JOHN WATSON CAME TO ENGLAND FROM Northern Ireland to make his name in 1969. His natural talent was immediately recognised and his journey to grand prix victories had begun. Wattie was 26 when he had his first (non-championship) Formula 1 race, 1972 at Brands Hatch in a Hexagon March 721, impressing with sixth place. His first grand prix, with a Hexagon Brabham, came at Silverstone in ’73 and the following year he scored his first points with sixth in Monaco.
After a troubled season with Surtees in ’75 he was signed by Roger Penske and took the first of his five grand prix victories in Austria. In ’77 he went to Brabham alongside Niki Lauda, moving to McLaren in ’79 where he stayed until ’83. In ’81 he won the British Grand Prix by 40 seconds from fifth on the grid in John Barnard’s all-new carbon fibre McLaren MP4/1. These days he’s a commentator for both F1 TV and for the GT World Challenge on Eurosport.
Motor Sport: Let’s start in the present and get your take on Formula 1 in the modern era. What do you make of the sport today compared to when you were racing?
John Watson: “What we see today, it’s a million miles away. It’s the scale of F1 today – more a huge business than a sport in some ways. It’s an evolution, it’s progress. Some people won’t like it but the new, younger generation are loving it, and that’s in part down to Drive to Survive on Netflix. And, let’s remember, social media wasn’t even invented when I was racing.
“The sport is always evolving. In 30 or 40 years’ time Formula 1 will have embraced yet more new technologies and will be different yet again. Back in the day you had a Cosworth engine, a Hewland gearbox, you built your chassis and went racing, then along came wings, ground effects, aerodynamics and then with the coming of carbon fibre composites the cars became so much safer.
“When I crashed the McLaren at Monza in 1981 the impact split the car in half but I was left sitting in the carbon tub unscathed, and safety has improved still further since then. The world has changed, life has changed, and
