you know.
6:19
So that's what I did.
6:20
Had it been different?
6:20
I mean, let's say some of that extraneous stuff that was, you know, wearing you down.
6:25
But had the car been competitive?
6:28
You have been tempted to change your mind?
6:30
Oh, I think so.
6:31
I mean, like any driver, if you hopped in the thing and thought, this is going to give me an unfair advantage, I'm down for a bit.
6:37
It's like you said at the beginning of this podcast, had we have had social media, in one respect I hated it, but certainly if we would have had mobile phones and cable TV and things like that, I probably would have done another couple of years because I know this sounds very stupid, but...
6:55
You'd go back to a hotel, particularly if you were doing testing at Rickard in winter, and you had to stop at 3 o'clock, 2.30, 3 o'clock, because it was getting dark and cold and everything.
7:04
So you'd go back to the room.
7:06
I was never a big book reader.
7:08
So, you know, what do you do?
7:10
Had I been able to put on cable TV or jump on the mobile phone and talk to my mates, I'm sure that would have given me a bit more encouragement to stay on for another couple of years.
7:19
But they're the little things that wear you down.
7:22
Like you've got to go down to the foyer.
7:24
Give the bloke a piece of paper with the phone number that you want to call in Australia.
7:28
Sit on a couch while he tells you to go into booth number three.
7:31
You know, it's all that.
7:33
Yeah, that used to get me down.
7:35
Was there a class of racing?
7:37
I mean, you mentioned the Porsche there before and so on.
7:39
Was there a class of racing a couple of fans have asked that you would have liked to have done more of or perhaps tried that you didn't get into?
7:46
Well, I tried IndyCar, and that was why he hated that.
7:50
I like racing the Porsche.
7:52
I did Le Mans twice in a Porsche and a Toyota.
8:00
Look, I've got to say that my first and only love was Formula One because I was always, they're bred for a purpose, they're designed for a purpose, everything else has been modified.
8:09
And whilst I say all that, I like driving the Can-Am car.
8:12
I really enjoyed that because that had a heap of downforce.
8:16
America's got some great circuits.
8:18
I mean, Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca.
8:21
I mean, it's got some fabulous circuits.
8:23
I look at some of the circuits America's got and I look at some of the circuits we've got, Winton, you know, some of those circuits, Winton International, and they're shocking.
8:33
You know, they're just dreadful little go-kart tracks in the middle of paddocks.
8:38
you know like Phillip Island's really good, Bathurst is really good although not suitable you know for a powerful open wheeler.
8:46
But we have very few really good circuits whereas America's got a heap of them and I used to love racing there.
8:53
It's a dangerous game and
8:55
you know, there are moments perhaps where you cheat death or you, you know, what was the worst crash for you, the one that sort of sticks in your mind?
9:04
You sound like the managing director's wife at a dinner party.
9:06
No.
9:07
They always used to ask me those questions.
9:10
And depending on how pissed I was or how bloody, or how nasty I wanted to be, I used to say, oh, well, I had my arm ripped off once, you know.
9:20
But you never worried about the danger.
9:22
This is clearly what you're talking about here, did you?
9:24
No, I didn't really, no, because at the beginning of the year, I'd make sure all my insurance was in order.
9:31
I had all the best equipment I could get in terms of clothing and all that sort of stuff.
9:35
I made sure that my wife and Christian and everything was all organised if anything ever happened and just got on with it, yeah.
9:43
I mean, that's not to say I didn't sort of get...
9:46
scared or apprehensive on the odd occasion.
9:48
Like, you know, there was the odd occasion.
9:50
But I never used to get the butterflies all that much.
9:53
Every now and again I would, and I wouldn't even know why.
9:56
You know, you'd be there saying, shit, what am I doing here?
10:00
Or...
10:01
But nine times out of ten, I didn't know.
10:04
I used to just...
10:06
I had stupid little, like... What's the word you... Superstitions.
10:11
Superstitions, yeah.
10:12
I mean, strangely, I used to like seeing an ambulance before the race, the start of the race.
10:16
Really?
10:17
Yeah.
10:17
And I used to say stupid things like ambulance.
10:21
Now, don't ask me what all that's about.
10:23
And maybe it was just a distraction, you know, way of...
10:26
And, you know, the red underpants, of course, and hopping in from the left-hand side of the car.
10:31
So there was all that nonsense going on.
10:33
But otherwise, no, not really.
10:35
Pretty significant sliding doors moment.
10:37
Am I right in saying you were meant to be on the plane with Graham Hill too when he passed away?
10:42
You were meant to be going testing and that changed at the last minute maybe or something?
10:45
Yeah, I was.
10:47
They had designed a brand new car and they were going down to Paul Rickard because that's where most people went for testing at that time of the year in England because the chances of it being dry, you know, were a lot better than anywhere else.
11:02
And they could drive the transporter there.
11:03
They didn't have to fly anything.
11:05
Yeah, so I was meant to be going down there to drive the new car.
11:09
And I was having a party at my place in Highgate in London
11:14
And I had a phone call from John, who worked for Marlborough.
11:19
He said, oh, AJ, he said, because he heard all noise in the background, he said, did you get a party?
11:22
I said, yeah.
11:23
He said, oh, mate, Graeme Hill's just been killed with Tony Bryers and everybody.
11:27
And he could have knocked me down with a feather because Tony Bryers, brilliant young up-and-coming driver, the Australian designer, and Graeme.
11:38
I mean, I flew back from the Nürburgring with Graeme, and...
11:44
I'll never forget it because I'd got fifth, which was their best result so far.
11:49
And he said, oh, come on, come back with me, which I did.
11:52
I didn't completely shit him the whole way.
11:55
He said, oh, Graham, there's a 707 just over there.
11:58
Oh, thanks for that.
12:00
He was just – let's just say I don't think he paid as much attention to his aviation as he did motor racing.
12:09
and what happened was, you know, it's a common story, that they'd parked all their cars where he kept the plane, and they advised him to go on up to the next, and he said, no, I know this place, it's not the back of my hand, and he hadn't altered the altimeter to suit the different, whatever you've got to do, and literally just flew into the side of the mountain, killed a lot of them, and I could very well have easily been on that plane, because they rung me up at the last minute and said, AJ, don't worry about coming down to Rickard, Tony Bryse is going to do it.
12:37
I said, yeah, okay.
12:39
So there you go.
12:40
Yeah, yeah.
12:42
You talked about that fifth place result there a moment ago.
12:44
That was Nürburgring.
12:45
And I think you came from like 22nd or 21st to get that result, which was mighty.
12:51
You would then go on later on to win at Hockenheim, the German Grand Prix, both classic legendary tracks.
12:58
What was it like back in that era to try and, you know, be fast around those joints?
13:03
Well, Hockenheim was obviously a lot easier than Nürburgring.
13:06
I mean, Hockenheim's a pretty straightforward sort of a circuit.
13:09
It's bloody quick, particularly that East Curve, or whatever they used to call it.
13:13
We miss that now, I reckon.
13:14
Yeah, well, we miss a lot of things, don't we?
13:16
Put any silly bloody chicanes everywhere.
13:19
But the Nürburgring was something else.
13:21
I mean, that was just unbelievable.
13:23
I don't think you could ever, ever know that place intimately.
13:26
I don't think you could ever do enough laps.
13:28
In fact, I went there about a week or four or five days early and hired a BMW.
13:33
I won't say the hire car company, because they might still be after me.
13:37
And at the way you start the laps, they used to charge five Deutschmark.
13:44
And so I used to do as many laps as I can just trying to work out, you know, like... Just kept buying tickets all day.
13:51
I did, yeah.
13:52
Because there's certain landmarks that are famous now, like you come over Blind Brow of the Hill, and when you see this White Chapel, you know that there's a right-hander immediately after it, and all that nonsense, you know.
14:03
So I'd been going around and around and around, and where you buy your tickets and where you queue up to go onto the circuit, you get all these people that want to come in and ride with you.
14:11
Right.
14:12
And that was all right.
14:14
This young bloke kept on asking, can I come?
14:15
No, no, mate, no.
14:18
I just didn't really know what I was doing.
14:20
I didn't know where I was going myself.
14:22
Anyway, when I thought I'd sufficiently got to know it a little bit, I said, yeah, righto, mate, jump in.
14:26
Come on, we're right.
14:27
And I got about halfway around and shunted it into the armco.
14:30
And glass was breaking and shit was flying everywhere.
14:34
He was screaming, never to be seen again.
14:36
He jumped out and disappeared like a rabbit.
14:40
And then I had to wait then.
14:41
I didn't quite know what to do.
14:42
So James was doing the same thing and Donahue was doing the same thing.
14:47
And so... James Hunt, Mark Donoghue.
14:49
Yeah, yeah.
14:49
I flagged them down and said, Jesus, mate, what am I going to do here?
14:53
But there was a break in the Armco because it's such a long circuit that they put a break so you can drag the car off the circuit.
15:01
And where that happens is like little huts where the marshals can either stay overnight or have their get lunch or whatever.
15:07
So we decided to wait until evening, dark, and then we...
15:12
We got the car off the track, and then we decided to wait until the evening, and then they came round.
15:16
I think it was James or somebody that towed me, or I drove it.
15:19
It was crabbing.
15:21
Oh, no.
15:22
Oh, yeah, and that was rooted.
15:25
And drove it out of the circuit onto the road, got about 25 k's up the road.
15:29
Oh, it appears to have had an accident.
15:30
Well, no bloody dear.
15:32
Oh.
15:33
Bloody deer jumped out on me.
15:36
And so James drove me back to the hotel and I rung up and said, oh, look, you know, shocking, one of your wildlife.
15:44
And they said, well, is the deer hurt?
15:47
And I said, no, very fortunate I was able to swerve and miss him.
15:51
Anyway, the car was completely rooted.
15:52
Anyway, they gave me a replacement one, which I thought was damn decent of them.
15:56
But no, that was a funny day overall.
15:58
Best form of defence's attack, don't they say?
16:02
One here from... What have we got here?
16:05
Sorry, this is a couple of questions from listeners.
16:07
Lucas McEntry says, the three quickest F1 drivers that you raced against.
16:13
Did you ever think about that stuff, or was it always just about you and trying to be the fastest and not think about the opposition?
16:19
Yes, that's true, I did.
16:20
I mean, if I saw...
16:23
Somebody in front of me, like if you saw a Ferrari, you'd think, oh, well, it's either Villeneuve or it's Schechter or somebody.
16:29
You wouldn't dwell on that fact.
16:30
I mean, to me, they were just a thing to be passed, an object.
16:34
There's a car, and I had to get past it.
16:38
Obviously, you put it in your mind.
16:40
I mean, they call it telemetry now.
16:42
We had telemetry in our helmets.
16:45
You'd say, well, okay, there's whatever.
16:46
He's hard to pass.
16:47
I mean, Villeneuve, when you pass Villeneuve, you earned it.
16:51
He would never give you room.
16:52
You could tell straight away, helmet colour, you knew who it was.
16:54
Absolutely.
16:55
And, you know, you'd think, oh, here we go, we're going to rub wheels or something here because he's just not going to give way.
17:00
Because with all due respect, I loved him and he was unbelievable, but he was never, ever going to die in bed.
17:06
I was ill, I tell you.
17:07
You know, when you look back and see the amount of shunts that he's had or had.
17:13
And he used to do some very silly things, you know, like rubbing wheels unnecessarily.
17:17
I mean, I don't mind rubbing wheels.
17:18
I mean, I'm all for it.
17:20
but like at Sandvoort for instance when he went off and tore the back left hand wheel off the only thing that was hanging on was the brake lining and he drove it all the way around the circuit back to the paddock like that now of course
17:34
Well, most of the Italians and a lot of people think, oh, Gilles, yeah, fantastic, you know, what a hero and blah, blah.
17:41
I reckon he was just, I told him, I said, you're a bloody idiot, mate.
17:43
Like, I mean, at the end of the day, I could have been coming up behind you, that brake line could have snapped and that wheel could have come back and hit me and killed me.
17:53
So I just think you're a dick.
17:55
But Jill, you know, he'd just rub his shoulders, shrug his shoulders, off he'd go, which is fine, because in those days we all made our own arrangements, you know, like even to the extent where it has been known for other people to do brake testing.
18:08
If they got a bit dirty with somebody, if they thought somebody had done something wrong, they'd give them a bit of a break test.
18:13
Because we had a certain thing about being old enough to look after yourself and not be body coddled by FIA and bloody managers and make-up artists and Christ knows what.
18:23
So, yeah, but Gilles was a hard man to pass.
18:29
Ronnie Peterson was a quick, quick driver.
18:32
Andretti actually was a very, well, he wasn't underrated.
18:35
He was one of the, like, Mario Andretti is probably one of the true legends of motorsport.
18:39
I mean, that guy could drive anything.
18:41
You know, NASCAR, sports car, you name it.
18:45
Mario, not only could he drive it, he was super competitive, yeah.
18:49
And I feel very fortunate to have raced against a lot of those sort of guys.
19:02
Let's see how my pronunciation is for some of these F1 greats.
19:07
Jacques Villeneuve.
19:08
French Canadian isn't my strong suit, sorry Jacques.
19:12
Michael Schumacher.
19:14
Pretty good.
19:15
Lewis Hamilton.
19:16
Easy peasy.
19:18
Ayrton Senna.
19:19
My personal favourite, but let's try that again.
19:22
Ayrton.
19:24
There we go.
19:26
A couple of, to finish here, maybe in the touring car landscape, if you don't mind, Mark Osler, a broadcast colleague of mine who you would have known from the Channel 7 days, he told me this great story about you taking him on a hot lap of Bathurst in the Sierra.
19:40
And he reckons you came out of the pit lane, you looked across at him, and you stuck it in fourth.
19:45
And the car laboured, and then all of a sudden the turbo came to life, and he said the thing was unbelievable.
19:52
What were those Sierras like back in the day?
19:54
They were shocking little things.
19:55
Yeah.
19:55
I mean, they were under-tired.
19:57
Yep.
19:59
They had nothing of 600 horsepower.
20:01
And as Mark told you, you know, you'd put your foot down, there'd be about a nine-hour lag.
20:08
So they were just nasty things to drive.
20:10
And anyone who says they were fun or they were good is a masochist.
20:14
But having said that, there was nothing else around that could beat them because they were that bloody quick.
20:19
But I remember I put it on the front row of the grid...
20:25
Tony Longhurst and myself did exactly the same times to get on the front row of the grid.
20:30
But Frank Gardner didn't like the fact that I was on the front row of the grid with the person that he was actually working for.
20:36
So we found a mechanical problem with my car not long before the pit lane opened.
20:42
So I had to wait in the pit lane until I fixed the mechanical problem and then had to take up my spot on the rear of the grid.
20:49
Oh, Frank was good, I tell you.
20:51
So, but, yeah, they were a challenging little thing.
20:54
The very first time I ever drove one was at a circuit I never particularly liked, just outside of Sydney.
21:00
A little amphitheatre.
21:01
Amaroo Park?
21:02
Amaroo Park.
21:03
Go-Kart Track.
21:05
And anyway, I whacked it on pole.
21:07
But of course, I wasn't quite used to the fact that the bloody tyres would wear out in about 0.3 of a second, because they had that much bloody horsepower that they'd wheel spin and carry on and they were under-tired anyway.
21:18
But no, they were a challenge.
21:22
How do you frame the Bathurst chapter?
21:24
You reflected on it being such a legendary circuit before and a great place to drive.
21:27
It would have been nice to have ticked that one, wouldn't it?
21:30
It would, as Gracie keeps on telling me, open-wheelers are for sheilers.
21:35
And you might have won the World Championship, mate, but you haven't won Bathurst.
21:40
Marley claimed the fame as I got second.
21:42
And I won the 12-hour, but I haven't won the big one, see?
21:46
So, you know, you're nothing.
21:48
No, you're not.
21:51
So, yeah, but, I mean, I like Bathurst.
21:53
I mean, I won't pretend I look forward to going there because I don't think anyone would like to go.
21:58
You wouldn't voluntarily go to Bathurst.
22:01
It's like I went to Malala one year to test the falcon and I went into the local shop at the village
22:08
And she said, you're Alan Jones?
22:09
I said, yeah.
22:10
She said, what are you doing here?
22:11
I said, I just come here for my holidays.
22:13
I come here annually, bring the kids with the caravan.
22:16
She said, really, what do you like about it?
22:20
I mean, hello.
22:21
You know what I mean?
22:22
So you can have fun sometimes.
22:24
I love your sense of humour, mate.
22:26
It's never left you, which is great.
22:27
You worked, you and I actually got to work together very briefly at Channel 9.
22:31
We did a race at Eastern Creek, the motorcycle GP there, and we called the support races.
22:35
Great chapter for you there with the late Darrell Eastlake and Baz, who's now gone as well, and it really helped Formula One go next level in terms of its exposure to this country, didn't it?
22:46
Well, you know, Barry and Des, I mean, they were bloody characters.
22:50
I mean, Des was a bloody dag.
22:51
Mm-hmm.
22:52
Barry, well, what do you say about Barry?
22:55
I mean, I used to fly back after a broadcast with Barry on the Monday morning.
22:59
Yeah.
23:00
And in the end, I used to invent stories about why I couldn't share a car with him because he'd hop straight back in the cab and light up one of those rotten goulet that he used to smoke.
23:10
And, of course, smoking a goulet wasn't enough for Barry.
23:13
He had to go and buy one with filters because they were stronger than the non-filtered ones.
23:17
Then he'd bite the filter off and spit it out the window and light her up.
23:20
Well, of course, the cab driver would blow up.
23:22
Yeah.
23:23
you know and barry's oh mate you sure you know don't worry mate i've got the window down so barry for christmas why do we have to go through this every bloody trip you know like i'm a nervous wreck by the time i get home so in the end i used to say my mate i can't i got something in tweed heads i've got to go pick up a step over toe hold somewhere or whatever you know just just pay my own way home rather than put up with the crap right yeah
23:44
But no, he was an unbelievable character.
23:46
And of course, Daz, well, I mean, he'd, well, he has, he'd make a snail race, you know, sound exciting.
23:51
Yeah, exactly.
23:53
I don't know if you know this story, but before I started working in the media, I won a little competition on radio to go for a hot lap with someone.
24:00
You were driving for Glen Seton at the time.
24:03
So my first ever ride in any V8 supercar was with you.
24:07
No.
24:08
Yeah, it was.
24:08
True story.
24:09
And I walked into the garage at Eastern Creek, and there was a very nervous lady who was also a competition winner, and a gentleman who was probably a little on the larger side.
24:18
And you looked at the three of us, and you pointed straight at me, and you said, you're first.
24:22
And I went, okay.
24:23
Because you were thin.
24:24
I was thin.
24:25
I hate taking fat people for rights.
24:30
really even when I'm doing hot laps for the car company that I used to represent which I won't mention their name because I don't represent them anymore.
24:38
You know I used to like the little Japanese girls because you wouldn't even know they're in the car but you'd get some fat bloke in the car and it really would upset the balance.
24:45
It would make it understair or do something.
24:48
Sorry I just... No no the conclusion to the story is we're trundling down pit lane it's my first sort of eye-opening moment of
24:54
you know, the rattle and noise of a supercar.
24:58
And you looked across at me and you sort of shouted over the noise and you said, right, we're on old tyres and they're cold and you're the first one of the day.
25:06
And you just gassed it out of the pit lane.
25:09
The thing was more or less sideways by the time we got to turn two.
25:12
Mate, it was awesome.
25:13
And it was a great, a very vivid recollection for me of...
25:18
um the kind and style of racer you are i mean you just grabbed that thing by the scruff of the neck and hustled it well once again without i don't know how to explain this but um that's why patrick always used to get me to test the car because i'm a big believer when you've got the bum in the car you just give it all all the time it doesn't matter whether you're testing or racing or whatever and if you're if we used to go testing um
25:42
There's no point driving at eight tenths or anything because when you go back to the race and you drive at ten tenths, it becomes a different animal.
25:48
So if you get into it and give it heaps all the time, and a racing driver is a bit like a pianist.
25:54
You know, the only instrument you've got is the piano.
25:57
So you don't sit down at the piano and not play it well.
26:01
Every time you sit down, you should be playing it well to practice.
26:04
So every time I put my bum in a car, I always try and, except sometimes I must admit that, you know, if I'm taking punters around on a corporate day, you always back off a little bit because that would be rather embarrassing to stick it in with the CEO or something next year.
26:19
Speaking of instruments, there is a guitar in the corner of the room here.
26:22
I mean, I was staggered when I walked in today.
26:24
Are you doing a little bit of playing?
26:25
Oh, it's perfect.
26:28
I'll be honest.
26:29
I'm bloody hopeless.
26:30
You know, I'm all thumbs.
26:33
I'd love to be able to play it, but every now and again I pick it up and have a bit of a practice and I get bored and I get angry with myself and throw it away, put it back in the corner.
26:42
Two to finish, two to finish.
26:43
One person has asked about, in relation to your V8 chapter,
26:47
a very memorable weekend at Simmons Plains and you were battling with Scafie and Scafie ran around.
26:51
I think you battled with Wayne Gardner as well.
26:54
And it was pretty decent, heated conversation between you and Mark in the pit lane.
26:59
Did time heal that?
27:02
And what was said, can you remember what was said at the time when you had that confrontation, the pair of you?
27:06
Not really, but I just do remember coming out of the hairpin and I was right up his backside and he backed off a little bit.
27:12
And of course, going into that back straight from Simmons Plains, you can't afford to back off because you lose your momentum.
27:18
So I kept it in and must have run up his arse or done something.
27:21
I don't know.
27:22
I don't care.
27:23
And off he went and spun around.
27:26
to which he took a bit homebred too, which that's his entitlement, I don't give a damn.
27:31
And, of course, with Wayne, it was the left-hander coming out of the left-hander after the straight.
27:37
Yep.
27:38
And I think he tried to go in the outside of me or something, and I wasn't having anything to do with that.
27:42
So I just kept my foot in it, and we touched, and he went off.
27:45
So it was a bit of a memorable day.
27:49
I had two of them all.
27:51
Final one, and I know in the balance of it all, you probably are a little disappointed, but probably would have done it differently.
28:00
There is a funny story about you, the Beatrice Lola, the pilot, the plane, and you basically had him on standby, good to go, because you knew it was going to be a pretty ordinary race, didn't you?
28:13
Well, more than standby.
28:14
I told him to go and get some sandwiches and get some fresh and go and get some cold beer.
28:19
As I said to you at the beginning of this, I'll give 100% if they give 100%.
28:23
And if someone can prove to me that they've done their best and they've given me 100% car, I will honestly give 100%.
28:30
But if I think it's a complete wank and a waste of time, I won't.
28:33
It's as simple as that.
28:35
And Beatrice got me to the stage, quite frankly, where I just hated the thing.
28:40
I mean, the actual chassis wasn't a bad chassis.
28:44
You were just light years behind in power terms, weren't you?
28:46
Well, it was just a joke.
28:48
I mean, the Americans would say, you know, from Ford, you're going to see American muscle at its best.
28:53
Yeah, good on you.
28:54
Wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding.
28:57
We went to Monza.
28:58
It was 15 k's or more slower down the straight than the Ferraris.
29:02
I went and got Mike Costin, Keith Duckworth,
29:08
I said, Keith, look, mate, that's slow down.
29:10
They're passing me like I'm parked.
29:13
He said, oh, well, are you running too much wing?
29:15
Oh, please.
29:16
No, Keith, no.
29:17
Oh, jeez, I haven't thought of that.
29:19
So I told him to come up and have a look.
29:21
Our rear wing was almost flat.
29:23
The Ferraris looked like a barn door on the back.
29:26
And they were that much quicker.
29:27
It was a joke.
29:28
So anyway, I was sick of all this bullshit.
29:30
So we flew down to Portugal.
29:32
I had my own plane at that stage.
29:33
So...
29:35
I just said, listen, I'm sick of this shit.
29:37
I'll just see how it goes in practice, but if it's the same old crap, just go and get some beer, get some sandwiches, get her all warmed up.
29:45
And I'm not particularly proud of this, but by the same token, I'd probably do it again.
29:49
I picked a spot conveniently right behind the pits, the paddock, which was a hairpin and a nice big gravel runoff area.
29:56
So, gee whiz, I locked up my brakes and skidded into the bloody gravel, couldn't be retrieved, so I had to hop out and go back to the motorhome, get changed and get in the car and go to the airport and go home.
30:06
And we were back home in time to go to our favourite Chinese restaurant in Chiswick.
30:10
But yeah, I mean, I did that.
30:14
you know i mean it happens from time to time i mean it's not as bad as what nicky did i mean nicky went to the race of champions at riverside and they paid us pretty good dough to go there and nicky went there on the basis that they paid for his learjet to be re-instrumentated um blah blah blah
30:31
And he got in and I think the first thing he declutched the thing at about 90,000 revs and blew the shithouse out of it and then said, right, instruments are all ready, straighten the Learjet home.
30:44
Oh, right.
30:47
But, I mean, I love Nicky.
30:48
I mean, he... We miss him, don't we?
30:50
Oh, mate.
30:51
He has...
30:52
They all called him the professor or whatever they called him.
30:56
But Prost has called that.
30:57
What did they used to call Nicky?
30:59
Anyway, but Nicky loved a beer.
31:00
He liked the odd cigarette.
31:01
You know, he actually, the bloke that used to come and wash his cars, rather than pay him money, Nicky would give him one of his trophies.
31:08
So that's, you know, he was a really down to worth.
31:12
I really loved Nicky.
31:13
He was a good bloke.
31:14
It's been great to shoot the breeze with you, mate.
31:16
And I'm sure there's a gazillion more stories.
31:17
It's been very kind of you to spend this time.
31:20
And from everyone, congrats on what you've done.
31:25
And I'm really thrilled, mate, that A, you'll be with Channel 10 this weekend and this coming weekend for the Grand Prix, I should say.
31:30
And then also that you're at our home race and we're celebrating the 1980 World Champion because that's the right thing.
31:36
Well, I might not be able to get a ticket from them.
31:38
Who knows?
31:38
Had a bit of trouble so far.