IMAGES Autopics.com.auCALTEX SIERRA
“When we talk about compromised race
cars being modified for a task, the Sierra
was a perfect example. It was under-tyred
and over-powered, which is fine in itself,
because everyone else in a Sierra was in the
same boat and that was the car to have.”
BENSON & HEDGES RACING
“I joined the Benson & Hedges Racing team
for the endurance races and then turned
that into a full-time drive for 1990.
“The team was really Tony Longhurt’s
even though Frank Gardner was there and
running it. It was a well-structured team
and it had, I believe, pretty good sponsor-
ship from Benson & Hedges. He had a
great relationship with Ron Meatchem
at BMW, which saw Ron in our pits on a
regular basis even though we were run-
ning Fords, but Frank had a plan there.
“The BMW M3 promised a very differ-
ent experience; while we were not going
to have the power of the Sierras, we were
going to have a car that handled really
well, had great brakes and wasn’t going to
melt rubber every time you powered out
of a corner.
“I was very much looking forward to
- But things were changing in Group
A: the Sierra was no longer the car to have,
the weapon of choice was now the Nissan
GT-R – or Godzilla as it was dubbed by
local journalist Mike Jacobson.
“This car was built to the very edge of
the rules: turbo, four-wheel-drive ... every-
thing you wanted or needed to dominate
... and they did. I didn’t have a clue how
it even worked, but I appreciated the fact
that the Nissan had a major advantage
over everybody else. That’s the car you
wanted to be in, particularly in the wet,
Alan Jones is one of only two Australians to win the Formula 1 world drivers’
championship. He finished his racing career in touring cars in Australia, where he scored
a podium at the Bathurst 1000 in 1988 and a runners-up finish in the championship with
Glenn Seton Racing in 1993. He recounts his journey in his new book AJ: How Alan Jones
Climbed to the Top of Formula One. The following are extracts from his biography.
Jones partnered
another F1 world
champion, Denny
Hulme, in 1990.Alan Jones joined
Colin Bond’s Caltex
team in 1988.