John Watson on Penske's F1 win after tragedy: 'The irony wasn't lost'

“One of the things that Donohue believed was that you can determine the mechanical quality of a car by going around this big circular piece of tarmac – and then when you get that result, you add the bodywork!”

Watson thought the team were onto something with the PC3, helping it build up two examples for the ’76 season – but then the American outfit was thwarted by unforeseen circumstances.

“A regulation change came in early in ’76 which meant that the tall air boxes were removed and also the wing rear wing position came in close to the car,” he says. “All that screwed up the aero package on the PC3 – it never had the same kind of balance as it had prior in its original configuration.”

To fix the solution, the ever pragmatic Penske – dubbed ‘The Captain’ for his industrious nature – cast his eye over the rest of the grid for the solution.

“Roger said ‘Let’s build our car again’, Watson says. “Looking at other cars, the McLaren, he said ‘I want you to put a big spacer in between the engine and gearbox like an M23 and put on a normal set of normal canard fronts wings – and the car was transformed.”

At its first race in Sweden, the team were lost, but then two top-three finishes in the next three races – Watson’s very first F1 podiums – justified The Captain’s decision to go back to the drawing board, the result being the PC4.

“The car did all the things it should have been, but initially didn’t,” Watson says. “At the French GP, Brands Hatch – and then it all came together in Austria.”

Today, Roger Penske has a sprawling business empire. Employing over 60,000 people, as well running IndyCar, NASCAR, and also Porsche’s sports car teams on the weekend, the Pennslyvanian has interests worldwide.

However, hard as it is to believe now, Penske was still then a relatively poor relation on the F1 grid in the mid-’70s. As a result some performance-related privileges afforded to teams like Ferrari and McLaren were hard to come by – but at the Österreichring, the boys from Pennsylvania lucked out.

“Everybody was running crossply Goodyear tyres,” Watson explains. “And one of the difficulties with these was getting continuity in the circumference of the tyre.

“If you were a ‘contracted’ Goodyear team, you got first dibs when the tyres were made available. Guys from Ferrari, McLaren, Lotus and Tyrrell got in first and took the best matched front and rear pairs.

“Depending on your status in the field, you ended up getting what was left. We didn’t have different compounds then.”

“The basic handling was transformed – it became a racing car”

For once though, Penske found the ‘magic’ set.

“In Austria our tyre guy Jerry, out of all the sets of tyres I could get, ended up with one which was just unlike anything else – I don’t know what it was.

“There were fundamentals that were hidden in the car’s performance, but you put these tyres on and it came alive. The basic handling was transformed – it became a racing car.”

James Hunt was the class of the field in qualifying and thus on pole, but as a result of the rubber revelation, Watson was second – the only other driver to get within a second of the McLaren driver.

“Racing all these guys was very much different to what we have today I think,” he opines. “There was a different level of respect. The concept of people weaving [didn’t exist then] and also braking zones were so much longer, so you could get the chance to make a braking manoeuvre.”

The dicing continued, until Scheckter allowed himself to be baulked by a backmarker heading down the pit straight on lap 10, allowing both Peterson and Watson to sweep past in a thrilling move. Watson could easily have ended up being sandwiched between a combination of the backmarker, the Tyrrell and the pit wall. What gave him the confidence to put his PC4 there?

“I just think it was a sense of the feeling that the car was with me,” he says. “We were working as one. If you have that level of confidence and self belief in yourself and your equipment, then you’re able to do these things.”

Watson has a particular view on passing in a race, which frequently allowed him to pull off his signature opportunistic overtakes. He would eventually make it his trademark, but this was his first famous pair of F1 drive-bys.

“If you’re going to overtake somebody, the best way to do it is catch them, pass them and move on,” he says. “Don’t get hung up behind them. If you sit behind somebody lap upon lap, you lose momentum and the control goes back to the car that you’re behind.”

Watson stuck to the philosophy – one lap later he’d got ahead of Peterson too, and was from there unchallenged. The man from Northern Ireland led serenely home to take Penske’s first win in F1, remarkably just two days short of a year since it had lost Mark Donohue.

Watson says the emotion in the camp was sheer “delight” before going on to add: “I’m sure the irony of the situation did not escape all those people that were part of the team when they lost, not just their driver, but their talisman in Donohue.

“Motor sport was significantly more dangerous then. Nevertheless, we all knew there were risks, and sadly – tragically – people lose their lives. You needed to find a way to compartmentalise that and use all the other aspects of your character personality – just blot it out.”

Following the win, a bet made with the normally pristine Penske had to be honoured. The Captain had ordered Watson to be sans facial hair if they ever managed to win a race together.

“We flew back that night and stayed at Heathrow,” Watson says. “In the morning, for the first time in about seven years, I shaved off my beard. Roger came down in the morning looking for me – he missed me in the cafe I looked so different!”

There was more mischief to be had Stateside….

“Back at Penske headquarters, I went down there one day, and Heinz said, ‘Let’s ring up Niki!’ After going though hell at the Nürburgring, he had now come through it and was able to take phone calls.

“We rang him up and he said [Watson puts on vintage Lauda-spec Austrian accent] ‘Oh! Oh! Very good, very good – I’m glad you beat that f***** Hunt!’

“It was interesting that Niki was already thinking beyond his hospital bed and getting back behind the wheel, because he had a significant lead in the championship.”

The fun wouldn’t see out the year though. Watson had been looking forward to kicking on with his American dream team, as rumours of a second car and perhaps even Ronnie Peterson driving it persisted. However, the Ulsterman soon got a – quite literal – rude awakening.

“Suddenly, at some point between the end of the season and Christmas, I got a call from Roger at two o’clock in the morning,” Watson remembers. “Roger said to me ‘John, I want to tell you I’ve decided to withdraw from Formula 1.’ I said ‘You’re joking…’

Penkse had decided to consolidate his sporting activities in the US rather than, in Watson’s words, “go out on a limb in Europe”.

Despite being briefly distraught, Hoffer managed to help negotiate for Watson to join Brabham, before he then went on to claim race wins at McLaren, driving the revolutionary MP4/1 and taking perhaps his most famous win at Detroit in ’82, with a whole flurry of passing moves to come from the back to win.

However, it was with Penske, on its day of redemption in Austria, that Watson truly first marked himself out as a formidable grand prix racer.