HOW JONES AND SHADOW CONQUERED THE AUSTRIAN GP
No one expected Alan Jones to win the 1977 Austrian Grand Prix. Not local hero and pole winner Niki Lauda, sitting pretty at the top of the world championship points, nor anyone else at the sharp end of the grid at the Osterreichring. And probably not Jones and his Shadow team, and certainly not the race organisers.
That explains why it wasn’t the still semi-official national anthem, Advance Australia Fair, that played as the Shadow driver stood atop what went for the podium in Austria, nor the more formal God Save the Queen. Rather, remembers Jones, “some bloke with a trumpet, who was obviously pissed, played Happy Birthday”.
In lieu of laying their hands on a copy of Australia’s national song, or even knowing what it was, the officials’ choice of was probably a fair compromise for this celebratory moment in the history of the Shadow team. The British-based operation that raced under the Stars and Stripes had had its chances to win grands prix back in 1975, but it
