Remembering Clark – 25 years on

We had been talking about Jimmy. Originally, he was to have driven the red and gold Ford, but had gone instead to a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim where the only premium was on horsepower, the best driver on earth just another number on a cockpit side.

In the bookshop I bought a few things, paid the man. "Heard about Clark?" I said no, what about Clark? "He's been killed this morning - in Germany..." The words, the intonation, are sharp in my mind even now.

No announcement of the tragedy was made, but an hour later, as I drove back to London, a scratchy French radio station made it real: "Un grand champion est mort aujourd'hui..."

April 7, 1968 should strike a chord with anyone who loves this sport. I remember a conversation at Silverstone, years ago, with Alain Prost. It was mid-week, and he was testing alone. During lunch there was a cloudburst, and in the small Marlboro camper, rain battering the windows, we fell to talking about heroes.

Prost was 13 years old, playing around with karts, at the time of Clark's death. "I saw Jim as someone fantastic, so much better than anyone else, so smooth, so easy. Something I have always admired," he went on, "is a guy who's really quick, but doesn't look it. Stewart was the same. But I think maybe Jim Clark was the best ever."

Clark's contemporaries had no doubts. For them, his death was almost beyond comprehension. "People used to get killed quite often back then," remembers Chris Amon, "but when... it happened... to Jimmy, we were all shattered. Of course we grieved - but you always felt grief. With him there was another dimension, a selfish thing, if you like.

"Jimmy's death frightened us. If it could happen to him, what chance did the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed we'd lost our leader..."

Go to the Gates often enough, and eventually they will open, but Clark never seemed anywhere near them. When he was sideways, you assumed he was amusing himself, rather than correcting a mistake. He was that good.

Think of 1965: 10 races in the world championship, your six best results to count. At the Nurburgring Clark took his sixth win, putting a seal on the title by early August.

The race was actually the seventh of the year, but Jimmy had missed Monaco - he was in Indianapolis that weekend, winning the 500.

You may argue that his era was less competitive than now, and it is undeniable, too, that usually he had the best car. But equally beyond doubt is that by a league he was the greatest of his generation.

He had a light voice, unmistakably Scottish, but with the soft drawl of the border country, which became more mid-Atlantic as the years went by. And he used it to great effect, amplifying the driest sense of humour.

In practice at Monza once, Jackie Stewart was telling a horror story of how his BRM's throttle had jammed before the Curva Grande, how he had somehow - and he didn't know how - made it through.

"Are you saying, Jackie," his countryman murmured, "that you normally lift off there?"

The driver/designer relationship between Clark and Colin Chapman was perhaps the most potent racing has known, and never, in his eight seasons of F1, did Jimmy race other than a Lotus.

I spoke only once with Chapman about him. A decade after Hockenheim, it was still difficult for Colin to accept Clark's loss. "For me," he said, "he will always be the best. In time someone else will come along, and everyone'll hail him as the greatest. But not me."

These days, Grand Prix drivers almost never race elsewhere, but Clark - like Stirling Moss - excelled in everything. "Think of Indy," Chapman mused, "and the sportscars, F2, saloon car races with the Lotus Cortina...

"Once or twice Jimmy came close to retiring, and I had mixed feelings: the idea of going racing without him was almost unthinkable, but at the same time I desperately didn't want him to hurt himself."

You could never confuse Chapman with an overly compassionate man, but clearly Clark had a place alone in his affections. "He had more effect on me than anyone else I've known," he said simply. "Apart from his genius as a racing driver, he was genuinely a good man - intelligent, honest, in many ways rather humble. Racing changed for me after '68."

This was a side of Chapman I had never seen before, nor ever would again. We were in his office at Ketteringham Hall, and at one point he almost broke down. When his secretary brought in tea he turned away, pretending to look for something while composing himself.

When I think of Jimmy Clark now, he is always in a Lotus 49. It seems quite inappropriate that history tends to shackle his memory to the 1.5-litre era of 1961-65; with around 200hp, these were hardly Grand Prix cars for the gods.

In truth, though, whatever the rules of the time, Clark would have dominated. I saw many of his races in the Lotus 25, and usually he led all the way, a green metronome ticking off the laps. Spa he won four years running, although he loathed the place.

He had good reason. In the Belgian Grand Prix of 1960, only his second F1 race, he almost ran over the body of Chris Bristow at Burnenville. A few minutes later his team mate Alan Stacey was killed at Malmedy. In qualifying Stirling Moss had been badly hurt. These were dark images of Spa-Francorchamps which remained with Jimmy, and it was a mark of the man that they never compromised his performances there.

Similarly, if truth be told, he didn't much care for Indianapolis. At first, in 1963, it was an adventure, an opportunity to drive a single-seater of real power and substance. He finished second, beaten only by Parnelli Jones, a certain ignorance of the Brickyard rulebook and a chunk of Hoosier Establishment prejudice.

Still, he gained everyone's respect, not least because he didn't make a fuss. Parnelli's roadster had been dropping oil, and Clark's Lotus, then the fastest car in the race, fell back on the slick surface. But while Eddie Sachs, who crashed on the oil, got into knuckle talk with PJ afterwards, Jimmy kept his peace.

Two years later he ran away with the 500 - and Parnelli was second. That, in the minds of Clark and Chapman, was the right response.

Unassuming may have been Jimmy's way, but there was a feistiness there, too, and those early experiences at Indy always rankled. He hated the razzmatazz and the red tape, resented the need for a driver of his stature to take a Rookie Test. Just as AJ Foyt took delight in winning Le Mans, so Clark quietly relished the plundering of the Speedway.

His performances there always seemed to me proof of Jimmy's real stamp. For him it was simply another race, a different challenge, and in the same way he adapted readily to the Lotus 49, which he drove for the first time at Zandvoort in '67. Yes, the new Cosworth DFV had a power advantage, but in infancy it didn't arrive very nicely, coming in with a belt at around six-five. Add to that the wilful nature of the original 49, and then recall that Clark won the race.

That was his last full season, and he was at his greatest, which was very great indeed. Jimmy was one of those few to whom races surrender, a man who took pole position at the Nurburgring by more than nine seconds...

That summer he spent in Parisian tax exile, commuting to races in his yellow Elan, for he adored driving for the sake of it and never could resist any car which sparked his interest. Jackie Stewart rolls his eyes at the memories.

"Oh, Jimmy'd drive things I wouldn't even sit in! We'd do the Tasman Series over the winter, and you'd find all kinds of weird and wonderful specials down there. He just couldn't help himself, and it amazed me that Chapman let him do these things."

The final Grand Prix of 1967 was in Mexico, and Clark won it. But while the rest then returned to Europe, relieved the season was over, Jimmy went next weekend to drive a Ford in the NASCAR race at Rockingham.

"The truth was that, in a car, he liked to show off a bit," Stewart says, "and that was in total contrast to his normal character. He dreaded making speeches, for example, and you had to push him into the VIP lounge at an airport. He'd never do it on his own."

Clark originally went into F1 with the intention of racing for three or four years, then retiring to the farm at Chirnside. Many expected he would quit at the end of 1965, the season of his second World Championship and the Indy victory; believed he would marry Sally Stokes, his long-time girlfriend, and depart the scene. In the event, it was the relationship which ended; after that, Jimmy seemed more than ever committed to racing.

"People have suggested he was thinking seriously about stopping," Stewart says, "but I never thought that was so. And I know he was never going back to farming again - not full time, anyway. Living in Paris changed him quite a bit. Out of a car he was still nervous in some ways - did you ever see his fingernails? - but he'd got used to quite a sophisticated way of life, and he liked it."

Maybe he never would have settled permanently in Berwickshire again, but there is no doubt that, like most in exile, Clark fed on dreams of home. Through 1967 he was able to visit Britain only once, for Silverstone and another memorable win. He was due to return the following spring.

"It was misty and wet and miserable that morning at Hockenheim," recalls Amon. 'I was next to Jimmy on the grid, and we spoke briefly before the start. I remember he was very uptight that whole weekend. I was close to him, but it was difficult to communicate with him those last days.

"We'd both done the Tasman Series, and, like me, he was tired, and really didn't want to do that bloody race. He was due to go to Scotland for a holiday right afterwards, and he couldn't wait. He hadn't been home for a long time."

The day of his funeral was crisp and bright. And the wording on his headstone perfectly mirrors the man he was. 'Jim Clark OBE', it reads, then 'Farmer of Edington Mains, Chirnside'. And beneath, 'World Champion Motor Racing Driver.' Next to him is Willie Campbell, who had taught him farming in boyhood.