Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion

In the highly-competitive arena of motor sport,

only once in a while does a real driving genius emerge from the pack.

One such man was Jim Clark.

Jimmy was so unlike every other racing driver I've ever known.

He was very special in a whole lot of ways.

It's funny, the words that come to my mind are

"innocent talent".

And that was it.

His driving skill really was a God-given gift.

Even at the height of his fame in the mid '60s, Clark was a reclusive, enigmatic figure.

But a wealth of rare archive material made available by family and friends,

provides a revealing new insight into the brief life of a remarkable man.

People would not understand that you could be frightened.

Well...it's all part of it.

If there was nothing to be frightened of there,

and no limit, any silly bugger could get in a motorcar.

I enjoy motor racing.

I started as an amateur hobby,

with no idea or nor intention or becoming world champion.

But I was curious to find out what it was like to drive a car fast,

to drive on a certain circuit, to drive a certain type of car.

But now you've found out and raked in all the honours, what's left?

How do you assess your chances of reaching old age, or even middle age, if you push it any further?

Across this now-overgrown stretch through a German forest, cars once raced at breathtaking speed.

And it was here that Jim was tragically killed at the age of 32,

when the car he was driving mysteriously crashed into trees.

Four decades later, a simple memorial ceremony is taking place nearby.

It's quite incredible, because my wife said to me only the other day,

"Why's so many people interested in Jim Clark these days?"

To fully understand the answer to this question,

we need to go back to the place where his story really begins.

Jim Clark spent most of his youth in Berwickshire, on the borders of Scotland and England.

This was, and still is, farming country, an unlikely

place to begin a glittering career as a racing driver.

The Clark family ran two sheep farms

that stretched across some 12,000 acres,

and Jim, the only son, was fully expected to one day carry on the family business.

He was quite disobedient at times.

My eldest sister...well, she was ten years older.

She thought he was just a cheeky little boy,

and she would reprimand him more than Mother.

Jim spent three years at Loretto, a highly-respectable boarding school,

but at 16 was forced to return to the farm when his uncle and grandfather both died suddenly.

And that might have been it had he not met another local farmer's son.

I first met him at our local Young Farmers' Club.

In fact, he overtook me on the way there and I didn't know who he was.

I thought, "What a bloomin' idiot." He was driving like a real boy racer.

I used to do a bit of club racing and he used to come along and give me a hand.

And it all developed from there.

I used to go along with a friend of mine, another local farmer,

Ian Scott-Watson, and act as his mechanic,

never thinking that I would be able to get into a car, whatever, because my parents were so against it.

I did my practice and thought I was going as quick as I could go.

He went out and did his, and he was three seconds a lap quicker

than me within five laps, which embarrassed me no end.

So we swapped places, and I had my first race.

We did a lot of club rallying round in the borders, in the south of Scotland and the north of England.

He was just doing little club events, nothing spectacular at all.

It was just three or four pals together going to race meetings.

And continued from there as he step by step, went up the ladder.

He had no realisation of his own ability.

He said to me, "Why on Earth is everybody going so slowly?"

And I said, "Jim, it's not that everybody is going so slowly, it's you going so damn fast."

Let's face it, he, all through my racing career, has been the bloke who's pushed me on.

I wouldn't have done half the bloody things because I had no confidence in myself.

Jim gained a huge amount of experience racing for the local Border Reivers team,

and in the summer of 1959 found himself teamed up with Sir John Whitmore,

driving a Lotus Elite in one of the most prestigious events in the world

- the Le Mans 24-hour race.

I do remember him as being sort of...shall we say?

From the country and a bit naive, and so on and so forth.

And quite endearing because of that.

I don't think at the beginning he was aggressively ambitious,

he just did what he did very well and the result of that was he was in front of people.

They finished tenth overall, a fine achievement by any standard.

But as far as Jim's family was concerned, it was still just an expensive hobby.

I started out racing with no idea of ever making money at it.

And it was only really at the beginning of 1960, when my father...

..got a bit upset that I was spending so much time racing...

He suggested his hobbies always paid themselves, and so on.

It made me look into the possibility of making mine pay.

The man who would take him to the next level and beyond was designer

and Formula One Team Lotus manager Colin Chapman.

He offered Jim a seat.

Ian Scott-Watson filmed his friend as they drove to the airport together.

From this moment on their lives would follow very different paths.

No one could have imagined at that moment what adventures lay in store for Jim Clark.

The sheep farmer's son from the Scottish borders was heading for the big time.

The 1960 and '61 seasons played a key part in Clark's apprenticeship as a Formula One driver.

Here he began to mix with a host of motor racing veterans, both on and

off the track, soaking up knowledge wherever he could find it.

He was a devoted pupil of Colin Chapman, and mixed well

with the small but dedicated team of Lotus engineers and mechanics.

I was one of the mechanics who worked on his cars,

and I was very apprehensive because he was the up and coming star,

and he was very quiet.

I thought, "This can't be a racing driver,

"this very demure person, very, very shy."

But there he was, and when he got in the car he was absolutely magic, he was really unbelievable.

Another British driver new on the scene was motorbike world champion John Surtees.

We got on, we both respected each other.

Both wanted to be quicker than each other.

But you could be totally sure he would do nothing

that would endanger you at all, you could fight fair and hard.

There was good reason for gentlemanly conduct during this period.

Thrills and spills were all part of the sport's appeal,

but safety measures and medical back-up were primitive.

I remember my first time going to Brands Hatch, thinking,

"There's a crazy sport, it's so dangerous."

My mother just hated to watch it.

Oh, very anxious moments.

Worry all the time, really.

I'm quite relieved whenever a race is over.

There were accidents pretty well every weekend and a lot of people got killed.

In 1958, these 16 men lined up for the start of the world championship season.

Today, seven of those men are dead.

Jim had received a graphic lesson in the sport's dangers

when he raced for the first time at the notorious Spa circuit in Belgium.

I had a pretty rough race, in my own mind, at Spa. I was never very happy.

I don't mind admitting it, I was scared stiff more or less all through the race.

You're going so bloody fast that I was even scared to let the car slide adrift at all.

And...

I was...I was really frightened.

But what happened at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix at Monza went way beyond frightening.

Ferrari were the team to beat that year,

and their leading driver, Wolfgang von Trips,

was just one win away from securing the world championship.

It was only on the second lap, while Jim was duelling with von Trips, that disaster struck.

He came past me, and as he put on the brakes he pulled over.

I thought, "God, you can't do this, you know?"

He pulled right into the side of me.

His wheel got in between von Trips's wheels

and the wheels touched and it sent von Trips's car off into the crowd.

I was just behind it.

I know I went over, bits and pieces and the rest of it.

And it was a tragedy.

We were standing in the pits. We heard there'd been an accident.

And Jimmy came back very, very shaken.

As well as von Trips, 14 spectators had also been killed.

Italian police pointed the finger of blame at Clark.

It was awful, really, really awful.

I mean, we just couldn't get away quick enough.

Well, the fact was I got badgered for days on this.

They wouldn't let it lie, and they came up to the farm

here and there were photographers lurking round every corner,

and I told them all to go and piss off, I want to be alone, you know?

Hell, I was obviously bloody upset about it all.

No, no, the more I think of it, the worse it became, you know?

He was very much affected by it.

I think he felt almost powerless,

because the car had been impounded, he still didn't know if he was going

to be heaved off to Italy and perhaps even be thrown into jail.

The Italian police were after his blood, and

for a time he didn't know if he'd even be able to go back to Monza.

I think it was very much a racing incident, and it took more than one for it to happen.

And it just happened to be that Jimmy was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A full investigation of the crash eventually cleared Jim,

but the incident would linger for years to come.

The following season,

a somewhat more reclusive, media-shy Clark returned to racing.

In Colin Chapman's pioneering new Lotus, he was in with a realistic

crack at the 1962 Formula One world championship.

The car was certainly quick,

but in the end it was a lack of reliability that let him down.

Fellow British racer Graham Hill went on to take the title.

But it was an American driver, Dan Gurney, who aroused Chapman's

competitive instincts, with the prospect of racing in the USA.

Chapman and Lotus and Ford got together, through my connections,

and the next thing I knew Jimmy was a team-mate.

And we got along really well.

500 was a big race.

Everybody wanted to win the 500.

When you see 300,000 plus people

in the grandstand there, you know this is it.

'While the big Indianapolis roadsters have had to stop for tyres and fuel,

'Jim Clark, in his lightweight Lotus has grabbed the lead.'

When he showed up there, he was outstanding, because you could see

his cornering speeds were great.

He seemed to be a natural.

He was certainly an incredible race driver.

He showed us the way, there's no question about that.

'Parnelli is four and a half seconds ahead of the smooth-driving Clark.'

My car, ten or 15 laps from the end,

cracked a crack in the oil tank.

Parnelli - we called him Parnoily!

Because his tank was leaking so much oil, and people were starting to spin and everything.

'But Parnelli Jones finishes the 500-mile ordeal in three hours and 29 minutes.

'Scotsman Jim Clark's Lotus captures second place.'

Clark had only just missed out on winning the Indy 500 at his first attempt.

But that's the way it goes, and Jimmy was not upset.

If he was, he didn't show it.

He was perfection when it came to being a gentleman.

He never lost his cool, never saw him lose his cool about anything.

By now, the pairing of Chapman and Clark was really starting to gel.

They seemed a perfect match.

I think Colin Chapman had the utmost faith in Jimmy's ability to extract

everything there was in the automobile,

and Jimmy had great faith in Colin Chapman for coming up

with the cutting edge of technology at that time.

'Colin's personal dynamism has inspired an outstanding group of draughtsmen, engineers and mechanics

'and has united them in a formidable team, Team Lotus.'

Chapman knew that Clark was ready to produce something special.

Oh, he's just a fantastic driver.

He's still young and he's still maturing. He's going to get better.

He's very easy on the machinery, very easy to get along with.

He's an ideal racing driver.

This combination...

..which developed together became the acknowledged main threat.

The Lotus 25 was a radical design at the time,

and, in Clark's hands, simply unbeatable.

Records were smashed at nearly every race, in a season

which produced some of the greatest challenges a driver could face.

In Spa in '63, in the rain,

he won by almost five minutes.

Which is some margin.

'Now for the big event of the day, the 16th British Grand Prix.

'Jim Clark's the big man this year.

'And now they're away! 82 laps, 246 miles in all.

'In the race, 23 of the biggest men in motor racing.

'As seems inevitable this year, Jim Clark's the first man home.'

Magic season.

We won seven out of ten grand prix.

And no-one had won that amount of grand prix in one season before.

Everybody couldn't quite understand how this shy farmer from Scotland

was such a marvellous driver.

But he was.

He's a very, very tough opponent.

He not only can drive quickly, but he can race.

It's just that little distinction from being able to conduct a car

quickly around a circuit, and then race at the same time.

You know Clarke's listening to you up in Carlisle.

Have you anything that you'd like to say to him?

Yes, I hope he goes back to farming!

Back home in the Scottish borders, the farming community could scarcely comprehend

that one of their own sons had taken on the world, and won.

They turned out in their thousands to give him a hero's welcome.

Jim's triumphant homecoming was captured on home-movie camera by his old friend, Ian Scott-Watson.

Pretty astonished, and really very excited by it.

It was great to feel that I'd played some part in his getting going.

But behind the smile, Jim's mind was in turmoil.

He had secured his world championship title at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza,

scene of the terrible racing accident two years earlier.

Victory celebrations had barely begun when Jim found himself once again under investigation.

Are you prepared to go back to face any further inquiry?

Not at the moment. I'm rather busy in other ways,

and...I'd like to do some consulting first,

just to see what this is all about now,

because I made a full statement last year, they questioned me

for three hours, I made a complete statement in English and signed it.

And what I'm expected to remember about the accident now

that I didn't last year, I wouldn't know.

I think, because he suppressed his emotions,

I think they would build up sometimes and he didn't like

to express emotions publicly, and it would build up,

and then it would burst out a little bit excessively.

He used to get to quite frustrated with journalists.

Some of them, they're just bloody ill-mannered.

But what do you say to the question that they obviously put to you,

and that's the fact that whether you like it or not, buddy,

you're a news figure,

you're involved in a serious thing like that,

we've got to badger you.

What do you feel about this? How did you...

What I say to that is why the hell don't they come and badger me after I've won a BLEEP good race?

-All right?

-Mm-hm.

Why don't they badger me when I've done something good?

They don't want to know you when you're doing well,

when you're doing anything right, it's when you're in the shit they want to know.

That's what really upsets me about the British press.

A winter back on the farm was a welcome distraction for Clark while the controversy slowly died down.

Only here could he truly escape the attention of the media.

With so much motor racing activity based in the south of England,

Clark increasingly began making regular trips to London.

He used to come and stay quite often when he was down in London, with my wife and I.

We had a little flat in Mayfair and it became known as the Scottish embassy,

because first Jimmy and then later Jackie used to come and stay there a lot.

Jimmy would have the big bedroom

and Helen and I would have the small bedroom.

And every now and again he'd bring a girlfriend in, and Helen, my wife,

would say, "That's not the girl he had the last time!"

Jim eventually fell for a young model by the name of Sally Stokes,

and the two soon became a serious item.

It happened to be the opening of Cleopatra

and he invited me to go to the premiere with him, so I thought,

"Oh, that sounds smashing",

so we did that and that was our very first date.

We used to go out to dinner together, but often, the problem with him

was that he couldn't decide which restaurant to go to.

And he said, "I don't know where to go. Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know. Where do you want to go?" It was terrible!

The worst decision maker I've ever met in my life.

The number of movies that we went to that we never made, you know, we'd go round, "That's a good...

"Wait, why don't we go and see this one and see what's on here?"

By the time we got to the one that we wanted, the movie had started and the box office had closed.

He just couldn't make decisions.

It was just the way he was, it was strange, because I think when he got into a racing car,

his whole personality changed, and he became very focused

as he sat in the racing car, and he was just different sitting in the car than when he was outside the car.

In those days, erm...

the top drivers would drive many, many different cars.

Jimmy could jump from one car to another and very different cars, and do it very effectively.

He was quick in anything that he drove.

So it didn't make any difference, he loved driving.

You've seen pictures of him in the Cortinas, mainly on three wheels.

Loads of Cortinas had this unique

quality of lifting its front wheels when you went round corners,

particularly left-hand bends, the front wheel would come up,

sometimes eight inches off the ground.

So it was very spectacular to watch.

The 1964 racing season could never realistically match the dizzy heights of the previous year.

Compromised by mechanical problems, Clark still managed three wins,

including one at Brands Hatch in front of his home crowd.

Returning to Indianapolis, he once again stunned the Americans with his pace.

'Clark juts his way into the lead.'

'The flying Scotsman continues to pull away.'

But once again, the winner's trophy would elude him.

The following year, Team Lotus were back.

Chapman and Clark were determined to beat the Americans on home soil.

And with two years of experience behind them,

this was their best chance yet.

'And for the next 500 miles,

'each man will ride alone, doing the thing he knows best...

'driving a precision racing machine...to win.

'As the pace car pulls into the pit, Jim Clark moves ahead and pulls into the lead.'

'Clark continues his lead.

'But coming out of the back stretch, AJ Foyt moves to the front.

'Foyt tries to press his advantage, but Clark hangs on, determined to reclaim his lead.'

It wouldn't really matter whether he was in a Lotus.

Whatever it might be...

..he was going to do well, period.

'Jimmy Clark crosses the finish line to become the victor of the 1965 Indianapolis 500.'

He won that race by two whole laps.

And lots of people don't report that these days.

He flew.

And they saw it.

And they were stunned.

Obviously he'd been there and paid his dues.

It was the third time that he was there,

and I think he was well deserving of it.

'Jimmy Clark of Scotland becomes the first foreign driver to win since 1916.'

That was it. It was all over with.

In the history books.

'And Clark, he was already a world champion, but winning the 500, that's real special.'

And there were hundreds of Americans who named their children after Jim Clark.

As well as receiving the largest cash prize in motor sport,

Clark's victory that day earned him a variety of other goodies.

'A sports car worth £1,000.

'One year's supply of meat.

'Two television sets, and a do-it-yourself home toolkit.'

Next came photo shoots with supermodels...

And Clark's face began to be seen everywhere.

The mild-mannered king of speed was now an international celebrity.

And Jimmy was wondering how the press

was going to be after winning Indy again,

and saying, "Oh, my goodness, it's going to start again now, you know. Oh, boy."

The man with the biggest prize of all to defend is Jim Clark.

And it was really difficult for him to begin with.

-He was very shy, didn't like making speeches.

-And I'm able ...

I'm unable to find words to express satisfactorily my appreciation.

It didn't wear well with him, the hustle and the bustle.

'Monday July 5, 8.15am.

'Ahead of him, a day of engagements in the world of advertising, public relations and sponsorship.

'A schedule of off-track business engagements, which is often so full

'that a private plane becomes a necessity.'

How very busy he was.

There were times that his life actually wasn't his own.

'In seven days, Jim Clark travelled 3,280 miles in three countries

'and earned at least £2,500.'

You know, it was a different life for him.

Certainly different from life up at the farm.

It's a little bit of a whirlwind at times.

You get into it and it's very difficult to find time to slow down.

As ever, there was really only one place that provided Clark a shelter

from the demands that were now a regular part of his life.

I'd like to get back here much more often,

but unfortunately at the moment I find that racing commitments

and other commitments don't allow much time.

It's a great relaxation to get back here,

and very much the opposite from racing.

One could almost say it was his bolt hole,

with all the pressures of Grand Prix racing and dashing back and forward.

He just immediately could morph back into being the borders farmer.

I mean, he genuinely loved it.

Motor racing and farming to my mind were in a way two opposites.

The very fact that they are two opposites,

helps me enormously keep a sense of balance.

I think he loved the sheep, he loved the farm.

But I think the pull to cars and racing, that sort of overtook.

There was little time to savour his Indy 500 win.

The Formula One global merry-go-round had already begun.

Another championship was at stake.

The racing circuits of the world were now a familiar hunting ground,

and more often than not, Clark was able to put himself in pole position.

In a Grand Prix, he used to like to get out in front,

build himself a lead...

..and let the other people try and get after him.

It was my very first year in Formula One.

I finished three times, second to Jim Clark.

First in the Belgian Grand Prix, in torrential conditions.

To be on the podium with Jim Clark -

who was my hero - was a great privilege.

And it sort of became a joke, it was Batman and Robin.

And there was no doubt who was Batman and who was Robin!

I know I get a lot of the glory, but it's built up of

all these people working very enthusiastically,

and very hard, to ensure that I've got the best car possible.

He was the most important part of a team, up there with Colin.

And we knew that if we could do a good job

and make reliable race cars, he was going to be up front, for sure.

Clark amazingly won the British Grand Prix for the 4th year in a row.

'Jim Clark has won his 17th Grand Prix, the 1965 World Championship

'is virtually his, with the season only half over.'

There was little doubt, by now, that he was a very special driver.

But what exactly was it that made him so good?

He was so smooth, he was so clean.

He drove with such finesse.

He never bullied a racing car.

He sort of caressed it

into doing the things he wanted it to do.

The really exceptional drivers are just ultra-sensitive.

They can feel things that other people don't actually notice.

And that, to me, is what was very exceptional about him.

By concentrating on the breaking,

by concentrating on the way through the corner,

on the amount of throttle...power, I can get on out of a corner.

I don't drive any faster, I just concentrate harder,

which makes me go faster.

'Jim Clark in the wheel of a Lotus,

'this season, an unbeatable combination.

'Victory in the German Grand Prix, can he be World Champion?

'Clark leads from the start.

'Graham Hill, BRM, lying second.

'John Surtees' Ferrari packed up after one lap.

'There was no-one who could catch Clark.

'Winner at 99.79 mph.

'If there had been a dead heat, that laurel wreath

'could have gone over two men's heads.

'Jim said that for the rest of his life, he'll remember this magical year.'

The people of Jim's hometown would remember it

for the rest of their lives too.

The Scottish Borders farming community welcomed him home like a king.

Winning Indianapolis and the World Championship,

I don't think anyone's done that since.

You know, people admired him, the way he won like a gentleman.

And that's the way he was, really.

Among the guests of honour that day was Jim's family,

including his father, who just five years earlier had told his only son

to either give up his hobby or make it pay.

His dad was very proud of him.

And I think that's what Jim treasured.

Jim was showered with honours and awards,

from Buckingham Palace to the rest of the world.

It was his magical year.

Everything seemed to go very well.

-Hip, hip...

-Hooray!

-Hip, hip...

-Hooray!

-Hip, hip...

-Hooray!

But Jim was never likely to be seduced by fame.

When all the crowds and cameras had disbursed,

he still had everything and everyone he needed.

He was a quiet person,

rather introverted really.

And it would be few people who Jim Clark could totally relax with.

One such group of people included his racing driver pals,

Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart.

The three of us together were terrific.

I mean, we got called the Three Musketeers,

we did lots of things together.

I mean, it was a wonderful example of how, even at the highest

form of competition, you could have a human relationship

with a group of people who were participants.

We'd would go on holiday together, we'd fly to races together.

Betty, that's Graham Hill's wife, Sally, Jimmy's girlfriend Helen,

my wife, would all come out to meet us.

Oh, well, that was a lovely trip for us really.

Betty and Helen and I went down to join the guys in Australia,

and we visited a lovely surfer's paradise

beach club there, where they had a lot of

exhibition water-skiing.

And that was amazing, Jimmy was very impressed with that.

He was a pretty good water skier himself, actually.

We were just one happy family, really.

It was tough times, I tell you.

Somebody's got to do it.

Jim's talent had not only brought him fame.

By now, he was earning big money too.

Jim Clark was never someone who you thought

in the same bracket as thinking about money.

He never discussed it and he never wanted to discuss it.

No, no.

I don't even know what he was paid.

Jim's accountants certainly knew, and with a tax rate for the rich

of 93 per cent at the time, he was strongly advised to move abroad.

Jim chose Paris.

Friends there helped him find an apartment,

and all the creature comforts he could ever want.

But as a tax exile,

he'd be unable to step on British soil for a whole year.

And he very, very reluctantly left the country,

and I think that was a very tough time for him.

Not being allowed just to come and go as you please.

Probably financially, it all seemed much better.

I'm sure, from a point of view of quality of life, it wasn't.

Well, that was probably about the time we broke up really.

I couldn't go to all the races, of course, I had to work as well.

And I couldn't get to all the races,

so sometimes there were some lonely times, right.

It was very sad, because everyone identified very much

with the two of them, they were very, very close and doubtlessly,

obviously the love of his life, you know?

I wasn't getting any younger,

and we'd been going out for three or four years, so...

he wasn't making up his mind too quickly, so...

that's how it happened.

And as it turned out,

probably that was for the best.

Some tough challenges now lay ahead for Jim

as the 1967 season got underway.

Being a tax exile,

Jim had been unavailable to test his car during the winter.

The first time he even saw it, was the first race of the season.

It would take a miraculous drive to win.

'Jim Clark rips the new Lotus Ford around Zandvoort,

'in the '67 Dutch Grand Prix, breaking all lap records.'

Clark was on winning form again that season,

delighting his fans at the British Grand Prix.

It was the 5th time he'd won this event.

But elsewhere, mechanical gremlins returned once again...

..and Clark found himself retiring from races when leading the field.

First, it was Belgium.

Then France.

And again in Canada.

The frustration of scoring no points,

despite having the fastest car in the field, was beginning to show.

And a veteran like Clark also knew that when something

broke in the car, it could have very serious consequences.

They were fragile.

And towards the end of his career, he was beginning to become sensitive

about that and more nervous about it,

and perhaps a tad less trusting of Colin.

And I think that there were a few chinks

appearing in that relationship.

Ironically, it was to be yet another setback at the Italian Grand Prix

at Monza, that elevated Clark to the stuff of legend.

Forced into the pits with a puncture,

he rejoined the race a full lap behind.

Incredibly, he retook the lead.

But on the very last lap, his car ran out of fuel.

John Surtees won the race.

But it was Jim who won the Italians' hearts.

Back in Paris,

Jim had discovered his new home was in fact

a most agreeable place to unwind from the stresses of motor racing.

When he was in Paris,

I feel...

he was like if he was on holiday, you know?

We never talked together about racing.

We was young, and we spent two years together, you know,

to play with life.

We were going to all the fashion restaurants,

and we were going nightclub.

I think at that time,

he prefers a nice woman than a nice wine, you know?

Well, I think he got into a bit of excitement in Paris,

I don't think there's much doubt about that.

But I don't think that it was, er, it didn't faze him at all.

He might have loosened off a little bit

and became a little bit more liberated perhaps, but, erm,

he was still deep down the Border farmer.

Jimmy never changed really, deep down.

The last two races of 1967 produced back-to-back wins for Clark,

though came too late for him to win the world title.

And at the first race of the 1968 season,

he established a new record of 25 wins in Formula One.

Jim Clark was now, officially,

the greatest driver the world had ever seen.

He had set up a record as good as any record of any racing driver.

25 wins and 72 starts.

I mean, that is an incredible record.

I keep it in the back of my mind

that I don't want to go on motor racing forever.

I know one can't do that.

And for that very reason, I...

try to look at the future and see what I'm going to do

once I give up motor racing.

I started motor racing because I enjoy it,

and I still motor race because I do enjoy it.

And, er, it's a very difficult thing to give up, or to change one's life,

and come back and settle down...

to this quiet,

as it were, all the time.

Friends of Jim's remain convinced he was close to finally quitting the sport.

A 3rd and final world championship

would be a spectacular way to bow out.

He, at that time, was going to be the man to beat.

There's no doubt in my mind about that.

That was going to be a season to end all seasons.

There was a time of course when we all jumped into different cars,

and Jimmy was...I do believe, he wasn't supposed to be at that race.

Fellow drivers recall he'd been frustrated

with the car's lack of performance in practice,

and had only been able to qualify 7th on the grid.

And then, on the morning of the race, it rained.

'How much...

'does danger to come into it, or do you honestly never think about it?

'No, I do, erm...

'from time to time.

'Especially, you know, if there are a lot of trees about

'or something like that.

'If you go off you're going to hit them really hard.'

There is only one living witness to what happened that day,

former race marshal, Winfried Kolb.

'Reports are coming in that racing driver, Jim Clark,

'has been killed whilst competing...'

ANNOUNCER SPEAKS IN FRENCH

I heard it on the Dutch radio,

and they used the word "overleden", and I didn't understand that word.

So I jumped out of the car and ran to my father-in-law and said,

"What does overleden mean?"

And he said, "Oh, no."

I was at home and I turned the television on,

and there was a picture of Jim Clark's face.

And I knew...

instantly what had happened. He'd died.

A terrible shock.

And that's how it hit the whole world of motor sport.

I mean, it was just total shock.

Very sad.

An icon had gone.

Jim Clark came home for the last time.

The funeral was extremely moving.

And people had come there from all over the world.

Dan Gurney came all the way from California,

Graham, of course, was there,

and everybody that should have been there, was there.

The world was never the same again.

The whole town, the whole village of Chirnside were grieving.

And the whole of Berwickshire was, really.

And I thought...

I thought that was incredible really.

I don't know what actually happened.

It wouldn't have been a driver error.

So it was something else.

Jimmy Clark was too good a driver to have that happen to him.

Something had to break.

I honestly don't know.

I mean, you know,

the conclusion seems to be that it was a tyre.

It's reasonably common knowledge, that he had a deflating rear tyre.

It was a very careful investigation of his car

by aircraft crash investigators.

Everything was looked into most carefully.

Whatever the cause of the crash, Jim Clark was gone.

His was the first of several fatal accidents that season,

and more would follow in a sport where death had become commonplace.

I think Jim Clark's loss was the one that hit everybody most.

He was a big, big favourite around the world.

And turned out to be a legend.

Four decades on, events all over the world are still held in his honour,

including the Jim Clark Revival Meeting at Hockenheim.

Elsewhere, the cars he once drove are still displayed,

many of them maintained by the same Lotus mechanics

who once worked with him.

And in the town of Duns, just a few miles from the farm,

a small museum now houses his many trophies

and ephemera from his racing career.

He would be astonished, and we are amazed at the interest still.

It is quite incredible.

We all go sooner or later, but they feel that he put them

on the map. In a way that's very nice...

and he did.

He was a great symbol of what motor racing

and champions, true champions, could really be.

And would that in all the sports that we now see,

we had champions who had a similar attitude. Thank you.

And of course, Jimmy was never to be replaced, never will be.

He's er...he was a special man,

one of a kind, and the like we have never seen since.

It's been a long time, but...yeah...

It's just been a long time.

I miss him like everybody else does, really.

I think that when someone like that dies,

they never completely die within your own memory.

And who knows,

we may even meet again.

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