The F1 Driver who Made Overtaking Look Like Child’s Play — John Watson
For certain Formula 1 drivers, you can pick out a specific characteristic in their driving style that they particularly excel in.
As an example, if you were to mention Jarno Trulli, the characteristic that springs to mind would probably be his qualifying pace. For someone like Alain Prost it might be his excellent race management.
For Ulsterman John Watson — or “Wattie” as he was also known — that standout characteristic would unquestionably be his uncanny overtaking ability, which saw him producing spectacular charges time and time again throughout his F1 career.
After an early career struggling to make a name for himself driving customer cars for tiny ‘garagiste’ outfits, and uncompetitive machinery such as Surtees’ workmanlike TS16, Watson got his first big break in late 1975.
Sadly though, this breakthrough came as a result of tragedy. Current Indycar owner Roger Penske had been getting a Formula 1 team going in the mid-1970s, making rapid progress with the help of their driver Mark Donohue — a capable engineer whose feedback helped to accelerate the pace of development on their cars, which secured a couple of points with Donohue at the wheel.
By the latter part of 1975, Penske’s PC1 chassis which had been carried over from the previous year was proving troublesome. The team therefore swapped to a customer chassis (which they had done previously in 1971, running a customer McLaren for Donohue in a one-off drive) to see out the remainder of the year, with plans to introduce a new in-house chassis at the start of the 1976 season.
It was at this point that catastrophe struck, as Donohue was killed in an accident at the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix. The single-car Penske team were therefore deprived of their only driver, as well as a valuable source of feedback for development of their cars.
In order to fill the void left by Donohue, the driver that Penske turned to was Watson, who was drafted in for the final round of 1975 before starting a full season with the team in 1976. This provided Watson with a valuable opportunity to make a name for himself in a team that, despite being beset by tragedy, was still on an upwards trajectory.
The 1976 season saw Penske field two new chassis. First was the PC3, which was a fairly basic car based heavily on the previous season’s PC1, as well as the customer March chassis which the team had also run in 1975. While unremarkable, it nonetheless secured a couple of valuable points for the team with Watson at the wheel in South Africa.
It was with the introduction of the follow-up PC4 chassis at round 7 of the season in Anderstorp where Penske and Watson’s fortunes really turned a corner.
After retirement in its first race, the PC4 quickly showed itself to be an extremely competitive car, recording back-to-back podiums in its second and third races in France and Britain.
After a non-score in Germany on the fearsome Nordschleife, Watson’s finest showing of his career up to that point would come in Austria.
On the ultra-fast Osterreichring circuit, he qualified second only to James Hunt’s title-contending McLaren, albeit assisted by the absence of Ferrari, who boycotted the race as a result of the injuries sustained by their star driver Niki Lauda at the previous round, as well as perceived pro-McLaren bias from officials.
Watson’s qualifying performance was impressive nonetheless, and on race day he proved that it was no flash in the pan. This was despite needing to deal with tricky conditions which saw the circuit too dry for wet tyres, but not really dry enough for slicks.
At the start, he was able to put the kibosh on Hunt, forcing him to back out and accept second place through the high speed Flatschach section of the circuit.
It was far from plain sailing for Watson initially though, as he had to fight for position repeatedly throughout an extremely exciting race. The first challenger was Ronnie Peterson in his March, who managed to get past into the lead at the start of lap 3.
While Watson clung on gamely, it looked as though the race was slipping from his clutches in the early stages, as he was then also passed by Jody Scheckter, who was charging hard in Tyrrell’s bonkers 6-wheeled P34.
Watson was therefore running in third, leading a gaggle of cars including Hunt’s McLaren, the Lotus of Gunnar Nilsson, Hunt’s teammate Jochen Mass, and Jacques Laffite in his Ligier. It soon became clear though that Peterson in front was cooking his tyres in the recalcitrant March, and the gap which he had worked to build up quickly evaporated until Scheckter was right alongside him at the start of lap 10.
In the kind of perfectly timed and opportunistic move which would come to define his career though, Watson slipstreamed the pair of them, and dived past Scheckter, creating a 3-wide battle for the lead which would be scarcely believable today.
Clearly in a charging mood, it didn’t take long before Watson pulled a similarly opportunistic move on Peterson at the first Texaco bend to reclaim the lead. Soon after, Scheckter in the Tyrrell had a massive crash, which served to illustrate the trickiness of the conditions which Watson was flourishing in, as well as to eliminate the car which was probably his main threat for the race win.
From that point on it was relatively plain sailing for the Northern Irishman, as he was able to see off all challengers to secure a memorable first victory after a thrilling race that saw constant changes of position up and down the field. The only exception was Watson, who was never headed once he passed Peterson, and thereby signalled that he had truly arrived on the Formula 1 scene.
While Watson wasn’t able to repeat his victory in 1976, he nonetheless had other strong showings such as at Zandvoort, where he qualified on the second row and duelled with James Hunt for the lead before retiring. He was soon met with news that would come as a major blow though, as Penske announced at the end of the year that they would be withdrawing from Formula 1 in order to focus their efforts on Indycar racing in Roger Penske’s native US.
Some consolation came in the form of a drive with Brabham for 1977, alongside Brazilian race winner Carlos Pace. Brabham had been frontrunners as recently as 1975, but 1976 had seen them take a major step backwards as the team adopted Alfa Romeo engines which proved to be unreliable and patchy in terms of performance. Signing for them was therefore something of a gamble on Watson’s part.
The 1977 Brabham proved to be much quicker than their 1976 car, but suffered similarly from reliability, as well as a fuel-thirsty engine which heavily affected Watson’s season. Watson’s career was also impacted by tragedy once again, as his teammate Pace was killed in a light aircraft crash just 3 rounds into the season.
Watson was therefore thrust into a number 1 driver role, which he attempted to capitalise on by securing his first pole position around the streets of Monaco, as well as by leading almost the entirety of the French and British Grands Prix that year.
Unfortunately, luck just would not let Watson lie, and a second place in France (where he lost the lead on the final lap due to fuel exhaustion) was the only notable result for the year.
The season also came with the news that reigning world champion Niki Lauda would be driving for Brabham next to Watson from 1978 onwards, meaning he would no longer be their clear number 1.
Lauda largely had the measure of Watson in 1978, winning two races and finishing 4th in the championship while Watson’s best result was second in a Brabham 1–2 at Monza, on a tragic weekend which saw the death of Ronnie Peterson, who had duelled Watson for victory two years earlier in Austria.
Despite the middling results, the gap between Watson and Lauda was generally not particularly large, and given Lauda’s status as one of the all-time greats of the sport, Watson’s stock was not damaged too badly.
It was for this reason that Watson was drafted in at McLaren, who were looking for a replacement for their departing champion James Hunt.
While this sounds like a major coup for Watson on paper, it should be contextualised with the fact that McLaren were very much a team in decline at the time.
They had completely failed to keep up with the aerodynamic revolution of the late 1970s which was ushered in by Lotus with their ground effect cars, and increasingly found themselves struggling for results as other teams sprung up to take the frontrunning position they had once occupied.
McLaren’s downturn was borne out by Watson’s results in 1979. On the one hand, he comfortably outperformed new teammate Patrick Tambay, who had been with McLaren since the previous season.
He outqualified the Frenchman 13–2, and outscored him 15–0, showing that he was still on good form. Despite this, the best result he could wring out of the troublesome McLarens was a single third place at the season opener in Argentina, with a few other lower points placings making up the rest of a rather depressing tally for the year.
1980 would prove an even lower ebb, as other teams really began to exploit ground effect, while McLaren continued to flounder in a season which saw them fail to even score a podium for the first time since 1971.
Watson was joined at the squad by future legend of the sport Alain Prost, who instantly made a splash by showing extremely well in what was accepted by this point to be poor machinery, and generally shading Watson comfortably in the early stages of the year.
Watson’s performance did pick up in the latter part of the year though, and he was able to draw level on points with Prost by season’s end, albeit with Prost having missed 3 races due to injury.
Nevertheless, this uptick, combined with a decision by Prost to leave the team for the French Renault outfit, perhaps saved Watson’s seat — and in hindsight revitalised his career.
This revival came about because of the takeover of McLaren by Ron Dennis, who merged the team with his Project Four Formula 2 team in preparation for the 1981 season. The result was a slick new McLaren team with a renewed sense of purpose, and an all-new technical team headed by John Barnard.
1981 was a tumultuous season in all facets of the sport, as outlined in one of my previous articles. This included the technical side of F1, with various new rules coming in that disrupted the established order slightly.
For the season, Barnard penned the innovative Marlboro MP4 — Formula 1’s first ever all-carbon fibre car. The design took some tweaking, but proved to be an excellent machine.
By round 7, Watson took its first podium in a tightly contested Jarama race which saw the top 5 separated by just 1.25 seconds. This was immediately followed by a strong drive to second in France in a rain-impacted race which saw the use of aggregate times which split the race in two, and led to a dramatic final sprint where Watson secured his P2.
After the heartening performances in Spain and France, the crowning moment of Watson’s season came at his home race in Silverstone.
Watson qualified the MP4 in fifth position, which set him up for a solid result given the progress that had been made with the development of the car.
Unfortunately for Watson, this all seemed to be undone when a major accident was caused by Gilles Villeneuve clouting the kerb at the Woodcote chicane on lap 4 and spinning across the track. Multiple cars were eliminated on the spot, including reigning champion Alan Jones, and Watson’s teammate Andrea de Cesaris.
Watson was able to avoid the accident, but to do so he had to slam on the brakes and come to a complete stop, which dropped him well down the order and seemingly out of contention.
Watson responded to this setback by putting in the kind of drive that would come to typify this later stage of his career — what Clive James termed “top gear from the rear”.
Watson put pedal to the metal (or pedal to carbon fibre in this case) and inexorably climbed up the field until he was back with the leaders who he had qualified among. First of that group to be dispatched was Mario Andretti in fifth.
Andretti had been at the tail of a group which also included Carlos Reutemann, with the whole gaggle bottled up behind the Ferrari of Didier Pironi — prompting an anecdote from commentator James Hunt about how the Ferrari cars were impossible to overtake due to the power advantage conferred by their turbocharged engines.
Seemingly spurred on by a desire to prove Hunt wrong, Watson made quick work of passing championship leader Reutemann with a brave move on the brakes, and then immediately set about Pironi too. In a matter of about three corners, he was past the scarlet machine as well and up into third position, having gained three places in less than two laps.
Hunt on the comms rightly praised this manoeuvre, though was surely smarting slightly at having been made to look silly by the ease with which Watson had overtaken the supposedly impassable Ferrari.
The only cars in front of Watson after that were the notoriously fragile Renaults, including his former teammate Prost. When Prost’s car faltered, Watson was able to close up and pass the other struggling Renault of Arnoux and go on to win almost uncontested as he stretched the gap over eventual P2 finisher Reutemann to 40 seconds by the chequered flag.
It was Watson’s first visit to the top step of the podium in half a decade, and the first win for a driver racing under the Union Jack since James Hunt in 1977. The fact it was on home soil made the victory all the more impactful, and Watson was widely lauded for a brilliant drive and a truly popular win.
A revitalising 1981 season was capped off with a strong second place in torrential rain in Canada, which secured 6th place for Watson in the drivers’ championship — effectively the ‘best of the rest’ outside that year’s 5 title contenders. His place at McLaren was thereby assured too, and now looked to actually be worth something with the upward trajectory of the team under Ron Dennis’ leadership.
Such was the promise of the revitalised McLaren that the team were able to tempt Watson’s former teammate Niki Lauda out of retirement to drive for them in 1982. Some may have been daunted at the prospect of facing someone who had beaten them before, but with Watson’s newfound confidence after his strong 1981 season, he and Lauda formed a productive pairing, with the Ulsterman proving a better match for the Austrian legend than he had been back in 1978.
1982 would prove to be the peak of Watson’s career, and saw him come agonisingly close to winning the championship title. The season also saw him put in what is in my opinion the greatest drive of his career, and the single greatest non-qualifying lap in F1 history.
His season started off in relatively low-key fashion, with point scores in the first 3 races including a second place in Brazil — albeit inherited after the disqualification of two other podium finishers. It even briefly looked like a repeat of 1978 with Watson being shaded by Lauda was on the cards at one point, as the Austrian won in fine style third time out on the streets of Long Beach.
This time though, Watson immediately responded, securing a win of his own at a sombre Belgian Grand Prix which had seen the death of Ferrari talisman Gilles Villeneuve in qualifying. Watson nevertheless delivered a stirring drive on the Zolder circuit, passing teammate Lauda and sneaking victory by passing Keke Rosberg on the final lap after the Finn’s tyres dropped off.
The fact that an increasingly popular driver won on such a sad weekend lifted spirits a little, but the mood was still understandably gloomy after such a tragedy.
Two rounds later in Detroit, Watson’s finest moment came, in a race which made clear that this season he was out for the title.
The weekend started inauspiciously, as a torrid qualifying saw Watson only 17th on the grid, while teammate Lauda was inside the top 10.
As it turned out, this merely served to set Wattie up for his finest attack from the back yet on race day.
The Detroit street circuit was new to the calendar that year, and was approached with some trepidation by many due to its extremely bumpy track surface. This was not so for Watson, who made steady progress from his lowly grid spot, passing cars left and right.
By lap 29 he was in the points, sitting behind a gaggle of cars that included Bruno Giacomelli’s Alfa Romeo, as well as frontrunners such as Watson’s teammate Niki Lauda, and San Marino winner Didier Pironi in his Ferrari.
Watson immediately got to work, putting a move on Giacomelli at the start of lap 30 , before an overambitious return stab from the Italian saw the two collide, with Giacomelli coming off the worse. Despite the knock, Watson’s charge was far from finished, and on lap 33 put in what has been termed “the lap of the gods” by some pundits.
First, he passed teammate Lauda on the Detroit circuit’s short pit straight, which put him up into fourth position behind the Ligier of US native Eddie Cheever, which was running well.
It wasn’t running well enough to hold up Watson though, who was through in the next major braking zone, getting up into the podium places with consummate ease.
Then came Pironi, who had the advantage of a turbocharged engine and who had been holding up Cheever and Lauda for quite some laps with neither being able to get through.
No such issue for Wattie. Immediately after passing Cheever he was right on Pironi’s rear wing, and after sitting there patiently for all of two corners through one of the circuit’s tightest sections, he nailed the Ferrari too.
Fifth to second in half a lap — it was vintage Watson.
The only car ahead of Watson after that was Keke Rosberg, in something of a repeat of the Zolder race. Once again Rosberg was struck by an issue though — in this case a gearbox problem — and it was a mere formality for Watson to get past with the pace he had in hand.
On lap 37 he took the lead, and from there on he never looked back, coming home to win by some 15 seconds despite a race stoppage which saw aggregate times used.
Coming away from Detroit, Watson was leading the championship for the first time in his career, and looked as good of a bet as anyone to eventually win the title come season’s end.
Unfortunately, Watson’s challenge would largely unravel after this point. While he took another podium in Canada, a string of non-scores, primarily due to getting caught up in accidents left him with only an outside shot of the title by the season finale.
He put in another charging drive all the way up to second place on the mickey-mouse Caesar’s Palace circuit, after a terrible start from 9th on the grid which saw him basically last by the end of lap 1, but it was not enough. This time it was Rosberg’s turn to sneak the result away from Watson to win the title by coming home in P5.
P3 in the standings, equal on points with the injured Didier Pironi in second was Watson’s final placing, which was perhaps a disappointment after the promise shown throughout the year. He had nonetheless put in some showcase drives that demonstrated perfectly why he was one of F1’s most exciting challengers.
1983 would sadly prove to be Watson’s final full season in Formula 1, but he at least went out on a relative high. The season saw him put in his most famous drive, as he charged up from a ludicrous 22nd place on the grid to win at the second round of the season in Long Beach, which I have covered in more detail in a previous article.
A pair of other podiums were also obtained, and Watson once again outscored Lauda, but he could not challenge for the title as he had done the previous year, as McLaren did not have a turbocharged engine, which had become essentially mandatory to be a title contender with 1983’s aerodynamic changes, until late in the year.
Watson had hoped that having outscored Lauda again he would be retained by McLaren, and is reported to have asked for a greater salary than the Austrian for 1984, citing outscoring him in both previous seasons, as well as winning a race in 1983 where Lauda had not.
Unfortunately for Watson, Alain Prost became available on the driver market after having been sacked by Renault. Ron Dennis had never wanted Prost to leave McLaren when he took over the team in late 1980, and so quickly snapped the Frenchman up for a bargain price, with Watson being the one who lost his seat to make room.
After a year racing sportscars in 1984 to mixed success, a return to F1 looked to be on the cards for Watson in 1985. He was signed by the Toleman outfit which had been making waves in 1984 with young hotshoe Ayrton Senna in their car.
Everything was ready to go, but unfortunately Toleman’s tyre supplier Michelin withdrew from the sport for 1985, and the other tyre suppliers of Goodyear and Pirelli were hesitant to supply the team owing to disputes with Pirelli earlier in the team’s career, meaning Toleman initially could not participate.
Toleman did eventually make the grid in 1985 after being bought by clothing manufacturer Benetton, but this also came with a stipulation that the team run an Italian driver. Watson, being decidedly non-Italian, once again saw his seat swiped away and his F1 career effectively over.
He did, however, get one last dance. At the 1985 European Grand Prix Niki Lauda was unable to compete due to injury, and the driver that McLaren turned to was Watson, showing that despite his dropping after ’83 he still retained good favour with the Woking-based squad.
He put in a typical Watson drive to charge up from a 21st place grid spot, but sadly just missed out on a point with P7. With that, his F1 driving career was over, and he returned to sportscars to some success, finishing second in the 1987 championship.
Since then, he has carved out a name for himself as a pundit, particularly on Eurosport’s coverage of F1 in the 1990s, where he formed an excellent commentary duo with Ben Edwards.
For me though, he stands out as one of the most exciting F1 drivers of his era, and a driver truly deserving of the title ‘last of the late brakers’.
On an off topic note, there’ll be no article next week due to the holidays. Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate, and otherwise thanks for reading and have a great New Year! — George.
