James Courtney announced his retirement by accident – on the television news. With his eyes set on a career in real estate, it made sense for the 44-year-old to plug the Gold Coast firm he was joining and talk up his expertise. But in doing so, he also stated that he was hanging up the helmet next year on his 25-year career and 250-plus rounds of Australia’s Supercars championship.
That career did not go in the direction Courtney – and many others – probably expected. A Junior Karting World title at 15 and the Formula A crown two years later earmarked him as a driver set for the very top, and a dominant British Formula Ford title in 2000 – against a field that included Anthony Davidson – did nothing to diminish that notion.
He made a smooth transition to British Formula 3 a year later and was running away with the 2002 title when his career, and life, was upended by a crash in his first F1 test with Jaguar at Monza.
“Everything in my career up to that point had gone my way,” reflects Courtney. “I was leading the F3 championship by a big margin and it was looking like all I had to do was finish off the last four, maybe six months of the year. All signs were pointing that [F1] way. It was probably my first setback, emotionally, of my career and it was the one that took the longest to get over.”
Courtney is confident that, even with its unstable management structure at the time, the intention was for him to move into Jaguar’s F1 team for 2003, forming an all-Australian line-up with Mark Webber. Then he had a second test, at Silverstone – and another mechanically induced crash.
“Even after I tested the F1 car again, that was still the trajectory,” he asserts. “It was all entwined in the contract, as long as I made the performance clause.”
But the form he’d shown in the opening half of the F3 season deserted him and, after missing a round post-crash, he struggled to find his speed in the Carlin Motorsport Dallara-Mugen.
“I think it was three months [to get over it] and, to completely recover, it was nearly 12 months before I felt normal again,” Courtney says.
Robbie Kerr took the title in Alan Docking Racing’s entry and Courtney’s F1 trajectory disappeared in a flash. Antonio Pizzonia took the F1 seat, and Courtney and his manager Alan Gow had to look elsewhere to rebuild his career.
"I didn’t just want to be in F1, I wanted to be someone who won championships, who won races. I wasn't interested in just making up the numbers"
James Courtney
‘Elsewhere’ turned out to be the All-Japan Formula 3 championship; Courtney took TOM’S to the title at a canter. With just 16 of the 20 races to count, he took 13 wins and four other podium finishes. TOM’S moved him up to Formula Nippon, in which he was fourth on his debut, but Japan’s Grand Touring and GT series looked more attractive – and changed the direction of Courtney’s career.
“I did the Super GT big sportscar stuff and I got a love for racing again,” he explains. “In formula cars, you start in Formula Ford, then F3 and you sort of lose the love of the racing side of things. You’re not really in wheel-to-wheel combat; in those days, there was so much aero wash, drag and passing was minimal. It was all about qualifying. You only really passed strategically, in the pitstops.
“But when I did the GT stuff, because they had ground effect, you could race really closely, you could push each other, and it brought back all that passion I had from the karting days. By that point, I realised that the Formula 1 I lived through in the late part of the 1980s and 1990s, and dreamed it to be, was not the 24 best guys in the world. It was, maybe, six top guys, and then maybe guys with big sponsors and dads with money.
“I didn’t just want to be in F1, I wanted to be someone who won championships, who won races. I was not interested in just making up the numbers.”
That’s a big part of why, when a second F1 opportunity came Courtney’s way, “I turned it down”. Any team other than Jaguar being on Courtney’s F1 radar came as news to many – this writer included. “It was Midland,” he reveals. “The option to go with the other team was only ever going to be midfield, at best. It was not going to be interesting to me.”
The Midland Group bought what had been Jordan Grand Prix in 2005 and, at the end of that season, changed its name to Midland F1 Racing. Courtney’s perception of its prospects proved accurate. Using Toyota engines, its drivers Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers failed to score a point in 18 races. Before the year was out, the team was sold again, this time to Spyker Cars.
“They say that you should never meet your hero; I suppose it was a little bit of that,” continues Courtney. “Also, it was how I also got spat out the side at Jag’s, at that point. That left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, I had been away from home for probably 14 years by that point, and Supercars was only getting stronger. The guys were getting paid really well. At that point, I wanted to go home.”
Home, of course, was western Sydney. With his CV, and his and Gow’s contacts, it was no surprise that a number of teams were keen to have him drive their V8 Supercars. First in line was the Holden Racing Team, then under the ownership of lead driver Mark Skaife.
Courtney was signed for the V8 Supercars endurance races at Sandown and Bathurst, but there was another offer. Stone Brothers Racing was about to bid farewell to two-time champion Marcos Ambrose, who was heading to NASCAR in the USA, and needed a driver to slot into the seat of the race-winning Ford.
“I didn’t just walk out of one [series] and hope for the best with the other,” Courtney remembers. “I had a deal to keep racing in Japan and then the whole Marcos thing happened. I was actually trying to deal with the Holden Racing Team at the time, with Skaife, and I think it’s been well documented that we were a long way down the road to do something.
“But they couldn’t guarantee a seat because they were not sure what they were going to do with Todd [Kelly, Skaife’s team-mate]. So then the Marcos thing came up. I knew I would be crazy not to jump on that, how competitive SBR was at the time. So I said to Alan, ‘Let’s go that way.’”
It took some time to find his feet in the quirky, heavy V8 Supercars, but Courtney did, taking 11th, ninth and sixth in three seasons with the Gold Coast-based team. Then he switched camps, joining Australian legend Dick Johnson’s Ford team for 2009. Again he had to settle in, taking seventh in 2009, but what happened a year later is already cast deep into V8 Supercars folklore.
The Triple Eight team had switched manufacturers in the off-season, from Ford to Holden, and Jamie Whincup came out of the blocks like a whirlwind, winning six of the opening eight races. Courtney hung on as best he could, with three podium finishes, until he hit a hot streak, winning four races in a row in the middle of the season to close the points gap.
“It was a purple patch, the boys were doing an amazing job, for preparation and set-up to strategy, and I was not making as many mistakes,” he admits. “It was an amazing time; we really should have had a better year the year before, but I let the team down a bit. The second year, 2010, it was such an amazing group of guys. Everyone on the car was just perfect.”
It came down to the final round, and an extraordinary Saturday 250km race around the confines of Sydney’s Olympic precinct at Homebush – literally a couple of miles from where Courtney grew up. Together with Mark Winterbottom, both Courtney and Whincup were in contention for the win and the title when the track was hit by a thunderstorm.
"Now, it seems like everyone is, in Australian terms, trying to be Peter Brock. Everyone wants to be the nice guy, always having nice things to say about each other"
James Courtney
In an instant, all three cars were in the wall and had to stagger back to the pitlane for repairs. Whoever made it out would salvage a few points and set up the title on Sunday. Courtney was the one who made it out – in a car more race tape than metal.
“Just to see the passion of the guys to get the car repaired, they just wanted it more than Triple Eight,” he remembers. “As a team, we got out in front of the T8 guys, we got more points and that’s what helped us to get the championship.”
To add to the drama was the backstory; team co-owners Johnson and Charlie Schwerkolt were about to go their separate ways and the very future of the team was in doubt. That, and beating Triple Eight to the title the next day – in essentially a T8 customer car – made the win all the sweeter.
The following week it was confirmed that Courtney was on the move, this time to the Holden Racing Team, now owned again by the Walkinshaw family. Successes were measured in race wins rather than titles, before moving to the Tickford Ford team and latterly to Blanchard Racing Team.
One thing he laments is what he sees as a lack of personalities in Supercars: “When I rolled in, and during my junior career, there were such big names and personalities, everyone always had something to say and there were rivalries. Now, it seems like everyone is, in Australian terms, trying to be Peter Brock. Everyone wants to be the nice guy, always having nice things to say about each other.
“The racing is still exciting. We’re probably not allowed to push as much as we were, but to me, the sport has lost those personalities. I think Will Brown stands out among the other young guys, in that he always seems to have something to say, or he has a bit of a joke around. But the younger guys now? They are a bit bland.”
Courtney is far from that. His career may not have quite played out on the world stage as originally planned, but it has been compelling to watch.
