Alan Jones, Australia's 1980 Formula One world champion, dies aged 80
Alan Jones, the Australian who won the 1980 Formula One world championship with Williams, has died at the age of 80, The Guardian reported on 5 November 2026. He had turned 80 on Monday 2 November.
Jones was born in Melbourne. In 1970 he moved to Europe to pursue motor racing, the start of a long climb through the junior ranks. He joined the Formula 3 team GRD in 1973, then made his Formula One debut with Hesketh in 1975.
His first grand prix win came at the 1977 Austrian Grand Prix, driving for Shadow. A year later, in 1978, he joined Williams, the team that would carry him to the title.
The 1980 season was his best. Jones won five grands prix that year, in Argentina, France, Britain, Canada and the United States. He also finished on the podium, the top three places, five more times. He clinched the world championship with one race still to run, the points gap too big for his rivals to close.
Williams also won the constructors' championship that year, the title for the team as well as the driver. The team's car was the Williams-Cosworth FW07B, and Carlos Reutemann was his teammate.
Across his career, Jones won 12 grands prix. His full name was Alan Stanley Jones.
He was the second Australian to be crowned Formula One world champion, after Sir Jack Brabham. He remains the last Australian to hold the title, a distinction that still stands more than four decades after his 1980 win.
Tributes from across the paddock are likely to follow, as they have for many champions of that era. For now, the facts are simple: a Melbourne-born driver who rose from the junior categories to the top of the sport, and whose 1980 title is still the last won by an Australian.
