Gavin Green: slumming it to report on 1970s F1

This issue celebrates 70 years of F1. Allow me, however, to take you back a mere 40 years. It is halfway through the 1980 season and an underrated Australian driver called Alan Jones is leading the title race. He drives for Williams and will subsequently deliver Sir Frank his first world title.

In Australia, a young Sydney newspaper journalist is frustrated by the lack of publicity Jones is getting in his home country. His race wins in Argentina, France and Britain get a few measly column inches below the Sheffield Shield cricket and horse racing from Royal Randwick.

So, sensing an opportunity, the journalist leaves his job, jumps on a Qantas jet to Europe and makes his way to the Styrian mountains and to the Österreichring for the Austrian GP, round 10 of the championship. That is primarily why I came to Europe, never to leave.

My first meeting with Jones did not go well. In those days, it was easy to get a media pass to cover F1 races. I went to the Williams motorhome in the paddock after the first day of qualifying to interview Jones. There was a queue of journalists. Just as I passed the motorhome, the door opened and Jones appeared. I jumped in, introduced myself, and said I was here to give him the Australian media support he craved. There was a brief pause. ‘You can f*ck off,’ he replied. As introductions go, it was not a good start. The rough-and-tumble of Australian newspaper journalism taught me to stand my ground. I told him I’d just arrived from Australia, how I was here to help him, and reeled off my Aussie media outlets which included significant radio stations in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

There was a pause. Journalists nearby protested, the PR person was demanding I join the end of the queue, and Jones looked at me with a mixture of anger and intrigue. ‘Oh all right then,’ he said, and I was ushered in.

I subsequently interviewed Jones after every day of qualifying, and every race, for the three remaining European races of that season. As I was reporting for radio, I would tape Jones’s thoughts on that day’s session, using a microphone and cassette recorder.

Getting those recordings back to Australia was not easy. I could not afford hotels and therefore had no convenient room phone from which to send my reports, including Jones’ words, to the radio stations. These reports had to be filed in the evening – early morning Australia time.

In Austria I stayed in a guest house, sharing a room with two race fans, an American and a Swiss. The elderly owners were happy for me to disassemble their telephone and attach alligator clips from my cassette recorder to their phone’s microphone to send Jones’ words, and mine, to Australia. The written race reports were later sent by telex. This was before fax machines became popular.

For the next race, at the Dutch seaside resort of Zandvoort, I used the phone in a Chinese restaurant on both qualifying and race days. I spoke to Australian radio from a disassembled phone in the kitchen as the chicken chow mein and sweet-and-sour pork were prepared alongside.

For my final race, the Italian GP at Imola, I spent my first night sleeping in a grass field next to the circuit. Fortunately, next morning, on the first day of qualifying, I bumped into a friendly Australian PR man who worked for Goodyear. He asked me where I was staying and when I motioned to an adjacent field, he offered me the floor of his hotel room in nearby Bologna. I soon became adept at pulling apart his room’s telephone.

Jones came second in both the Austrian and Italian GPs, always gave me interviews and, I think, grew to like me. I liked his bluntness, colourful language and driving style. He subsequently became the second Australian to win the title after Sir Jack Brabham.

Media interest in Australia grew as the season progressed. My reports may have played a small part. More significantly, Jones was homing in on the world title. Australians like nothing more than sporting champions.

Gavin Green’s dad Evan’s many roles included being the voice of motorsport on Australian TV, commentating on the Bathurst 1000 for many years