John Watson: “I learned to calculate risks – I didn’t go into areas where there was no escape”

F1 Beyond The Grid

karenellenbevan

News, Leisure, Sports News, Sports, Automotive

4.7 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2019

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He may not be as well-known as James Hunt or Nigel Mansell, but for a good period in the late Seventies and early Eighties, after the former had retired and before the latter became a household name, John Watson was Britain’s Grand Prix hero.

Over the course of 152 starts, Watson reached the podium 20 times, winning five races – including one from 22nd on the grid! But it wasn’t all roses for the Northern Irishman – over the course of his career he saw many colleagues killed or badly injured, and that’s one of the topics that’s discussed on this fascinating episode of Beyond The Grid, supported by Bose. There are also stories about his recently departed former team mate Niki Lauda, what it felt like to drive the infamous Brabham fan car, winning in F1’s first carbon fibre chassis and much more…

Transcript

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0:00.0	When you join Tinder, you might not have been looking for answers, but there were some good
0:05.0	clues, like in the way they smiled with their eyes. Like how they didn't reach free
0:09.6	hand before you'd reach for theirs. And when the time was right, they popped the question,
0:15.1	Will you keep a toothbrush at my place?
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0:29.0	Hello today.
0:44.3	Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Beyond the Grid presented by Bose
0:49.3	Quiet Comfort 352 Wireless Headphones. My guest this week is a driver who achieved a lot of
0:56.1	firsts during his career. He won five races of course, but one of those was the first and only
1:02.2	victory for Penske. Another was the first ever win for a carbon composite chassis, and he remains
1:07.6	the only driver to have won a race from as far back as 22nd on the grid. I'm talking of course
1:13.9	about John Watson. During the summer of 1981, John was the darling of the British tabloids.
1:20.4	He won the British Grand Prix for McLaren in that carbon composite car, and the crowd at Silversten
1:25.3	invaded the circuit after the race on a scale that had never previously been seen. It was Watson
1:30.9	Mania. But for all that celebrity, John was and remains one of the sports good guys.
1:37.2	Notably, he was there for Nikki Lauda in the immediate aftermath of his fiery accident at the
1:42.0	Nürburgring in 1976, and the two of them went on to become teammates and firm friends.
1:48.4	So on the day of Nikki's funeral in Vienna, who better to have on the show than Watson?
1:53.7	I hope you enjoy our conversation.
2:00.6	John, welcome to Beyond the Grid. Lovely to have you on the show. It's been just over a week
2:05.4	since Nikki Lauda passed away, so I thought we could start by talking about him because
	...

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