Book Review: Jim Clark at the Wheel by Jim Clark
This is the second Pan paperback I’ve read in the last year (see also BRM) and another that came from my Dad’s collection. Clark penned this autobiography following his first Formula 1 World Championship title in 1963 and then updated it in ’65 with an extra dozen pages on the less-successful 1964 season and his 1965 Indianapolis 500 triumph.
Forget today’s well-trodden path of karting and junior single-seaters: Clark was a late starter from a farming family, who famously graduated from tractors to race cars. A Sunbeam, DKW, Porsche 1600S and Jaguar D-Type was the unusual selection in which he cut his racing teeth. He then met Colin Chapman when testing an F2 Lotus in 1958, beginning an association that defined Clark’s career.
Clark is regularly cited as one of the all-time greats or even, by some, as the greatest of all. His early death at the age of 32, in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in 1968, cut short a stellar career that encompassed F1, Le Mans, Indy, touring cars and more. Twenty-five wins and 32 podiums from 72 F1 starts tells its own story.
A handy statistical rundown in the Appendix, compiled by Clark’s friend and mentor, Ian Scott-Watson, shows that he won 45% of the races he entered from 1956-65, across all formulae, so it’s hard to imagine that he would not have taken a third F1 title – especially given that Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt and Emerson Fittipaldi would all become champion in a Lotus within five years of Clark’s death.
I enjoyed the detail of the amateur racing scene at the end of the 1950s and it was interesting to read about Clark’s initial reluctance to abandon the family farm for a career as a professional driver. Race drivers are a necessarily confident bunch – regardless of natural talent – but it seems that Clark initially had real doubts as to whether he could mix it with the best. He credits Scott-Watson and Jock McBain, another contemporary of the Scottish racing scene and founder member of the Border Reivers team, with spurring him on in those moments of doubt.
Clark’s writing is matter of fact, and pleasingly free of the PR polish that might be applied nowadays. But as you might expect from a 60-year-old text, he also uses words and phrases that wouldn’t make it to print today, and which some readers will find offensive.
Jim Clark at the Wheel
by Jim Clark
Revised edition, Pan, 1965.
Find it on eBay
Forget today’s well-trodden path of karting and junior single-seaters: Clark was a late starter from a farming family, who famously graduated from tractors to race cars. A Sunbeam, DKW, Porsche 1600S and Jaguar D-Type was the unusual selection in which he cut his racing teeth. He then met Colin Chapman when testing an F2 Lotus in 1958, beginning an association that defined Clark’s career.
Clark is regularly cited as one of the all-time greats or even, by some, as the greatest of all. His early death at the age of 32, in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in 1968, cut short a stellar career that encompassed F1, Le Mans, Indy, touring cars and more. Twenty-five wins and 32 podiums from 72 F1 starts tells its own story.
A handy statistical rundown in the Appendix, compiled by Clark’s friend and mentor, Ian Scott-Watson, shows that he won 45% of the races he entered from 1956-65, across all formulae, so it’s hard to imagine that he would not have taken a third F1 title – especially given that Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt and Emerson Fittipaldi would all become champion in a Lotus within five years of Clark’s death.
I enjoyed the detail of the amateur racing scene at the end of the 1950s and it was interesting to read about Clark’s initial reluctance to abandon the family farm for a career as a professional driver. Race drivers are a necessarily confident bunch – regardless of natural talent – but it seems that Clark initially had real doubts as to whether he could mix it with the best. He credits Scott-Watson and Jock McBain, another contemporary of the Scottish racing scene and founder member of the Border Reivers team, with spurring him on in those moments of doubt.
Clark’s writing is matter of fact, and pleasingly free of the PR polish that might be applied nowadays. But as you might expect from a 60-year-old text, he also uses words and phrases that wouldn’t make it to print today, and which some readers will find offensive.
Jim Clark at the Wheel
by Jim Clark
Revised edition, Pan, 1965.
Find it on eBay