Britain's first five-time home grand prix hero

In one respect, anyway, the 1967 British Grand Prix was not dissimilar to the one just past, in that we had the winner we all expected. Fifty years ago the Silverstone crowd almost dared Jim Clark to lose, as would later be the case with Nigel Mansell, as today with Lewis Hamilton.

I think of 1967 as the last simple year in Formula 1, when the cars, uncluttered by wings and other aerodynamic devices, were things of simple beauty, and - devoid of commercial sponsorship - still raced in their country's national colours. If PR stood for anything, it was Puerto Rico.

By the standards of today, Formula 1 was all rather minimalist. To look after two cars, Dan Gurney's Eagle team employed just five mechanics, one of whom was Jo Ramirez; working at Cooper was another young mechanic, who would later employ Ramirez: one Ron Dennis.

I set off for Silverstone in a state of high excitement, not least because I would get to see Clark again. Already I had watched non-championship races at Brands Hatch, Oulton Park and Silverstone, but Jimmy had been at none of them, for he was spending a year in Parisian tax exile, and allowed but one short visit to the UK. This obviously would be for the British Grand Prix, for which, as ever, he stayed at The Green Man.

Although it has long been de rigueur for Formula 1 drivers to live in Monaco, Clark's move was seen at the time as quite radical, but the tax regime in Harold Wilson's Britain was punitive - indeed Jackie Stewart was in the process of moving permanently to Switzerland. "It had occurred to me," he said, "that, nine weekends out of 10, I was risking my life for the Chancellor of the Exchequer."

And risking his life he certainly was. For most of the season Chris Amon was Ferrari's only representative, for Lorenzo Bandini had died atrociously in Monte Carlo, and Mike Parkes - winner of the International Trophy at Silverstone in May - was fortunate to suffer only severe leg injuries when thrown from his somersaulting car at Spa. In 1967 Stewart's BRM was the only car on the grid with seat belts.

Given that in those days British sporting events were run on Saturday, practice at Silverstone began on Thursday morning, and I was in place at Becketts by eight. Round they came eventually, and for the first time I heard a Cosworth DFV.

In truth, it sounded pedestrian compared with the cultured V12 scream of Ferrari, Honda, Cooper-Maserati and Eagle-Weslake, but patently it had more than the legs of them, and Clark headed Gurney by eight-tenths. The following day he improved by more than a second, with team-mate Graham Hill next up.

If the Cosworth V8 was the best in the place, such could not be said of the chassis in which it was mounted. Colin Chapman's Lotus 49 was developed into one of the great Grand Prix cars, but while at its most beautiful in 1967 - green, devoid of wings - it was at that time a wilful thing to drive. As they came by me, Jimmy and Graham were sometimes in terminal understeer, sometimes in opposite-lock slides, the shortcomings of the chassis amplified by the 'light switch' characteristics of the early DFV. As Clark put it, "Life can get a bit hectic at the exit of a corner when it suddenly hits on all eight..."

Four hundred horsepower may not sound like much today, but it looked like plenty when downforce was unknown, when tyres were treaded, narrow, primitive.

Coming to Silverstone Denny Hulme led the championship, followed by Jack Brabham, Pedro Rodriguez, Amon and Clark. "The 49 was proving pleasingly unreliable," Denny said, "but we all knew that if it held together at Silverstone, the rest of us were in a different race."

So it proved. Clark's brief visit to England was like the plunder of a pirate: fly in, take the pole, win the race, fly out. His public could have wished for nothing more.

Hulme finished second, 3.8s ahead of Amon, whose race-long battle with Brabham was the highlight of the afternoon. Sometimes the phrase 'track limits' brings it back to my mind.

"It was one of the most enjoyable races I ever had," Chris said, "but frustrating, too. Every lap I'd come out of his slipstream before Stowe, and then have to drop back in again, because the Ferrari just didn't have the steam to get by.

"Old Jack was adjusting his mirrors early in the race - in fact, one came off, and whistled past my head! He lost the other one, too, and I've never known whether he was adjusting them, or trying to tear them off! Afterwards he said he was very sorry, but he had a wheel out of balance, and the mirrors were shaking.

"It was a very wide car, that Brabham, and Jack was throwing everything in the book at me: stones, grass, dirt - and mirrors, of course! I finally got him into Copse after he'd run a bit wide out of Woodcote on lap 77, with three to go..."

The crowd loved it when the Ferrari made it by, but their main focus was on the #5 Lotus, and they stood as it took the flag. The British Grand Prix had been won, for the fifth time, by a shy man, and it was a race, like others without number, that had surrendered to him from the start. As we sat in the endless queues that evening, none could have imagined we would never see him in Britain again.

By then, indeed, Jimmy had already left the country, and - like Brabham, Hill, Rindt and others - was en route to Austria for the Formula 2 race at Tulln-Langenlebarn the following day. Probably it was the last thing he needed just then, but you couldn't let people down, could you? He never did.