'The standard by which all others in F1 must be judged'

Nigel Roebuck: I was at Brands Hatch that day [when Clark lost his life in a Formula 2 race]. It was the BRDC 1000km sportscar race. It was cold and I was in the Clearways grandstand. After a couple of hours the race had settled down, so I went off to a buy a couple of books. I went to pay for them and the guy behind the till said to me: "Have you heard about Clark?" And I said: "No, what about Clark?" He said he'd been killed at Hockenheim that morning.

They talk about the world suddenly swimming before you and it was a little like that. It was a complete shock. He was the one guy it was never going to happen to, whatever else. It took a few minutes for me to kind of compose myself and get used to this idea. And then I knew I had to go back to the grandstand and tell my pal. That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

Brian Redman, who was racing that day, remembers that he was just about to take over from his team-mate - he was there with his helmet on, ready to go - when a local journalist came up to him and said: "Have you heard, Jimmy Clark's been killed?"

Brian was no different to any of the others at the time - he idolised Jimmy. He said it was one of the hardest things in his life to force himself to concentrate through taking in this overwhelming news.

I remember driving back to London and because I hadn't heard it formally, I thought maybe it wasn't true. We were frantically searching for a news station that might have something about it and finally we found a French station. I remember this voice just said: "Un grand champion est mort aujourd'hui." We left that on and it finally became real. It was just one of those days you never forget.

Peter Windsor: For me it was disbelief as well, because I used to wake up after trying to follow motor racing as best I could in Australia. I used to wake up on Monday mornings in fear of turning on my little transistor radio to the 6:30 news and waiting for the newsreader to say something along the lines of: "South African racing driver... New Zealand racing driver" and you never knew what was going to come next. "Yesterday, he won the Belgian Grand Prix," or "Yesterday he was killed at..." It was almost a 50-50 chance every Monday as to what he was going to say at the end of that sentence.

By 1968 - I was 16 - I'd heard a lot of these headlines, these "killed yesterdays". And I remember when I actually heard it, I was sitting in the little dining room we had, at home in Sydney... Mum was cooking breakfast and I was going off to school. The radio was on and I just remember: "Scottish racing driver Jim Clark was killed yesterday in a Formula 2 race in Hockenheim." That's all they said. And then they moved on to the next thing. It was complete and utter disbelief. I remember my hands started to shake and I burst into tears. I didn't go to school that day. I didn't actually go to school that week, from memory. I was distraught. I couldn't take it in at first. He'd become the centre of my life.

I was brought up in a spiritual environment - we used to go to church a lot, every Sunday - and I remember reading after his funeral that the vicar had said: "Jim Clark wasn't a regular churchgoer, but when he was around, he took his place in his regular pew." And I remember thinking he's going to be alright. It wasn't until I heard that, that I started to recover again. 
I would say that I believe in life after death and I believe souls never die and that Jim's still with us in many ways. Everyone is.

F1 Racing: Obviously he'd made a huge impression on you both with the way he conducted himself both in and outside the cockpit. Was he a charismatic man? What made him so special?

NR: He was intensely charismatic - Jimmy's voice had a quality. It was a light voice...

PW: A soft Scottish burr, wasn't it?

NR: Yes, it was. And it had a kind of a mid-Atlantic twang.

PW: And I think he had a feel, a taste, for colour and shape as well. The helmet said it all really. The dark blue with the white peak. Everything always looked right. His overalls always looked immaculate. They fitted him really well. And when he wore glasses, he wore Ray-Ban Wayfarers. He just looked great all the time. And he dressed in a very conservative Scottish Borders way. But he always looked great.

F1R: One of Jimmy's qualities that has passed down through the decades is his sheer speed and the immaculate driving style. Was that apparent when he was racing?

PW: Absolutely. The thing about Jimmy was how he liked to get into the corner early and extend the straight - that's kind of how he describes it in his autobiography. Colin Chapman was sitting next to him once in a Lotus-Cortina and Jimmy was doing this and Chapman was saying: "What are you doing?! You're turning in too early!" And he said: "No, no, I like to do that." Jimmy was doing it naturally and didn't really want to talk about it or even think about it that much, because it was so natural to him.

Jackie Stewart says that Jim never spoke with him about the detail of driving, ever. Not because he didn't want to give away the information, but probably because he didn't want to start identifying it within himself, in case it made him change. He could just do it. And certainly when I saw him drive, the overriding impression compared with, say, Graham Hill, Chris Amon, or Piers Courage, was that Jimmy had this ability to make the car float. Everything appeared to be right on tiptoes but everything was very soft and incredibly co-ordinated.

NR: Jimmy's skill was a mysterious thing to me. I'd grown up watching - and worshipping - Stirling Moss and always thinking: 'What does he do that the others don't? Why is he just plain better than the rest?'

You could watch him and he was silky-smooth and everything else, but beyond that, where was he making up the times? Because it wasn't obvious. It was the same sensation watching Jimmy - you watched what he did and you could obviously see that he did it supremely well, but what was difficult to tell with Jimmy was where he made up the time.

F1R: You can see some of his driving qualities in pictures like one of him exiting a corner at the Nurburgring, during the 1965 German GP, which he won. He's kicking up stones, on the limit, but Clark and the car look totally under control.

PW: And that's a classic example of Jimmy, in the Lotus 33B. We kind of took Jimmy winning for granted. But pictures like this show it wasn't so easy. He's completely on the limit - suspension compressed. Of course, if you've got everything perfect up to the apex, then the apex to exit is relatively straightforward, because it kind of takes care of itself - you've done the hard work.

F1R: Would it be fair to say that he stood above his Formula 1 peers - that he was 'The Man' of his generation?

NR: Absolutely.

F1R: Without rival?

NR: Well I remember Stirling holding that position, but then Stirling had his accident [Moss suffered a career-ending shunt at Goodwood in 1962] and the next era was Jimmy.

PW: But you know, the thing about him was that even when you had your Dan Gurneys, your Graham Hills, your John Surtees and Jochen Rindts, at no stage was Jimmy ever worried about competing against those guys in a Formula 2 car that was patently less competitive. In quite a lot of F2 races when he didn't have the best car, he would finish third or fourth - but he'd always drive absolutely to the maximum and he didn't mind because it had been great motor racing and he'd enjoyed it. That was just the love of driving a car on the limit and getting the best from it.

F1R: Peter, it's true to say that Jim Clark was your inspiration for becoming involved in motorsport isn't it?

PW: Well in 1968 I went out to the airport to see him off after the Longford race in Tasmania. He flew in to Sydney and then on to Indianapolis and his plane was delayed. I was with my dad and he said: "Come and have a coffee."

He was with one of the stewardesses - oddly - and we went up and he was in his famous check shirt, nice slacks and he had his briefcase with him and we sat down. The four of us chatted for about 20 minutes. It seems incredible today that that happened to me. But I remember saying to Jimmy: "I really really want to get a job in motor racing. I just hate that feeling on Monday morning of going back to school after being at a race meeting. How do I get through that Jim?" And he said: "If you really want it badly enough, never ever give up. Whatever you want, you'll achieve as long as you never give up."

And I told him I really wanted to be a journalist and he said: "Don't give up." That was basically the last thing that he said to me and I was probably the last person to speak to him in Australia. Sadly he died a couple of months later.

Since then I've had ups and downs in life, like all of us, but whenever it's a down, I always think of that moment when Jimmy said: "If you really want it badly enough, never ever give up." That was actually a pivotal moment in my life. We often use phrases like that, but for me it was.

Jim Clark, therefore, became the benchmark around which I judged everything in motorsport: attitude of drivers, approach of drivers, teams, cars, livery... whatever it is, circuits... I always think: "What would Jimmy think here? What would Jim Clark have done there?" He's still the main man for me.

F1R: Nigel, do you have quite that idealised notion of Jimmy or do you see him differently?

NR: Everything Peter says makes sense to me, though oddly enough whenever I think of Jimmy, almost the first meeting that comes back to me is in a way the least likely. In April 1964, there was a national meeting at Oulton Park and I got there on race day, early in the morning, and went into the paddock, because of course in those halcyon days you could pay a quid and buy a pass.

There was nowhere for drivers to hide in those days - no motorhomes, not even any caravans and as I walked in, just about the first thing I saw was the reigning world champion standing there wearing his cardigan - the famous cardigan that he quite often used to drive in sometimes. He had that under a big anorak, since it was bitterly cold and he was just standing in the middle of the paddock talking to some fans. They were obviously quite overwhelmed by the fact they were talking to Jimmy Clark, and why not?

A lady there was saying to Jim: "Now Jim, would you like some tea?" I remember that clearly. And Jimmy said: "Oh yes please!" So the woman produces a flask from her bag, unscrews the top, pours tea into it - this was utterly surreal. I stood there and was spellbound by him. You know, Jimmy Clark? Is this Jimmy Clark?

That was the day I got Jimmy's autograph, but I couldn't quite believe it. This is the greatest driver on Earth and I'm standing here with three other people on a freezing cold Saturday morning in Cheshire and nobody else is around. Why isn't everybody here to listen to what he's got to say? It was completely surreal.

F1R: You've obviously both watched and known a lot of great racing drivers through your decades writing about Formula 1, so where does Jim Clark stand, for you, in a list of all-time greats?

NR: Well I know where he'll stand with Peter! But I guess I've got this thing about Stirling Moss. I think because when I started going regularly to races, by then Fangio had retired and Stirling was the man. And there's an element of when you first fall in love with it, those memories stay with you most acutely. So for me, Stirling has always been the greatest driver who ever lived. That said, I've never seen anybody better than Jimmy Clark - that's for sure. I can remember, I went to a lot of races during Jimmy's career. I saw him race and win a lot. I knew in those days that Jimmy Clark was going to win again and it never bothered me in the slightest!

I can't really tell you why, except that, well, of course he's going to win, he's just better than everyone else and that's the end of it. In those days Chapman built great cars, but there weren't huge differences between them as there are now, so I think that made the driver more important than he is today.

PW: For me he was the greatest driver of all time and the standard by which all others are judged. It's always been that way in my mind. I totally take on board what Nigel says about Stirling and would put Stirling right up there as well.

F1R: You say, Peter, that Jimmy was your number one, but has he had a spiritual successor in your view?

PW: Well if Jimmy were here now, physically, I think he would say Jackie was as good as he was, probably. I think Jimmy would say that because he was a humble person and there's no denying that Jackie was pretty well-rounded as a racing driver and pretty accomplished. Jim was very, very close to Dan Gurney and he loved Dan, I think, like a brother almost. And he had enormous respect for Dan as a driver.

NR: I think he was also very close to Chris [Amon] as well.

PW: Yes, he had a lot of respect for Chris, but beyond that, where do you go? He liked Mario [Andretti] very much too, so he would have been delighted when Mario won the championship [in 1978]... But I think when you're evaluating drivers - and this is how I evaluate Jim - he's not necessarily [the best] by F1 results or standards, but everything he did, as a human being, he did well. He was just a consummate professional.

NR: A consummate professional but also a simple man with simple, straightforward values. He was just an honourable guy, wasn't he? Who can have a bad memory of him?

Now that was a car: Lotus 25

For those lucky enough to be there, the Beatles were never fresher nor more explosive than in their first bloom. Love Me Do charted only as high as number 17 late in 1962, but for anyone paying attention the revolution was patently here, and it was turning fast.

Some months earlier in that seismic year, an equally ground-shaking force had quaked through F1. Thanks to the British Racing Green cigar-shaped tube with vivid yellow stripe you see here, and Jim Clark, the sublime young Scot who lay almost flat within it, nothing in the motor racing world would ever be the same again.

The Fab Four were no overnight sensation, of course. They'd paid their dues before the Big Bang. Likewise, Team Lotus and live-wire founder Colin Chapman had endured more than a fair share of setbacks during their own slog for success.

Landmarks had been and gone without title success: the 'mini-Vanwall' Lotus 16, with shoe-shaped body from the pen of Frank Costin; the boxy 18, as Chapman took Cooper's cue and plumped for mid-engined push rather than front-engined pull; the 18/21 that adopted the decade-defining low-drag body shape; and the Type 24 that honed the pleasing silhouette for the benefit of customer teams.

But Chapman had saved his own Big Bang solely for himself - and he wouldn't be sharing it.

Lotus customers seethed at Zandvoort in May '62 when the factory revealed their secret weapon. The Type 25 looked like their 24s and shared the same mechanicals, justifying (at least to the letter) Chapman's vow for factory/customer parity. But the reality was 'Chunky' had pulled a fast one. And then some.

In the Dutch GP paddock that day, under swept glassfibre bodywork, sat the first fully realised monocoque chassis in a single-seater racing car. In place of the 24's traditional steel tube frame was an aluminium riveted tub created from a pair of D-shaped pontoons joined fore and aft by bulkheads and a stressed floor, with subframes housing front and rear suspension. This thing was not only lower and much lighter, it was around three times as stiff in torsional rigidity than the customer 24. On Dunlop's increasingly grippy tyres, the potential of the 25 must have been aggravatingly obvious.

Now, monocoques were hardly new. Aeronautical engineers such as Costin had built planes around them for 50 years, while Jaguar's Le Mans-winning D-type was underpinned by a full monocoque. But only after Chapman's napkin sketches while dining with Costin, and a wonderfully inspired trial-and-error build process from those basic drawings, did Team Lotus's mechanics realise just what the Old Man had hit upon, for the first time in an F1 context.

The genius was in the packaging. The problem of where to place fuel around the driver had dogged Chapman in his previous F1 attempts, but now he had a Eureka solution. Instead of tanks above the driver's legs, fuel would be carried in rubber bags posited within the aluminium pontoons, with an extra tank behind his back.

Now Clark would lie almost horizontal to maximise the car's low-drag characteristics, thus establishing the straight-armed posture that would become the future two-time champion's visual signature. Then there was the new, powerful V8 engine from British builders Coventry Climax (previously known for fire pumps and forklift truck motors), which would sit within the monocoque as a part-stressed member, adding to the impressive rigidity.

At the dawn of the new era of 1.5-litre engines in 1961, Ferrari's 156 'Sharknose' had left teeth-marks in the British opposition. Now, a little more than half a year later, the wounds would become a faded scar thanks to Chapman's 25.

Still, Clark's explosion wouldn't be instantaneous. After clutch problems ruined the Dutch debut, he'd win three times in '62 at Spa, Aintree and Watkins Glen, only for a seized engine to thwart his title bid in South Africa, to Graham Hill and BRM's benefit.

But in the year that would follow nothing could stop Clark's velvet force. Seven of the ten championship rounds would fall to the quiet farmer and his Type 25 R4 - four of them consecutively and on the same set of Dunlops! With further victories in the numerous non-championship races, the Clark era was in full flow.

The return of designer Len Terry is credited for the 25's improved reliability in '63, as Team Lotus took inspiration from their creation to begin plotting their parallel campaign to conquer the Indianapolis 500. A new Coventry Climax V8 would lead to low-slung exhausts replacing the straight pipes of the original, and suspension development brought ever greater gains from the improving Dunlops. Clark made hay.

In '64 the evolutionary Type 33 pressed home Lotus's advantage, although the 25 raced on. Clark claimed its final world championship victory at Clermont-Ferrand during his annus mirabilis of '65. Sandwiched between his two title years, Ferrari hit back thanks to the brilliance of John Surtees. The former motorcyclist surely deserved to win in '64, although it admittedly only fell into his lap after another Clark engine failure - deja vu of '62. Without those failures, not of his making, Clark would have won four consecutive titles.

We'd seen nothing like it since Fangio.

In those early months of '63, on the radio, on grainy TV sets and in theatres up and down the land, the Beatles sent Britain's youth into hysteria and simultaneously charmed the cognoscenti, as Please Please Me shot to the top of the charts to open a torrent of music that would change the world.

We'd seen nothing like it since Elvis.

Culture, society, sport... the pace of change was breathless. As the sixties began to swing, Jimmy Clark and his pretty British Racing Green Lotus with the vivid yellow stripe represented everything that was fresh and inspiring. What a time to be alive. It seemed like those days would never end.