The Bookworm Critique

There comes a time when you have to take a deep breath, look at your bookshelf, and ask yourself whether the world really needs another book about Jim Clark.

Clark lived, raced and died before my time. Through books, and also after talking with people who watched him race, I have developed a genuine admiration for what he achieved and the type of driver that others remember him to be. But if there is one slice of 1960s F1 history that has been covered to the point of exhaustion, it is the intertwined story of Clark and Lotus.

I can understand where the obsession comes from. Virtually all of the English-speaking custodians of F1 history are British (quirkily, one of the very exceptions is Eoin Young, but he has spent more than enough time away from his native New Zealand over the past 40 years to qualify as an honorary Pom).

Most of them are from the generation that spent its formative years being captivated by the exploits of the world's fastest Scottish farm boy and the Colin Chapman's revolutionary cars, and those kinds of early passions are not easily shaken.

That's why devotees of the original Star Wars trilogy kept traipsing in to see the new series, even though all three of the prequels were crap. In short, if you were a British F1 fan in the 1960s, you were almost certainly a devotee of Clark.

That such a talent should be extinguished in the manner that Clark's was beneath the tree canopy at Hockenheim in 1968 was terrible but it was hardly atypical of F1 at the time, so that doesn't explain why I seem to have four or five Jim Clark/Lotus books for every biography of some other sixties racer in my collection.

So I guess it is time to make a simple request to the motorsport authors of the world. Jim Clark rocked - but until there is something genuinely new and revelatory to be said about him, I'd rather learn more about John Surtees, or Jochen Rindt, or Graham Hill. Let's even press the fast-forward button and have a closer look at Jody Scheckter, or Alan Jones, or Nelson Piquet.

Actually, I suspect that the real reason why every year seems to bring another book about Clark and/or Lotus is a lot more pragmatic. Publishing houses are businesses, and the desire to make a contribution to what we know about racing history will understandably come second to the desire to make a profit.

So it's actually not really about there being a generation of Clark-worshipping writers. The real kicker is that there is an entire generation of Clark-worshipping readers. Like Senna and Schumacher, Clark sells.

Young's latest offering is a thoroughly enjoyable account of Clark's career, but it doesn't offer a lot of new material. The book is weaved around the story of the Lotus 25 (specifically, monocoque R4) that Clark employed as his weapon of choice during his triumphant 1963 season, and goes on to follow the life of the chassis after Clark had moved on to other cars.

I want to be clear in saying that this is not a bad book - indeed, the only criticism I could make is that the manuscript could have used some slightly more assertive work with the editor's red pen before going into print.

As an insight into Clark as both a man and driver it happily stands shoulder to shoulder with any other book out there. It's warm and personal, and is gets a considerable extra spark courtesy of Young's generous use of recollections and anecdotes from those who were there.

And there are a few fabulous little snippets here and there - I never fail to get a kick out of reading about Clark scoring four consecutive wins on a single set of Dunlops in 1963. And you thought one-race tyres were impressive ...

Also interesting was Yong's account of talking with Chapman about the ill-fated DeLorean project.

"Another meeting with Chapman came about when the American publication Autoweek, for whom I was writing a Diary column, phoned me at Watkins Glen and asked me to interview the Lotus boss urgently on the subject of the just-announced technical development contract with DeLorean. The industry was definitely not my area and I diffidently knocked on the door of the Lotus motorhome requesting a few moments.

"I was curious to know why Chapman was co-operating in the development of a GT car that would be a direct competitor to his own Lotuses. This didn't seem to be a consideration. 'Oh, it'll never work,' he said dismissively. 'And if the British Government is so anxious to spend money on it, someone is going to get the contract and it might as well be us ...' (p. 59)

The book's nominal theme - Lotus 25 chassis R4 - doesn't really come into play until the final chapters. It's here that you'll find the bulk of the new material, though it's hard to see much of it being of interest to many people other than serious Lotus aficionados.

Photos are plentiful throughout the book, and are made up of sprinklings of both relatively uncommon shots, and photos that have been run so often that you could just about draw them from memory.

As Clark biographies go, this is a solid effort and one that would provide a convenient entry point for someone who came along too late to see him for themselves.

But I'm still not sure about the premise, and can't shake the feeling that what would have been an excellent magazine article about the fortunes of Clark's Lotus 25 has been padded into a reasonably good book instead.