SEPTEMBER 9, 1963
He was the modest sheep farmer from Fife who became a motor racing legend.
On September 9, 1963, Scotland’s Jim Clark reached international acclaim when he became the youngest driver to win the Formula One Championship at 27 years old. He powered his Lotus 25 to victory in an unprecedented seven out of 10 races that season, a record that went unequalled until 1984.
Clark had made his F1 Grand Prix debut three years earlier at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on June 6, 1960.
His second F1 race at the 1960 Belgian Grand Prix exposed him to the dangers of racing at the time when two fatal crashes occurred.
“I was driving scared-stiff pretty much all through the race,” said Clark in a post-race interview.
He also came second in his first Indianapolis 500 race in 1963 and went on to win the title in 1965, the same year he won the F1 Championship for the second time. He remains the only driver to win both prestigious racing titles in the same year.
A truly versatile driver, Clark notched up 33 pole positions and won 25 races from his 72 Grands Prix career starts. Despite his success, Clark was shy and shunned the press. His dream was to retire to a farm in Scotland to start a family.
Sadly, that wasn’t to be. Clark was killed in a crash on April 7, 1986, when his Lotus had a tyre failure in an F2 race at Hockenheim in Germany. He was only 32 years old.