Alan Jones, Australia’s Last F1 World Champion, Dies at 80, Three Days After His Birthday

Alan Jones, the 1980 Formula 1 world champion and the man who made Williams a title-winning team, has died at the age of 80. His death came just three days after his birthday on 2 November. He remains the last Australian to win the drivers’ championship.

His wife, Amanda Butler-Davis, announced the news in a statement released through Motorsport Australia. Jones died on 5 November “following a short illness”. “He will be dearly missed and fondly remembered by those closest to him, as well as the many fans whose support he was always grateful for,” she said. Jones is survived by Butler-Davis and his six children.

How Alan Jones became a Williams legend

Jones was born in Melbourne, the son of a racing driver, and left for Europe in 1970 to chase a career in the sport. He made his F1 debut with Hesketh at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix. His first win came in Austria in 1977 with the Shadow team, a victory over Niki Lauda’s Ferrari that hinted at his talent. The Independent notes that his career had been largely undistinguished until he moved to Williams in 1978.

The team was still young and had yet to win a grand prix. Jones, together with co-founders Frank Williams and Patrick Head, helped change that. BBC Sport’s Andrew Benson describes a close, almost brotherly bond between the three men. Williams and Head admired his pugnacious, no-nonsense style, and later Williams drivers were often measured against him, usually unfavourably.

The breakthrough came with the FW07 car in mid-1979. Jones won four of the last six races that season and finished third in the standings. In 1980 he won five races, in Argentina, France, Britain, Canada and the United States. He was on the podium in all but one of the grands prix he finished, and he beat Brabham’s Nelson Piquet to the title with a race to spare. Williams had taken its first drivers’ championship in only its fourth season in F1. As F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali noted, the team also took its first constructors’ title that year.

Retirement, comebacks and a second career

Jones finished third in the standings again in 1981, winning the opening race at Long Beach and the finale in Las Vegas. He retired at 34, and the Independent says homesickness and a dislike of British weather played a part in his return to Australia, where he bought a farm. Cattle breeding did not hold him for long. He made a one-off return with Arrows in 1983 and raced a full season for the new US-based Haas team in 1986, after a late-1985 start. The car was not competitive, and his best finish was fourth.

The sources differ slightly on his race tally: BBC Sport counts 116 starts and Yahoo’s report 117. They agree on 12 wins. Yahoo also credits him with 24 podiums and six pole positions.

Away from the F1 grid, Jones won the 1978 Can-Am title and finished third in his only IndyCar race in 1983. He kept competing in Australian touring car and endurance racing until 2002, when he was 55. He then became a well-known television pundit at home, known for blunt analysis. He was critical of modern drivers, whom he called “prima donnas” and “too corporate”. He was a member of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and was made an MBE.

Tributes for a “true Australian icon”

Williams called him “a true Australian icon and a Williams legend”. It said he “set the standard for Williams champions: a fast, uncompromising racer with a challenger mentality”. Domenicali called him “a formidable competitor, a natural leader and an icon who inspired generations of fans, particularly in his beloved Australia”.

McLaren chief executive Zak Brown offered a personal note. The first race he ever attended was the 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix, which Jones won. He said that day sparked his lifelong love of racing, and that he is proud to own Jones’s championship-winning car.

The Australian Grand Prix said his 1980 title “inspired a generation of Australian motorsport fans”. Jones also remains the last Australian to win the Australian Grand Prix, taking the 1980 race at Calder Park when it was not part of the world championship. He and his father Stan are among only three father-and-son pairs to have won the event.

Alan Jones’s F1 peak lasted barely three seasons. Yet he put Williams on the road to becoming one of the sport’s great teams, and he has had no Australian successor as champion in the four decades since.

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File photo: Alan Jones 1980 (cropped).jpg by Original: NL-HaNA, ANEFO / neg. stroken, 1945-1989, 2.24.01.05, item number 930, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.