HEROES: Jim Clark
When it comes to masterful success in F1, Jim Clark is right up there, but he was just at home behind the wheel of a race or rally Ford, too.
Famous for his F1 Championship wins, Jimmy was also a master behind the wheel of Ford’s saloon cars.
It’s just 50 years since Jim Clark drove a Lotus Cortina in the 1966 RAC rally, crashed it, but endeared himself to the heart of every rally fan who watched him on that event. We will never forget the way that he learned to drive a rally car, the way that he almost immediately started swapping fastest times with the true experts, and did it all with a smile on his face.
That was just one tiny part of his links with Ford, which started with a Lotus Formula Junior victory in 1960, and climaxed with early victories in Cosworth DFV-engined Lotus 49 F1 cars in 1967 and 1968. His tragic death at Hockenheim in April 1968 was a total shock to everyone, and one which came decades before he deserved to leave us.
In the meantime, there was the sensational record which he had built up, not only in Formula One (with Coventry Climax-engined Lotus single seaters), but at Indianapolis with Ford-USA developed V8 engines, and in British Touring Car racing, where he was peerlessly successful in Team Lotus Cortinas, and could only really be matched by Sir John Whitmore.
There was a lot more — for Jim could, and did, race in anything which took his fancy, and for which he found the time. Before Colin Chapman snapped him up for the Lotus team, he had driven Porsches and Aston Martins, and during his eight years with Lotus he raced anything from tiny two-seater sports-racers to FVA-engined F2 machines, and massive single seaters in the North American Indianapolis 500 event.
Although as a race car driver Jim was a genius, and as a friend and acquaintance he was delightful company, he was really a modest country-loving farmer at heart. Born and bred in the Scottish borders, at Chirnside, near Duns, his family were farmers, he grew up as a farmer, and always seemed to be happy to get back there, to a bit of peace and quiet, when his schedule would allow.
Unhappily, at the height of his fame he had little spare time for that, had to buy an apartment in London, to live out of a suitcase much of the year and finally (as a tax exile when his earnings soared into potentially punitive tax regimes) he was obliged to find homes both in Paris, and in Bermuda.
Winning formula
His stellar F1 career, of course, is well known, and well-publicised — he won his first F1 race in Belgium in 1962, and in just six years he amassed 25 World Championship victories, 33 pole positions — both being more than any other race driver up to that point. In those years, too, he won the Drivers’ Championship twice — in 1963 and 1965 — was second in 1962, and third in 1964 and 1967. He also managed to dominate F2 at a time when it helped to have a Ford-Cosworth SCA or FVA-engined car, was robbed of the Indianapolis 500 in 1963, won it in 1965, and also won three of the four annual Tasman Series Championships which were held Down Under during the British winter.
Statistics of that type were enough to put him at the top of his sport, but it was also the way that he always seemed to perform — smoothly, peaceably, and with a good heart — which made him so popular.
Unlike some of those who followed, he was neither a whinger, a protester, or a thug, which may explain why he stuck with Lotus (and Ford) for all that time, with never an apparent sign of wanting to jump ship. Perhaps it was this which made winning look so effortless, for he rarely seemed to be under pressure: one of his most famous questions, to those close to him, was to wonder why ‘the others’ seemed to be so slow... When he was killed, he was only 32 years old, and was widely expected to go on improving, and winning, for year to come. If only.
Saloon capers
Other historians have usually concentrated on Jim’s single-seater racing successes, but ignored his record in saloon cars, but this is Classic Ford’s opportunity to reset the balance, and show just how good he was with four seats around him, and a roof over his head. Jim first met the Lotus-Ford twin-cam engine in 1962,
“HISTORIANS LIKE TO FOCUS ON JIM’S SINGLE SEATER SUCCESSES, BUT HE WAS JUST AS GOOD WITH FOUR SEATS AROUND HIM”
when he raced the tiny Lotus 23 sports car at the Nürburgring, first drove a prototype Lotus Cortina test car later in the same year, but did not race one until September 1963.
It was typical of Jim that he found that he had a spare weekend, was invited to drive one of the original Team Lotus BTCC examples at Snetterton (167 RUR), met it for the first time in the paddock, and finished the Touring car race in second place, beaten only by Jack Brabham who was driving an enormously powerful 7-litre Ford Galaxie.
For 1964, F1 stars Jim Clark and Peter Arundell drove the Lotus Cortinas in the BTCC, with three team cars waving their front wheels on most corners. The story of that season is easily told. Jim Clark started all eight rounds, won every class, every time — and even threw in three outright victories as well. Nothing could have been more emphatic that this. As Autosport writer, Paddy McNally commented:
‘The works Lotus Cortinas were wellprepared and exceedingly fast, proving capable of winning a race outright if the Ford Galaxies absented themselves for any reason.
‘They were, indeed, a whole lot more sophisticated than the cars of their more powerful rivals, much lighter than any of them, and with a great deal better balance and chuckability — but Jim Clark always making the most of this characteristic.’
For 1965 the Team Lotus cars were even faster than before, and by mid-season, when converted to leaf-spring rear suspension, they were incredibly effective. Three new cars — JTW 496C, JTW 497C and JTW 498C — were usually driven by Jim Clark and Jack Sears, and always won their 2-litre capacity class (Jim and Jack Sears winning three times each). Jim also won two events outright — once at Goodwood and once at Oulton Park.
Once again, to quote Patrick McNally in Autosport:
‘Once their cars were sorted out, Clark and Sears between them broke just about every class record lapping at fantastic speeds. They even won outright at International Goodwood on a wet track while the 4.7-litre Mustangs floundered. In the final race at Oulton Park they were hard on the Alan Brown Mustang’s tail right to the finish.’
Big changes
For 1966 the scene changed considerably, for Championship regulations were much modified, and new cars ran to FIA Group 5 regulations, which gave almost unlimited freedom for mechanical change and improvement. The British Team Lotus cars — the PHK....D team cars — ran with coil spring/wishbone front suspension, 160 bhp at first (with carburettors) and later with 180 bhp fuel-injected BRM-tuned engines, along with cast magnesium road wheels.
In a 10-event season, one or other of these cars won outright three times, and always won the 2-litre capacity class. Not only Jim Clark (all three race victories, and five class wins) and Peter Arundell, but Sir John Whitmore and Jacky Ickx all drove the team cars. In 1966 the only cars which could beat them in a straight fight were other Fords, either the 7-litre Galaxies or the 4.7-litre Mustangs and Falcons.
Unhappily, though, for 1967 when the Mk2 Lotus Cortina arrived, and was equipped with a 16-valve FVA engine, Jim was in his tax exile period, and could not come back to the UK to race them: that was the year, of course, when Lotus produced the Ford-Cosworth Type 49 F1 car, Jim drove it magnificently and unstoppably, and was hot favourite to win the 1968 World Championship before the tragic crash in Germany which claimed his life.
In the meantime, using a works Lotus Cortina, Jim had taken part in a well-publicised entry in the 1966 RAC rally. Jim — already a double F1 World Champion in 1963 and 1965 — was determined to prove that he could also shine on loose surfaces, without previously having seen any of the forestry stages which made up the vast majority of this event’s competitive mileage.
This was no just-for-show-business appearance either, for before the event Jim Clark practiced assiduously, sometimes with his name-sake Roger as a tutor, sometimes with Brian Melia, who would be his rally co-driver, alongside him, and always with one or other of the sizeable fleet of Boreham rally cars and practice/test cars to use at venues such as the Bagshot rough road tracks, near Camberley in Surrey.
Right from the start Jim was on the pace, setting third and fifth fastest stage times, his progress through the stages looking spectacular to say the least! He set fastest times in the Towy and Myherin stages (both of them Welsh classics), and in spite of having more than one minor excursion which (in his words) ‘rounded off the corners of the car’, four punctures, and a very brief panic when the earth lead jumped off the battery, was in sixth place overall at the halfway halt at Aviemore, in Scotland.
It was in the second half of the event that the dramas kicked in. Soon after the restart, Clark put the car off the road in the Loch Achray stage, damaging the front suspension and steering against a bit of solid Scottish scenery, being delayed by up to 45 minutes before the car could struggle to a Ford service vehicle, and be patched up. Nothing daunted, he carried on until (in John Davenport’s words, published in Autosport): ‘In the stage at Glengap, Jim Clark’s rally came to an end when he got airborne over some humps and flipped twice into some trees.’
This was the sad end to a very spectacular outing, and the end for this car, which was later photographed back at Boreham before it was finally dismantled. In later years, rumours spread that the wreckage had been spirited away, and might resurface.
“THE CORTINA WAS LIGHTER THAN ITS RIVALS AND WITH A CHUCKABILITY THAT JIM CLARK ALWAYS MADE THE MOST OF”