C&SC meets multi-talented hotshoe and TV commentator John Watson
and this time with Derek Bell’s former mechanic George Brown spannering: “He rebuilt my engines, did the gearbox, worked on the set-up and so on. Without him, I wouldn’t have made it through ’71. I cannot overstate that enough.”
Scroll forward a year and Watson made his Formula One debut in the non-points Victory Meeting at Brands Hatch: “That came about through a Dublin motor trader called Tony ‘Monkey’ Brown. He was a wheeler-dealer – a prototype Eddie Jordan – who did business with Bernie Ecclestone. Somewhere down the line he acquired the Eifelland, which was a March 721 with a weird-looking body by Luigi Colani. He asked me if I wanted to do a Libre race at Phoenix Park. The car was badly prepared – dangerous, actually – and I didn’t finish. The funny thing is, I fully expected to be awed by my first taste of an F1 car, but the leap in performance over F2 wasn’t that great. Then Paul Michaels entered the scene. His Hexagon team had enjoyed success in historics and they did a nice job preparing the car for Brands. We finished sixth and that ultimately led to Paul going into F1.”
In the meantime, Watson signed a contract with Ecclestone, who had acquired the Brabham squad. His ’73 season was almost over before it began when he broke his leg after crashing out of the Race of Champions thanks to a jammed throttle. He would recover in time to make his World Championship debut at Silverstone before enjoying his first full season aboard Hexagon Brabhams in ’74, fourth place in the Austrian Grand Prix being the high point: “Paul was one of the last privateers to really make an impact at that level, and we remain great friends. I would have stayed on with him for 1975, but the sponsorship wasn’t there so I signed for Team Surtees. It was the only game in town because all of the other seats had been taken and I was grateful for the drive.”
The ’75 season yielded no points-paying finishes, but it was followed by a year with Penske with whom he claimed victory in the Austrian GP at the Österreichring. Then Penske abruptly pulled out of F1: “Within 24 hours, [business manager] Nick Brittain and I had arranged a deal with Bernie to drive for Brabham for 1977. It happened that quickly. Clay Regazzoni was on a plane from Italy ready to sign! He ended up at Shadow, which was my other option.”
Watson would be thrust into the role as team leader following Carlos Pace’s death in an aeroplane accident, and was leading the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard before a fuel pick-up issue demoted him to second on the final lap. His two-year spell racing the Brabham-alfas would prove winless, though he looks back on his stint with fondness: “Bernie put his trust in Gordon
Murray, who was an innovative designer. The Alfa flat-12 was a lovely thing, too. It would pull from almost zero to 12,000rpm but the downside was its bulk. I enjoyed working with Carlo Chiti and the Autodelta team that did the engine. The guys would rock up to Alfa’s Balocco test track at about 11am, fire up the cars and shortly thereafter break for lunch – for two hours. It was all very pleasant, conversing over good food at a farmhouse restaurant. Then we would go back and do five or six runs, by which time the light was fading. It could be frustrating, but I loved the atmosphere. I’m glad I got to experience that.”
Rather less so his first season with Mclaren: “When I joined for 1979, I thought they were going to build the best ground-effect car in F1. I was on the podium in the opening round in Argentina, but it was a tough year. We had the new M29 for the British GP at Silverstone, which was a close copy of a Williams but, unlike a Williams, it wasn’t a winning car.” At the same venue a year later, however, and under the
‘HE OWNS A DELICIOUS RS 2.7 THAT HE TRADED A GRANADA AGAINST WHILE AT HEXAGON’
auspices of new team principal Ron Dennis, he would triumph aboard the template-setting MP4: “There were no half measures with Ron and the MP4 was a case in point. It was the first F1 chassis of all-carbonfibre construction.’
Still using DFV power, Watson and the MP4 were a major threat to the turbo opposition, with wins at Zolder and Detroit, but his title bid was undone by four straight DNFS in the second half of the year. Into ’83, it wasn’t all plain sailing.
“At the Monaco Grand Prix,” he remembers, “neither my teammate Niki Lauda nor I qualified due to a tyre issue. I remember Ron saying, ‘I would rather you’d crashed than not qualified,’ which rather took me aback.” His victory in the second round at Long Beach would prove a final hurrah in single-seaters. Wattie would be a free agent for the following season.
“It was a similar situation to the one I had experienced on joining Brabham from Penske, where Regazzoni lost out,” he ponders. “Alain Prost, who had been my teammate in 1980, had suddenly been fired by Renault and he took my seat. In the space of 24 hours, I went from being a Mclaren driver about to negotiate a new contract to becoming an ex-mclaren driver. I had an opportunity with Lotus, largely because [team chief] Peter Warr hated Nigel Mansell, and was looking for another British driver to replace him. I also tested for Toleman. During my first outing, I was really impressed with the Hart engine they were using. Less so during my second test. There was clearly disparity between engines, probably due to Brian Hart working on such a small budget. I have always led my life by intuition and instinct. I remember thinking: ‘You’ve done 151 Grands Prix. You’re walking, talking and alive. You’ve had a great time. It’s time to stop.’ I could have continued in Formula One because there were options, but I left of my own volition.”
There was to be one last F1 outing, however, our hero subbing for Lauda at Mclaren in the 1985 European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, but sports cars would be his métier to the end of the decade. Watson landed works Porsche, Jaguar and Toyota drives in Europe, and a seat with BMW’S IMSA team in the United States, before embarking on his successful secondary career as a broadcaster: “I loved my time racing in North America in particular. I wouldn’t have missed it. There are so many great circuits in the US, and I fell in love with the place right from when I first drove there in F1. Watkins Glen in a Brabham BT44; it doesn’t get much better. I also relished being a works Porsche driver because it’s a marque I have revered since childhood.”
Indeed, he still owns a delicious ’73 Carrera RS 2.7 that he part-exchanged a Ford Granada against during his spell at Hexagon. That, and a factory-restored 356 Carrera. His love of the marque also led to him participating on the 2017 Mille Miglia in a 356 Pre-a alongside car owner Lindsay Gray. “I have never been interested in historic racing,” he explains. “I have no desire to relive past glories, but this was something else. It seduced me. I love the romance of the original Mille Miglia, and other road races such as the Tourist Trophy at Dundrod that I remember watching as a boy. I hadn’t done any sort of competitive driving in almost 30 years, but it took me all of 30 seconds to get back into it!”
We wouldn’t have expected otherwise.