I was able to take a close look at the car and spend some time remembering the years when Alan raced and the pride that I had as an Australian with his success. 

During this part of Formula One history it was the small British based teams taking on the might of the likes of Ferrari and Renault. Williams had introduced the FW07 in 1979 and it would have three variants.

The FW07 was raced in 1979 with Alan Jones and Clay Regazzoni as drivers. The B & C models were raced in 1980 and 1981 with Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann as drivers.

To look at this car there is no comparison to the high tech cars of today. The FW07 was constructed from aluminium and steel not the exotic materials of today. Even with the dashboard there is no  comparison. The FW07 had only the simplest of instruments nothing like the digital readouts that modern grand prix cars have.

He recalled the times he spent in this car while he was at Williams. He recalled a test session when he was testing with the FW07B and was evaluating new radial tyres for Goodyear. On one lap he lost the tread of one of the front tyres. 

Well Alan described how he flew off the track and hit a concrete post which flew up and hit the front of the cockpit and went over the top of Alan's head, narrowly missing him. 

The way he described it you would have thought it was no big thing but at the time it must have being a very scary moment for Alan.

Alan drove the car but came back in saying that his vision was so bad because of the car running without springs. His eyeballs were shaking in his head. Frank Williams suggested that to help fix the problem with his vision Alan should sit on his wallet. Alan replied with, you should give me something to put it.

For me that was one of the classic pieces of conversation to come out of Formula One. For the modern grand Prix driver they would have to tow a trailer in order for them to carry all the money that some get paid.

At this point Alan was called away but I will always recall the Williams FW07B not only as part of Formula One history, but more importantly it was the car that an Australian drove to become World Drivers Champion.