Australian F1 champion Alan Jones dies aged 80

Alan Jones, the 1980 Formula 1 world champion, has died aged 80 after a brief illness.

Jones, and Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame legend, was the second and so far last Australian to win the Formula 1 world title, the culmination of a career that featured 12 victories and 24 podium finishes.

Jones was born in Melbourne in 1947 and followed in the footsteps of his successful amateur racing father Stan Jones in pursuing motorsport. A karting champion by age 15, by age 20 he took his first trip to the UK to survey the European racing scene and realised that racing success would require him to relocate abroad.

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In 1970 he moved to the UK in a bid to become a professional racing driver, but with little money to his name, progress was slow. He partnered with fellow Australian grand prix dreamer Brian McGuire in a business buying and selling second-hand cars, the proceeds from which were used to buy Jones's first Formula 3 car - but it was written off in a crash at Brands Hatch that left him with a broken leg.

His fortune began to turn in 1971 with a decent run of results in British F3, where he competed alongside fellow future Formula 1 champions James Hunt and Jody Scheckter. A first victory at Castle Combe earned him a seat with the newcomer GRD team in 1972 and again in 1973, when a pair of victories at Silverstone saw him progress to British Formula Atlantic for in 1974.

An equal best three victories for the season earned him the attention of Harry Stiller, who bought a Hesketh Formula 1 car for 1975 and signed Jones to race it, delivering the Melburnian his grand prix debut.

The team collapsed after only four races, but Jones's foot was in the door, and he was called up for Graham Hill's Embassy Racing team at the very next race as a stand-in for the injured Rolf Stommelen. His cameo lasted four races but was sufficient to draw the attention of 1964 Formula 1 world champion John Surtees, who signed him to his team for 1976.

Team Surtees was infamously sponsored by condom manufacturer Durex, leading to the BBC refusing to televise almost the entire season despite Hunt winning the title that year in his famous duel with Niki Lauda.

Despite multiple points finishes, Jones and Surtees fell out, and the Australian was dropped at the end of the season. Without a drive for 1976, Jones's career was on the ropes until a call from the Shadow team, which wanted him to replace Tom Pryce, the podium-scoring Welshman who had been killed two rounds into the campaign.

The call saved Jones's career, and despite a slow start, a gutsy drive in wet conditions at the fearsome Österreichring delivered him and his team a maiden grand prix victory from 14th on the grid after James Hunt's McLaren suffered an engine failure 11 laps from home.

It was the first victory for an Australian in seven years, since Jack Brabham's final win in 1970.

Among Jones's best-told stories was that organisers of the Austrian Grand Prix had been so unprepared for him to win that they didn't have a copy of the Australian national anthem immediately at hand as he popped the celebratory champagne.

"So [instead] a drunk played 'Happy Birthday' on a trumpet - of which there were plenty in Austria," he told the F1 website.

A recorded rendition of Advance Australia Fair later played as he accepted the trophy.

That drive, and a further podium at the Italian Grand Prix, sparked interest from Ferrari.

In a meeting with legendary founder Enzo Ferrari he was told he was the second choice if the team couldn't sign Mario Andretti. When Andretti signed for Lotus, Jones assumed his contract would become active, only to be told the team had signed Gilles Villeneuve instead in a bid to boost its sales in North America.

Jones had also had interest from Frank Williams, who had yet to strike success. He'd been pushed out of his original Frank Williams Racing Cars team by majority owner Walter Wolf, and his new Williams Grand Prix Engineering - the same team still racing today - had just endured a scoreless and very scrappy first campaign with a second-hand March car.

For 1978, however, the team was building its own car, and a meeting with Williams and chief designed Patrick Head at the team's factory convinced Jones to sign for the season as the team's sole driver.

Some strong qualifying results, a pair of points finishes and a second-place finish at Watkins Glen completed a good step forward, but the following season, with backing from Saudi Arabian national airline Saudia, saw results turbocharged.

Despite a slow start, four victories in the final six grands prix powered Jones to third on the points table behind champion Scheckter and Villeneuve. He would've won the final race of the season in the United States too - he'd taken pole position by 1.3s and was leading by more than half a minute - but for a

"That year I outqualified Ferrari just about all the time," he recalled to F1 podcast Beyond the Grid. "When I used to drive down pit lane and they were working on their cars, I'd give them a little wave - I might have only used one finger, but it was a wave.

"I thought, 'There's karma for you'."

The culmination of Jones's Williams career came the following year, in 1980. Williams delivered the best car on the grid allied to impressive reliability to give the Australian his first championship challenge.

Victory at the first race in Argentina set the tone. He retired from only three grands prix all season and finished off the podium only once, in the Netherlands.

The championship was secured with a round to spare, with two victories to conclude the season ending the campaign with a flourish.

It was his and Williams's first world title, and the team also won its first constructors championship.

His title defence started in superb fashion, with victory in the United States, but that year marked the beginning of what would become a prickly rivalry with teammate Carlos Reutemann, who had joined the team the previous year.

The source of spiralling tensions came at the second race, in Brazil, where Reutemann ignored team orders to let Jones into the lead to win the race despite being contracted to support the Australian as the team's lead driver.

All bets were off inside the team, and though Williams romped to another constructors championship, Jones and Reutemann watched Brabham's Nelson Piquet take the drivers title.

His enthusiasm waning, Jones retired with a victory at the 1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix, and though he was coaxed back for one full-time season in 1986, a difficult campaign with Team Haas sent him back into retirement for good.

Returning to Australia permanently, he became a Supercars regular, competing at first for Tony Longhurst Racing before switching to Glenn Seton's team, with which he runner-up to Seton in the 1993 championship.

His Australian racing career delivered him four victories in the Australian Touring Car Championship along with a win at the Bathurst 12 Hour and a runner-up finish at the 1995 Bathurst 1000.

During that time he also became a staple of Australian motorsport broadcasting, becoming the face of Formula 1 coverage Down Under alongside Darryl Eastlake and, later, Greg Rust.

He is survived by wife Amanda and children Camilla, Christian, Zara and Jack.