Driver Focus - Jim Clark

Jim Clark never started racing in the hope that it would become a career. What started as just a hobby soon took over his life - and it eventually ended his life too.

Born James Clark Jr in 1936, he was the youngest of five children and was the only boy. The family were farmers and the world of motorsport was alien to them. At the age of 13 Clark went to a private school near Edinburgh where he quickly got involved in competitive sports and caught the racing itch from reading motorsport books and magazines. His parents refused to let him have any involvement but by the time he was 20 there was little they could do to stop him.

He had bought a Sunbeam Talbot to use as a road car, but in 1956 this was to become the car in which he would compete his first race. He breezed to victory in local road-rallies and hill climbs and over the next two years was competing regularly in sports cars, funded mainly by wealthy friends.

When Clark won, he was often embarrassed to be the centre of attention - due also to the fact that he usually surprised himself at how good he was. In the late 1950s he accompanied Ian Scott-Watson to a race so that he could work on the car as a mechanic. Scott-Watson did his practice and offered Clark the chance to drive a few laps – he was three seconds a lap quicker.

​After embarrassing the whole grid, he came back to the garage and uttered: “Why on earth is everyone going so slowly?” to which the only answer was “Jim, it's not that they're going slowly, it's you who is going so damned fast.”.

The race that changed Clark's life came in 1958. He was given the opportunity to race a Lotus Elite at Brands Hatch, at which he finished second behind the legendary Lotus designer Colin Chapman. He impressed Chapman enough to earn himself another drive in the Elite - this time at Le Mans. He and his partner, John Whitmore finished in tenth and Chapman was so impressed with the young Scot that he offered him a drive in the Lotus Formula Junior car.

Formula Junior was a great stepping stone for young drivers but Clark only competed in a few races before being promoted to the Lotus Formula One team for the latter half of the 1960 season. He received a very unwelcome dose of reality in his second race at Spa-Francochamps when both Chris Bristow and Alan Stacey were killed in freak accidents. Bristow crashed into a four feet high embankment and was hurled into a barbed wire fence which decapitated him - while Stacey was hit in the face by a bird which caused him to crash fatally. Stirling Moss was lucky to not be killed when he crashed at the same corner, breaking his legs, three ribs and his nose. Clark finished fifth but in an interview in 1964 revealed: "I was driving scared stiff pretty much all through the race".

His difficult start to Formula One continued when he was involved in the crash that resulted in the death of Wolfgang von Trips. In the 1961 Italian Grand prix at Monza, von Trips crashed into the side of Clark and his Ferrari became airborne. It hit the frail fencing killing the driver and fifteen spectators.

Clark’s first championship came in 1963. Winning seven out of ten races, he finished the season with almost double the points of the man who finished in second, the great Graham Hill. This was also the year that he first competed in the Indianapolis 500 - which he almost won, had it not been for some spilt oil from race winner Parnelli Jones’ car.

In 1965, Clark made up for the narrow defeat by winning in style in the first rear-engined car ever to compete at the ‘Brickyard’. He also picked up his second Formula One Championship - becoming the first driver ever to win both in the same year.

However, what most people don’t realise is that Clark was also competing in the Tasman series at the same time. It was a series based in Australia and New Zealand which used older Formula One cars - he won the first of his three championships in the same year as his F1 and Indy500 double.

Colin Chapman was instrumental to Clark’s success. Although a fantastic driver, the Scot was not technically minded and was often unsure of where his speed came from. This made it difficult to translate the driver’s feedback into technical input for the mechanics. The close relationship with Chapman helped bridge the barrier between the two and make both the team and the driver the best in the world.

A new wave of technical regulations in 1966 left Lotus uncompetitive and Clark considered leaving. He deliberately kept his contracts to a maximum of a year so that he was free to leave when he felt the time was right. Although he never married, he did confide to a girlfriend that he wished to settle down on a farm in Scotland and raise a family. However, he was still young and his commitment was to racing.

It wasn’t until the Dutch Grand Prix of 1967 and the introduction of the Lotus 49 that he was able to compete for points again. However, as he crossed the finishing line, he had managed to find himself in first place - never mind just competing for points. The car won four races that year with Clark behind the wheel but, although it was fast, it was also brittle and ultimately the reliability of the Brabham car meant that Clark finished behind the team’s two drivers, Denny Hulme and Jack Brabham.

In the 1960s, it was not uncommon for Formula One drivers to compete in Formula Two races. In 1968, Clark lined up to race at the Hockenheimring in Germany alongside Lotus teammate Graham Hill. The team’s mechanic still speaks of the unease in the paddock before the race as Clark was unhappy with his car. After only five laps of the first heat, it left the track and was thrown into a tree. Clark suffered a broken neck and skull fractures and died before he made it to hospital.

To this day, many drivers will tell you that Clark was the greatest and had he not died in Germany he would have gone on to be one the most successful drivers to have ever lived.

In an interview in 2008, three time World Champion Jackie Stewart said: “Jimmy’s death was to motor racing what the atomic bomb had been to the world. He was everything that I aspired to be, as a racing driver and as a man.”