Jim Clark: Defining a Legend

Part Two: the Great Drives

Renowned for his fast getaways, Jim Clark's preferred race strategy was to take the lead and stay in front. His early race pace would often demoralise the opposition to the point where he could cruise home, maintaining a comfortable cushion, while putting as little strain on his car as possible.

However, occasionally there were days when things didn't go to plan and he was forced to pull out all stops. It was only on these occasions that fans were able to see just how good he was, and what a yawning gap existed between him and the rest.

A quick straw poll among knowledgeable aficionados would probably place the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in 1967 as Clark's greatest drive. On this occasion he pitted with a puncture, made up a one lap deficit on the leaders and then ran out of fuel on the final lap.

However when his friend, the late journalist Jabby Crombac, asked him whether that was the case, he was surprised to hear his response.

"I specifically discussed it with Jimmy, and he said 'No, no, no. My biggest drive was at the Nurburgring in '62. That was where I put everything into it'".

The 1962 German Grand Prix was held on the daunting 14.2 mile long roller coaster that was the Nurburgring's Nordschleife circuit. It was prone to similarly unpredictable weather as Spa-Francorchamps - due to the size of the area covered, conditions could vary dramatically from one part of the course to the next.

Circuit safety was poor, too. In the 1960s, it was lined by nothing more substantial than hedges for a considerable part of its length, beyond which lay either hard earth banks or unforgiving trees.

Prudent drivers drove within themselves, maintaining a comfortable margin for error. The imprudent, and those who suffered component or tyre failures, were less fortunate and there were many serious accidents and fatalities over the years.

In practice, American Dan Gurney set the fastest lap in his Porsche, sharing the front row with Graham Hill (BRM), Clark in his Lotus and John Surtees in a Lola. A huge crowd of 350,000 lined the course on race day, swelled by the prospect of a Porsche win.

A torrential downpour delayed the start by more than an hour; the conditions so bad that minor landslides had to be cleared from some parts of the course. On the rain-drenched grid, Clark was so preoccupied with stopping his goggles from misting up that he forgot to switch on his fuel pumps after starting his engine.

Jim Clark (Lotus 25 Climax) 1962 German Grand Prix, Nurburgring © LAT

As the flag dropped, the Climax V8 coughed and died and the rest of the field streamed away, darting around him and leaving him alone on the grid. It would be an agonising 17 seconds before a furious Clark slithered off down towards the South Curve in hot pursuit.

On that first lap, not only did he catch up to the tail end of the field, he passed 17 cars, coming across the line in an astonishing 10th position. On the next lap, Clark passed Jack Brabham - no easy task in the dry, let alone the wet - and closed up on eighth place man, Richie Ginther.

At the end of lap three he was through, and closing on a trio consisting of Jo Bonnier, Phil Hill and Ricardo Rodriguez. He swiftly disposed of Bonnier and Hill and by the end of lap six was up to fifth.

The difficulties of passing so many cars on such a narrow twisting circuit had taken its toll on the gap to the leaders, which now stood at 34 seconds. However, with fewer cars to pass he began to take big chunks of time back - sometimes as much as five seconds a lap.

By the end of the eighth circuit - just over half-way in the 15 lap race - the Scot had passed Bruce McLaren and was in fourth.

After nine laps the gap was down to just 17 seconds, and Clark was surely going to be with the leaders before the race reached its soggy conclusion. A lap later the margin was 14 seconds, and the tension was mounting. However, on his eleventh lap, Jim had two lurid top gear slides, from which he was lucky to emerge unscathed.

Having been driving in an almost trance-like state since his start-line fiasco, these narrow escapes brought Clark sharply to his senses and he throttled back to finish a relieved but frustrated fourth, some 42 seconds behind the winner, Graham Hill.

Monaco was the scene of several epic Clark fight-backs too. In 1962, having started from pole, early race gear-change problems dropped him back to sixth. However, he found a way to deal with it and began moving up through the field. Approaching the halfway mark, he was on the gearbox of leader Graham Hill (BRM) before his clutch failed and he was out.

A year later a poor start, once again from pole, relegated him to third but he was soon ahead and led until lap 78 of 100, when his gearbox failed.

In 1964, he led from pole position but brushed a straw bale, breaking his anti-roll bar. After a pit-stop to have it removed, he had worked his way up to second before his engine failed with just four laps remaining - cruel luck indeed.

He gave the Principality a miss in 1965 to win at Indy but by 1966 he was back and on pole again, despite being in a 2-litre Climax-powered car in the first year of the 3-litre Formula.

However, his run of bad luck continued, and this time the car became stuck in first gear at the start. The whole field passed him before he was able to find a higher ratio.

Just as at the Nurburgring in '62, he quickly caught the tail-enders, and before long was up to seventh and lapping as fast as the leaders. By the half-way stage he was fourth, part of a trio consisting of him, Lorenzo Bandini and Graham Hill chasing leader Jackie Stewart. Slowly but steadily, the gap to Stewart was closing.

Jim Clark (Lotus 33 Climax) 1967 Monaco Grand Prix © LAT

On the sixty-first lap Clark pushed his way up the inside of Hill to take third, but as he began his next tour, his left-rear suspension broke and he was yet again reduced to walking back to the pits.

For 1967, Clark was again in the 2-litre car because the expected debut of the Lotus 49 with Ford-Cosworth DFV engine had been delayed. However, for once he was not on pole, qualifying in a lowly - for him - fifth.

A first lap spin at the chicane to avoid a gyrating Brabham put Clark to the back of the field. He scythed past his rivals, rising to fifth place by lap 20. On the 40th tour he set a new lap record as he joined the battle for second position, but just two laps later he was out, a broken damper mounting causing him to spin and thump the wall at Tabac.

Clark never did win a Grand Prix in the Principality, which is remarkable when you consider his reputation for mechanical sympathy and Monaco's as a car-breaker - you would think they were made for each other.

The ultimate irony was that, during the sixties, Graham Hill, not exactly famed for being gentle on the cars he drove, won a record-breaking five races and became known as Mr Monaco ...

Even if Clark didn't consider Monza '67 to be his best drive, it is one which, for whatever reason, sticks in a lot of people's minds.

In a chaotic start, Clark, who had secured his customary pole position, was swamped. Instead of rolling forward from the dummy grid under the direction of the starter, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney and Graham Hill saw the starter's flag twitch and were off, heading down towards the Curva Grande.

It took Clark just three laps to push to the front of the race but soon afterwards his car started handling oddly, due to a deflating rear tyre. It was only when Brabham dived up the inside of the Scot at the Parabolica, gesticulating furiously, that he realised what was wrong and a lap later he was in the pits.

Pit stops weren't common in 1967, and the wheel change took nearly a minute and a half. When Clark rejoined the race, the leaders had already passed, putting him a lap down, in 16th place.

After 20 laps he was up to 12th and circulating with the leaders, albeit still a lap down. It took him more than ten laps to shake off the tow, and only then could he really get motoring.

Time and again Jim smashed the lap record, eventually setting a time equal to his qualifying effort, although Hill was now virtually matching his pace and pulling away from second-place man Jack Brabham.

The Australian was in turn being slowly reeled in by John Surtees, who was settling nicely into his new Honda, christened the 'Hondola' because it had been built up around an unused Lola Indy car chassis.

By lap 50 of 68, Clark was up to fifth and homing in on the unwieldy Cooper-Maserati of Jochen Rindt, who yielded three laps later. Graham Hill was nearly a minute clear of Brabham now. Just when it looked as if his rotten luck in 1967 was going to change, his engine blew in a big way and he coasted into the pits at the end of lap 58.

The front of the race was closing up. Clark caught Surtees and two laps later swept past Brabham into the lead, completing a remarkable recovery with just six laps remaining. However, Surtees was not finished, passing Brabham and hanging on grimly to the coat-tails of the Lotus, with Brabham also tucking into his slipstream.

Jim Clark (Lotus 49 Ford) 1967 Italian Grand Prix, Monza © LAT

With a lap to go, the tension was unbearable. Clark was no longer pulling away, and the gap was down to just one second. As the leading trio disappeared out of sight round the Curva Grande the Scot's DFV engine hesitated slightly and, in a flash, Surtees and Brabham jinked round him.

By the Lesmo curves, it was clear that the Scot was in trouble and he limped round the rest of the lap, coasting across the line 23 seconds behind wily winner Surtees, who had just edged out his rival in the dash for the chequered flag.

After the race, the official explanation was that there was three gallons left in the tank but that the fuel pumps had failed to pick it up. However, the late Keith Duckworth, designer of the DFV engine, proffered an alternative scenario:

"He ran out of fuel. Clark's absolutely masterful effort - he was obviously going 'Harry Flatters' everywhere - meant that he used more fuel, in catching up this lap and a bit, than he would have done normally."

This version of events tallies with the recollection of Clark's mechanic Allan McCall, who attributes the episode to Chapman's legendary obsession with not putting too much fuel in his cars because of the extra weight this involved.

"Chapman did the fuel calculation and decided that we only needed 31 gallons or something crazy like that. Everybody thought, '**** off!'

"So Dick Scammell took me to one side and muttered 'Put 33 in it' and I'd done my own calculations and I put 36 in it. I think we were about five or six gallons more than what Chapman had calculated for that particular weekend.

"People say we had a fuel pump pick-up failure - that's bullshit. We simply ran out of fuel because Chapman had screwed up chronically with his calculations."

Dick Scammell remembers the blasting he got from the boss, but also recalls that Clark was typically reasonable about it:

"We put in more than Colin said but in the end he was highly upset, so was everybody else. Jimmy never got upset about it - he was quite a gentleman. A great inspiration."

To understand why Clark didn't hold his Monza drive in particularly high regard, it is worth considering this comment from Jabby Crombac:

"You have to bear in mind that Monza was not a very difficult circuit but, of course, it took a lot of guts because, at the time, you had some very fast corners.

"But, you see, Jimmy was a strange guy because he was surprised that the others were so slow. He said. 'Why aren't they quicker here? It's a piece of cake, flat out, no problem, why aren't they quicker?' he just couldn't understand it."

Evidently, when pushed, Clark was able to operate on a completely different plane to the rest of the mere mortals that raced against him. This didn't happen too many times, but when it did it was plain for all to see what a truly great driver he was.

Next week: the last 100 days