Alan Jones, the last Australian and first Williams driver to win the Formula 1 world title, has died at the age of 80.

Jones raced in F1 between 1975 and 1986, winning the title in 1980 to become the first of Williams' seven world champions.

Jones, who turned 80 on Monday, won 12 grands prix in his career and raced competitively in other formats until 2002.

"We are extremely saddened to announce the passing of our beloved Alan, who passed away on 5 November following a short illness," his wife Amanda Butler-Davis said in a statement released on her behalf by Motorsport Australia.

"He will be dearly missed and fondly remembered by those closest to him, as well as the many fans whose support he was always grateful for."

Jones started the first of his 116 F1 races in a Hesketh at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix.

He won his first race for the Shadow team in Austria in 1977 before joining Williams the following year.

After finishing third in the drivers' championship in 1979, he won five races in 1980 and finished on the podium in all but one of the grands prix he completed, taking the title ahead of Nelson Piquet.

Jones was the second Australian to win the F1 championship, after Jack Brabham in 1959, 1960 and 1966.

Jones remains the most recent Australian to triumph at the Australian Grand Prix, winning at Melbourne's Calder Park Raceway in 1980 when the race was not part of the world championship.

He finished third in the drivers' standings in 1981, winning in Las Vegas for what proved to be his final race victory. He retired at the end of the season.

Having appeared in one race for Arrows in 1983, Jones made a full-time comeback with new team Haas in 1985 and raced largely unsuccessfully the following year.

"Alan dedicated his life to motorsport, building a legacy that will live on through the countless people he touched along the way," Butler-Davis said.

"Through his achievements, passion and unmistakable character, both on and off the track, Alan left an enduring mark on the sport both nationally and across the globe."

Alan Jones' time at the very peak of F1 was short - essentially just under three years from mid-1979 to the end of 1981 - but he left a lasting impression.

Jones is synonymous with the Williams team, having become their first world champion in 1980, and he formed a close, almost brotherly bond with co-founders Frank Williams and Patrick Head.

Williams and Head loved Jones' pugnacious, no-nonsense approach, and between them they were the leading force in F1 for a short time, as the team first emerged at the forefront of the sport.

Future Williams drivers, whoever they were, were almost always measured against Jones, and usually came up wanting in Williams' and Head's eyes.

After making his debut, it took a little while for Jones' abilities to be appreciated. But victory for the unfancied Shadow team in the 1977 Austrian Grand Prix, beating Niki Lauda's Ferrari fair and square, was an indicator of his potential.

Moving to Williams in 1978, the team showed well with their neat FW06 design, the first led by Head at the start of his iconic career.

But it was 1979 when Jones and Williams really turned it on. When the new FW07 car debuted mid-season, it and Jones soon became the standard setters.

Early reliability problems meant he was unable to challenge Ferrari drivers Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve for the title under the season's bizarre split scoring system, but he won four of the final six races to set the tone for the following year.

In 1980, with the upgraded FW07B, Jones and Williams were the team to beat. Pushed hard to the title by Brabham's Nelson Piquet, for whom Jones had little time, he won five of the 14 races and clinched the title with a race to spare.

He could and arguably should have won again in 1981, but a couple of retirements and some errors restricted his victory tally to the first and last grands prix.

A dominant victory on the unloved new circuit in the Caesars Palace car park in Las Vegas was overshadowed by team-mate Carlos Reutemann's bizarre capitulation in the championship fight with Piquet.

After it, although at the height of his powers, Jones retired at the age of 34, to return to his beloved Australia.

He thought it was the right move, but he soon got the itch to return. A one-off outing for Arrows in 1983 was followed by a full-time comeback for the new US-based Haas team - no relation to the current one of the same name.

But the project was not a success. The car did not debut until the 12th race of 1985, and in 1986 was unreliable and slow, despite help from a then unknown Adrian Newey.

It collapsed at the end of the season, and Jones left F1 for good. He continued to race intermittently into his 50s, and also spent time as an F1 driver steward.