Jim Clark: The Last 100 Days

When Jim Clark won his 25th Grand Prix at Kyalami on New Year's Day 1968, no-one could have foreseen that he had less than 100 days to live.

He was at the top of his game, had won more Grands Prix than any other driver and was embarking on a new Championship season with the Lotus 49 - already a proven race winner and with a new 'B' spec version due in time for the first European Grand Prix of the season, in May.

Before that, he had two months of fun in the sun with the Tasman Cup, an eight-race series held in New Zealand and Australia, to look forward to.

Although this was a formal racing commitment, in practice most drivers viewed it as an opportunity to relax, sunbathe or water-ski and socialise with fellow drivers, interspersed with the odd race - and Clark was no exception.

During the last two years of his life, Clark changed, becoming more comfortable in his own skin and more confident about working outside the confines of Team Lotus and Colin Chapman.

In part, this was brought about by his emigration to Bermuda in April 1966 for tax reasons. The move took him away from his home, a sheep farm in the Scottish Borders region, forcing him to become more independent. He was certainly becoming a 'man of the world': when in Europe, he shared a flat in Paris with his great friend, the journalist Jabby Crombac.

He also became more assured and outgoing when dealing with both fans and the press, and while he was never going to be a confident public speaker, he did become better-versed in this most difficult of disciplines for someone who appeared, in public at least, quite introverted.

What was also evident was that Jim was becoming more independent of Colin Chapman, who in the early years of their relationship had been quite protective of his charge, trying to prevent him from driving anything other than a Lotus.

Since joining Lotus in 1960, Clark had rarely strayed from the company's products. Several sports car and GT outings for Aston Martin, a solitary victory at the wheel of a giant Ford Galaxie in a saloon car race and a foray driving the unique Felday four-wheel-drive sports car was the extent of his 'outside experience'.

But 1967 was a turning point, for he tested the STP-Paxton turbine car in March at Indy tyre-testing (understandable because the car was sponsored by STP, who also backed the works Lotus Indy team), and at the end of the season branched out into racing NASCAR and USAC single-seaters - the forerunners of what we know today as Champ Cars.

Clark's brief dalliance with NASCAR came about as a result of a last-minute phone call from Bill France in October, while he was spending time at his Bermuda home with Jackie and Helen Stewart and Jochen and Nina Rindt.

Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark © LAT

While Stewart reportedly turned the drive down because the financial arrangements weren't to his satisfaction, Clark agreed to drive in the 500 mile race at the Rockingham circuit in North Carolina and bring Rindt along with him.

Although the Austrian did not race, Jim did, qualifying 25th and moving up to 12th before the engine in his Holman Moody Ford Fairlane blew after 142 miles. He was reported as having said that he had enjoyed his experience - and the welcome he received - so much that he would like to come back for more.

He never had the opportunity to do this but interestingly this is a path trodden more recently - albeit on a more permanent basis - by fellow Scottish Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, as well as a number of other former Formula 1 stars such as Juan Pablo Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve. In this respect, Clark was something of a trail-blazer.

Four weeks after Rockingham, Clark returned to the States to drive an Indy car designed by renowned engineer/constructor Rolla Vollstedt in the Rex Mays 300 at the Riverside track near Los Angeles, California.

This was significant, because it was the first time he had raced any type of single-seater other than a Lotus since his debut in 1959 at the wheel of a Gemini Formula Junior racer.

However, it was more significant because it introduced Clark to the benefits of harnessing the airflow over a racing car. An innocuous-looking plate fitted onto the top-exiting exhaust pipes turned out to give a handy boost to the car's performance.

Vollstedt takes up the story: "Originally, the plan was to keep the exhaust pipes from vibrating and breaking off. But the rules then were that you weren't allowed any aerodynamic devices. So I made this rectangular plate and fastened it on to the pipes to give it downforce in the back.

"I was able to convince the tech committee that this was not an aerodynamic device, I was just trying to use a little preventative maintenance and keep my pipes from breaking off ...

"Jimmy had indicated that he liked it, it helped quite a bit. When John Surtees - who was driving for George Bignotti - came over and questioned Jim, he passed it off: 'Oh, it doesn't do anything, Vollstedt likes to have it there, so I'm just going along with it'. He was trying to keep Surtees from doing the same thing."

Clark qualified in second without too much effort and was confident about his prospects for the race but unfortunately, having taken the lead when pole-man Dan Gurney spun out, he missed a shift, over-revving the engine and breaking the valves.

Straight after his Kyalami win, Clark flew to New Zealand, where the first Tasman Cup race took place at the Pukekohe circuit on the North Island. After qualifying on pole, he broke the valve-gear when leading comfortably, gifting the win to rival Chris Amon's Ferrari.

A week later, in Levin, he went off the track while in the lead and, in trying to make up for lost time, clouted a kerbstone, bending the rear suspension and forcing him into retirement.

Jim Clark in the Lotus 49 Ford © FORIX/Rainer Nyberg

This was Clark's last race in the familiar green and yellow colours of Team Lotus, for Colin Chapman had agreed a tie-up with a John Player cigarette brand. Henceforth, the team would be known as Gold Leaf Team Lotus and the cars would race in the sponsor's colours of red and white with gold trim.

A hasty respray was organised in time for the next race at Wigram airfield, which Jim duly won, bagging a handy bonus of NZ$1,000 for being the first person to lap the circuit at more than 100mph ...

His experience with Rolla Vollstedt got him thinking about wings on Formula 1 cars. After their hectic start to the Tasman series, things had settled down a bit and he persuaded his mechanics to try and rig up a wing on his 49.

Chief mechanic on the trip, Leo Wybrott, remembers it well: "By the time we reached Christchurch we'd worked on the idea and kept thinking about it. With Roger [Porteous, one of the team's mechanics] being a helicopter pilot, we came up with the idea of using a piece of helicopter blade.

"We figured that the best place to go was the airport. At that time, deer-stalking with helicopters was very big in New Zealand in the South Island, and they used to fly in to collect the carcasses and would smash the tips of the rotors all the time. So there were plenty of helicopter rotor arms about. That's what we acquired, for free, from Christchurch Airport.

"We decided to see what effect it had. We'd taken a longer section than we needed, so we had this sticking out of the window while working out how much force we needed to hold it up as we cranked up the angle. By doing this, we came up with a very, very rough guide as to the dimension down from the trailing edge to the edge of the window.

"Those were the original ideas of how much angle we gave it when we very first set it up on the car. It was supported at each side at the front off the top of the gearbox ears and there was a stay that was adjustable with two rose joints down from under the middle of the wing towards the back, down onto the centre of the gearbox."

The car never actually ran with the wing, as when Chapman got to hear of it he ordered that it be removed forthwith. But not before a young Ferrari engineer named Giovanni Marelli was able to take plenty of photographs and, just over four months later, guess which team turned up at a Grand Prix meeting with a rear wing on their cars?

Clark's next race was at Teretonga, again on the South Island. In an incident which has similarities to his later accident at Hockenheim and illustrating the constant danger which drivers faced in the 1960s, Clark ended up in a 150mph spin that ended with his his car slithering into an orchard, hitting a tree at slow speed and damaging the nose-cone.

Speaking - tragically and somewhat prophetically - to Team Lotus Competitions Manager Andrew Ferguson, Clark reportedly joked that 'they nearly had to bring me home in a box' after this episode. Despite this, and pitting to have the damaged nose removed, Clark still finished the race second.

Jim Clark in the 1968 Tasman Series © LAT

Clark's teammate Graham Hill joined in for the Australian leg of the Tasman series, the two scoring consecutive 1-2s at Surfers Paradise, which was in those days a purpose-built track rather than the street course used now, and Warwick Farm.

The race at Sandown Park was more closely-fought, Jim winning by about half a car's-length from Amon. This was to be his last-ever race victory, for the following week at Longford in Tasmania, torrential rain made conditions for the more powerful cars treacherous, and Piers Courage in his Formula 2 McLaren took the win.

When he returned from the Tasman series at the end of the first week in March, he had several engagements in Europe before flying out to Indianapolis for Spring testing, beginning the week of March 25th.

This was his first opportunity to try out the radical wedge-shaped, turbine-powered Lotus 56. The output of the turbine engines used the year before by the STP-Paxton car which had come so close to winning had been restricted by the authorities. However, the sweet-handling Lotus chassis more than compensated for this, and it was clear the car had great potential.

Mechanic Arthur Birchall, who attended the test, remembers that STP boss and team sponsor Andy Granatelli demanded that Clark sand-bagged at the test, due to the fact that he had a court case going downtown, challenging the restrictions on the turbines for 1968 as being too draconian, so lapping quickly would not have aided his case.

Even so, Clark reported that the car was 'fantastic' and lapped easily at 161mph, compared to the near-170mph pole speed set the previous year.

At the end of the week, Clark hopped on a plane back across the Atlantic for a Formula 2 race in Barcelona. Having qualified on the front row, his race was short-lived, for Jacky Ickx crashed into the back of him on the second lap, damaging his suspension and forcing him into retirement.

Seven days later, most of the same drivers - Clark included - assembled at the Deutschland Trophy race, the first round of the European Formula 2 Championship.

There had been some talk of Jim racing a Ford F3L sports car at Brands Hatch in the BOAC 500 but the Alan Mann team did not keep him informed of developments as they had said they would while he was away on the Tasman series, so he opted for Hockenheim.

The Scot endured a troubled practice, missing the first session with fuel metering unit problems and had difficulty setting his car up for the circuit, eventually placing seventh on the grid. That evening, he appeared on a German TV sports programme with his friend Kurt Ahrens and attended a function with Ahrens at a local vineyard and seemed in good spirits, despite his on-track woes.

Jim Clark, Lotus, 1968 Deutschland Trophee F2 race, Hockenheim © LAT

Race-day dawned wet and the drizzle was still falling when the field set off for the first of two heats. Clark was running in a lowly eighth position when, on the fifth lap and on one of the fastest stretches of the circuit, his car went out of control and speared off into the woods at the side of the track. It disintegrated among the trees and Clark died instantly.

The cause of the accident has never been proven conclusively, although an investigation led by an air accident specialist, Colin Chapman and a Firestone engineer concluded that it was the result of an explosive decompression of his right rear tyre.

The assumption was that he had picked up a slow puncture and that, at a certain level, there was insufficient pressure to hold the beads of the tyre against the rim at high speed and they dropped into the centre of the rim, causing a dramatic loss of grip.

Irrespective of the reasons, Jim Clark, the greatest driver of his generation, was dead. It was a crushing blow to his fellow drivers. As Bruce McLaren said at the time, "I think we all felt he was invincible."

It wasn't just the other drivers who were profoundly affected by Clark's death - it hit Chapman doubly hard, according to Jabby Crombac. "He had such a special relationship with Jimmy that his loss was not only of somebody of whom he was fond, but also he could see that his main trump card had been taken away," he said.

The mechanics who had worked closely with him were also devastated, as Leo Wybrott explained: "I came back after the Tasman series and had only been back a short time when Jimmy was killed. At that stage we'd spent two and a half years of summers and the Tasman series, nearly three months, together.

"We were really close-knit. There was just me, Jimmy, Roger and Dale [Porteous, Roger's brother], so we'd go everywhere together. We had a very close relationship. Certainly a lot of my enthusiasm for the sport went when Jimmy was killed."

At the start of the year it seemed likely that Clark would add to his tally of two titles. His friend Jabby Crombac asserted: "There is no doubt in my mind that Jimmy would have been champion in 1968. The fact is that Graham won the title that year and Jimmy was quicker than Graham, period. Therefore Jimmy was bound to be the world champion."

Sadly, it was not to be and all we are left with now are our memories of what a truly great driver Jim Clark was.