Got money to spend? Look no further
DAVID TREMAYNE, evro Publishing, £80, ISBN 978 1 910505 16 8
In this 50th year since Jim Clark perished in a freak accident during a drizzly Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in Germany, we have not one but two new chronicles of his extraordinary career, his inner shyness and the circumstances of the tragedy. One is a revised and redesigned edition of fellow-Scot Eric Dymock’s much-admired Jim
Clark: Tribute to a Champion. The other is this new, rather more expensive, volume from prolific motoring journalist and author David Tremayne, who has been working on it for the past 20 years.
Tremayne, unlike Dymock, didn’t know Clark. This has enabled him to stand back a bit and gather the facts, details and the anecdotes through those who did know the twice World Champion, and to consider them afresh. And what details: there are quotes from Dan Gurney, the one driver whom Clark really feared (so said Clark’s father at his son’s funeral, triggering tears from Gurney), from team-mate Trevor Taylor, from acting team manager Jim Endruweit in charge at Hockenheim on the terrible day, from Jackie Stewart, from friends of both genders.
Over 520 pages, Tremayne analyses Clark’s every competitive outing, his state of mind at the time, his relationships with those most important to him (Colin Chapman, girlfriend Sally Stokes, early mentor Ian Scott-Watson), and everything else he has uncovered in deep research and contemporary interviews. Clark appeared not to know why he was so quick, but he and all around him had supreme confidence in his ability. There’s a great story about the Lotus team’s impromptu arrival at Indianapolis in 1962 and blowing the Indy establishment away. They thought he’d lost it when the little Lotus 25 wobbled on the exit to Turn Four, but no. ‘Didn’t you see that rabbit that ran across the track? I didn’t want to hit it.’
Hundreds of atmospheric photographs illustrate the biography, showing a man developing from a youth with the trademark big grin to someone more pensive, more mature, looking beyond what he had to prove because he’d proved it. Tremayne tells the tale with love and reverence but a proper journalist’s objectivity, and Dario Franchitti – for whom Clark is an idol – writes a good foreword. It’s a pricey book, but a compelling one.