For a few seconds, the thought went through John Watson’s mind that it was
going to be another bad day at the office. Driving his McLaren-Ford MP4 car
through the Woodcote Chicane in the 1981 British Grand Prix at Silverstone,
the Ulsterman ran into a wall of smoke on the third lap of the race. In
front of him was the Canadian Gilles Villeneuve in a Ferrari and the
Australian Alan Jones in a Williams.
“Villeneuve was driving like a hyperactive child,” recalls Watson, “and he had
finally lost control of a car that was a handful at the best of times.”
Jones collided with the Ferrari in front of him and although Watson managed to
avoid both cars, he had to stop abruptly and stalled his engine. “There was
still enough momentum for me to get the car started and the engine going
again, but I lost about six or seven places. So all the good work I had done
up until that point had been undone.”
Watson had been hoping for a good race that Saturday, July 18. He had not won
for five years but was in excellent form in the previous two events. He had
finished third in the Spanish Grand Prix when five cars completed the race
only 1.24 seconds apart, and then gained second place in France behind home
favourite Alain Prost.
“When people asked me what I was going to do at Silverstone, I said: ‘Well,
obviously mimic the TV presenter Ted Rogers with 3-2-1’.”
Watson was more hopeful than confident, though. Silverstone was better suited
to the fast turbo-charged cars than the normally-aspirated McLaren-Ford
engine under his control. “Silverstone was all about horsepower rather than
finesse and our car was all about finesse. It didn't have the power of the
turbo-charged cars so the nature of the race track was not to our
advantage,” he says.
The Marlboro McLaren team was also going through dramatic changes. After two
tough years with the team, Watson had a new boss. Ron Dennis had taken over
at the beginning of the season and his designer, John Barnard, was
experimenting with an innovative carbon-fibre chassis.
Watson was delighted. “There was suddenly a young, committed, ambitious and
intelligent team. I was given the opportunity with the latest philosophy of
design, technology and execution of design to be in a much more competitive
position than I had previously enjoyed. It was a real Jekyll and Hyde
transformation but it was a positive one.”
There were no surprises in qualifying for the British Grand Prix. Frenchman
Rene Arnoux, driving the turbo-charged Renault, was in pole position with
his teammate and countryman Prost alongside him. Watson was in fifth place.
Prost set the early pace and Watson, after his near miss on the third lap, had
to fight his way back through the pack. The field began to whittle down
because of mechanical problems and Prost’s engine packed up 17 laps into the
68-lap race.
Arnoux took the lead but lost power late in the race. Watson had worked his
way into second place and passed the Frenchman on lap 60. The Silverstone
crowd was ecstatic: a British driver was in front. Watson drew away from his
rivals and won comfortably by 40 seconds. Carlos Reute-mann was second and
Jacques Laffite third, a lap behind.
The trio who finished on the podium then boarded a flatbed truck for an
emotional and traditional lap of honour around the circuit. After going down
the pit straight, they turned through Copse corner and started the gradual
incline to Maggots. “As we got there, the track was completely full of
people,” says Watson. “Normally, I am quite a self-effacing person and I
didn’t know how to deal with it. I had never had to deal with that level of
public adulation.”
It was an emotional day for the Belfast-born driver who regarded the British
Grand Prix as his home race. It was also an emotional day for Dennis, who
was celebrating his first win as team boss.
Watson had last won in 1976 when he triumphed in Austria. “You don’t want to
be a one-hit wonder,” he says. “It’s a bit like being a rock band or a
novelist. How do you follow up your hit record or book? It is always the
most difficult thing for anybody who achieves the No 1 status. The follow-up
can be more difficult than the first win. It shouldn’t be, but it can be.”
Watson won five grands prix in his career. He finished third in the drivers’
championship in 1982, helped by a victory in Detroit where he started 17th
on the grid and passed three cars in one lap near the end of the race. A
year later, he started in 22nd place at Long Beach and won.
Why did he have so many back-to-front victories?
“Normally-aspirated cars were at a disadantage in qualifying because we
didn’t have the out-and-out performance of the turbo engines. Where we were
strong was that the car was a good car, efficient aerody-namically, and we
had good Michelin tyres. The key was getting the tyres to come alive once
the race started. We had 40 gallons of fuel and one set of tyres for the
race. We weren’t going through this pantomime of pit stops with refuelling
and tyre changes.
“Carrying 40 gallons meant you had 280lbs of fuel aboard. If you were
aggressive in the early phases of a race, you could damage your tyres
irrevocably. The key was to find a way to make your car work with that load
of fuel and to get the best out of the car while looking after the tyres. So
the discipline that was necessary then was diametrically opposed to the one
we have today.
“While technology is very exciting and has been wonderful in many elements of
F1, it has led to a polarisation of one team or another dominating. That has
led to a skewing of the statistics of team and driver victories. In my day,
eight or nine drivers won races in one year. The champion might win only two
or three races. Nowadays, if you are in the right place at the right time
and have a distinct technical advantage with the car you drive, you have an
opportunity to win an awful lot of races and lots of world championships.”
Watson, who is now a commentator for A1GP, says that the biggest change since
his time was caused by the fatality of Ayrton Senna at Imola in the 1994 San
Marino Grand Prix. “There was a sea change within F1. To see the death of a
man of the status of Senna in your living room watching TV sent a
fundamental bolt through the operations of F1. The administration said that
we can never let this happen again. Touch wood, it has never happened again.
It has remained free of fatalities in the 14 years since.
“Fatalities were an occupational hazard in my time. It was a judgment you had
to make about being a grand prix driver. I was abundantly aware of the
potential that any accident could be a fatal one. You had to have sufficient
belief in yourself and the people that you worked for that you would have a
safe car and that your judgments would look after you. It might have been
blind faith. As you became older, you became more aware of your fallibility.
For anybody of that generation who is able to talk about it today, there is
probably an element of good fortune.”
The son of a car salesman, Watson turned down the opportunity to go into his
father’s business. “I was a very fortunate young man who fulfilled my
dreams. I was the first person from Ireland, north or south, to achieve
success as an F1 driver, winning races and being in contention for the world
championship.
“Motor racing allows you to go on this rollercoaster of highs and lows,
emotions and sadness that I wouldn’t have had in a normal job.
“There is also something unique in winning your own grand prix. It is much
more emotional than the others.”
ESPN Classic, Sky channel 442, will show Caught in Time: Formula One Retro
1976 (John Watson's first ever grand prix win in Austria) at 8.30pm today
