Driver Focus - Jackie Stewart

There are very few drivers that have managed to win the Formula One World Championship three times, but Jackie Stewart could have won even more had he not decided to end his career early following the death of his Tyrrell teammate François Cevert.

Born John Stewart in Dumbartonshire, Scotland in 1939, cars were always part of Jackie’s life. His father owned a garage and his elder brother Jimmy was also a racing driver who competed in several non-championship Formula One rounds as well as a single appearance at the British Grand Prix.

As a teenager, Stewart was forced to leave school after undiagnosed dyslexia started to affect his work. He began working in his father’s garage and took up clay pigeon shooting. He won several titles and even competed for the opportunity to shoot in the 1960 Olympic games.

A customer of the family business presented Stewart with the offer to test a number of his cars at Oulton Park and subsequently gave him the opportunity to race a Marcos in 1961. After taking four wins that season, Stewart decided to follow in his brother’s footsteps and turn professional, racing a Jaguar E-Type. In 1963, he switched to the British Formula Three series and took 14 victories.

By 1965, he was ready for the big time and joined BRM where he spent the first three years of his Formula One career, securing two wins and third in the Drivers’ Championship in his first season.

The BRM P83 that was introduced in 1966 was a disaster and the team eventually reverted back to the old chassis after the car, with Stewart behind the wheel, only managed to finish one race. By the end of the 1967 season both Stewart and his teammate Graham Hill left the team with the Scot opting to join Matra with Ken Tyrrell at the helm.

In his six seasons with Tyrrell, Stewart took all three of his Championships and finished runner-up twice. With 27 victories he became the most successful driver since the great Juan Manuel Fangio. However, despite winning the title in 1973, Stewart left the sport before the end of the season.

Although he had already planned to retire, Stewart stepped out of the cockpit before the start of what was meant to be his last Grand Prix.​

At Watkins Glen, in Saturday morning qualifying, François Cevert left the track at the fast Esses corner. He hit the barrier with such force that it was uprooted and cut Cevert’s body in half. Stewart took to the track to try and determine what had happened to cause such an horrific accident, but the team eventually withdrew from the race and Stewart never made his hundredth, and last, start.

However, this is certainly not where Stewart’s Formula One story ends. No driver has ever done more for the safety of all involved in the sport, both during his years behind the wheel and after he had retired as a driver. Cevert was not the first of Stewart’s friends to be killed in Formula One and the Scot had been campaigning for improved safety for years.

At the 1966 Belgian Grand prix, Stewart was nearly killed in a crash in heavy rain with very little safety barriers surrounding the track. In an interview for the BBC, he recalled: “We started the race in dry conditions. By the time we got to about the fourth corner, there was thunder-rain and seven of the best drivers in the world went off on the very first corner – I wasn’t one of them, I’d made a bad start.

“Most tyres can’t accommodate the kind of water that was there that day and I went off the road. I hit a wood-cutter’s hut, knocked down a telegraph pole and part of a wall and went down into a farm yard. I was knocked about and it was only the first lap.

“I was stuck in the car for about thirty minutes and, of course, it could have gone up at any minute. I was semi-conscious and Graham Hill, fortunately, came round. He could have continued but came to help me.

“Graham borrowed spanners from spectators’ cars in order to get the steering wheel off to get me out of the car. And, in fact, had to go and find somebody to get an ambulance to come and pick me up.”

There were no marshals or paramedics on the scene - the only person available to help was a nun who had first-aid experience. Stewart was lifted onto a canvas stretcher and laid on the floor surrounded by discarded cigarette ends while his overalls were still soaked with petrol.

After being lifted into the back of the emergency vehicle the motorcycle policeman, that was escorting them, lost the ambulance and its driver didn’t know the way to the hospital.

With broken ribs and collar bone, Stewart decided that if the sport was not going to take care of him, he would have to take care of himself. He taped a spanner to his steering wheel and made sure to organise his own medical cover - the drivers eventually grew tired of waiting for organisers to meet demands and paid for a mobile hospital to attend each race.

“It was simply ridiculous. Here was a sport that had serious injury and death so closely associated with it, yet there was no infrastructure to support it, and very few safety measures to prevent it. So, I felt I had to do something."

Stewart introduced mandatory full-face helmets and seatbelts. He would threaten that drivers would not race if safety measures were not met and race organisers mocked him for being a coward. He was accused of removing of 'removing the romance from the sport'.

“1968 was the turning point because so many people died in such a short period of time and we weren’t at war, we were competing in a sport - almost a leisure time sport for public enjoyment.”

Stewart organised the Grand Prix Drivers Association. When he found himself, again, in Belgium in 1968 the GPDA went to inspect the track and requested that there were changes made to the circuit, including the removal of barbed wire fencing. The circuit owners refused and the drivers voted to boycott the race.

The press launched a personal attack on Stewart and the GPDA after Spa was cancelled but by the 1969 US Grand Prix, they were silenced after Graham Hill crashed horrifically, breaking both legs. The part-time ambulance driver took him to a hospital that was closed.

After the death of Bruce Mclaren, the GPDA held a meeting to discuss the forthcoming race at the Nürburgring. Jochen Rindt had approached race organisers with a list of demands but organisers refused to make any changes. Jack Brabham stood up to defend Stewart’s decision to not race if the demands were not met. The track refused to back down and the drivers voted to hastily switch the German Grand Prix to Hockenheim.

​By the Italian Grand Prix, Rindt was also dead, with Stewart in attendance as the German was read his last rights by a priest.

As a result of GPDA demands, the Zandvoort circuit had been condemned and rebuilt at huge cost to the organisers. The 1973 Dutch Grand Prix was meant to be the first of a new era for Grand Prix tracks, but that is not how it will be remembered. It will be remembered for the television footage that made the world stand up and realise the tragedies that could occur if safety standards were not met.​

Roger Williamson became trapped in his car as it burst into flames. David Purley desperately tried to right the car to get Williamson to safety but was unable to move the car on his own.

The marshals, in their Sunday best, could not get near enough to help and the one fire extinguisher on hand was no match for the fireball.

Williamson was burned to death while spectators desperately tried to help but were ushered back by police. The race was not stopped despite Purley standing in the middle of the track, attempting to wave down other cars.

​Stewart put himself at the forefront of safety for all involved in the sport, from the drivers to the spectators and without his work Formula One would be decades behind its current standards. He continues to campaign to this day and is one of the most respected names in the Formula One paddock.

In 1996, he even formed his own team, Stewart Grand Prix which later became Jaguar and is still on the grid in its new guise as Red Bull Racing.