Alan Jones, the 1980 F1 world champion who built Williams into a dynasty, has died at 80. The Australian arrived in Britain in 1970 with £50 and a reputation for muscling underpowered cars to the front. By the time Frank Williams signed him in 1978, he'd already proven he could shock the grid — a wet-weather win at Austria in the Shadow DN8 signaled what was coming. The ground-effect FW07 and Jones were a perfect match: he was psychologically bulletproof, ruthlessly precise on setup, and wheel-to-wheel he scared the field senseless. The 1980 title cemented it. He walked away after dominating the '81 Las Vegas finale, returned for a quiet Newman Haas stint in '85-'86, then retired for good. Williams never stopped channeling his character — aggressive, uncompromising, relentless. That DNA runs through Grove to this day.
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