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Archive for the category “Jim Clark’s 1963 season”

01 Jun 2013
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From the gloss of Indy to the switchbacks of Mosport

Indianapolis was barely over when Jim Clark left for Mosport – for the next race on his crammed 1963 calendar2_in_Chrono_Order

The young rookie, Skip Barber, in his ex-Ian Walker Lotus 23, leads Jim Clark’s similar, Al Pease-owned, Lotus 23 around Mosport Park

There were times when going to Mosport so soon after Indy did not seem like such a good idea.  It was a rush from beginning to end – but then Jim Clark was used to rushing.  It was what he did in order to earn his profession as a racing driver.  Starting money, particularly in North America, was beginning to look very appealing – and Jim had always been open to the idea of driving different cars in different locations.  In March, 1962 – long before Dan Gurney initiated the Indy plans –  Jim had been delighted when Colin Chapman had asked him to race a Lotus Elite at Daytona; whilst there, he had had no hesitation in accepting an invitation from “Fireball” Roberts to try a stock car on the banked tri-oval.   By 1963, with Indy elevating him to a new level of consciousness in the American racing psyche, Jim was open to all sorts of offers.  The Player’s 200 was one such.  The promoters would pay him decent starting money – and he could squeeze the race in between Indy and Crystal Palace back in England on Whitmonday. It also looked as though Team Lotus would be able to run the Milwaukee and Trenton USAC races later in the year.  Then there were the big-money sports car races at Riverside and Laguna Seca at the end of the season.  It all added up to an interesting, diverse and very busy year.  Jet lag, of course, had yet to be invented!

In the meantime, there was no time either to savour his second place at Indy – or to be frustrated about it; and that was probably a good thing.  He needed to be on that plane to Toronto.  Parnelli Jones, by contrast, cancelled his upcoming appearance in the Player’s 200 with Frank Harrison’s Lotus 23B and flew instead to New York:  he would be a guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight show.

Jim had Dan Gurney for company on the flight to Canada but the trip felt less solid than usual.  Jim was plunging into the unknown with a Comstock Lotus 23 – a deal put together via Lotus North America –  and Dan with Timmy Mayer’s Cooper Monaco;  his regular, and super-quick, Arciero Lotus 19 would instead by driven by Chuck Daigh.   Both arrived tired and drained in Bowmanville, Ontario.  There was just time for a couple of exploratory practice laps before the two-part race on Saturday.  Dan was instantly fast – good enough to be fourth – but Jim was dismayed.  The car wouldn’t run.  He couldn’t even put a lap together.

With Comstock’s support, Al Pease, an excellent “preparer” of cars who was originally going to race his own Lotus 23, quickly stepped in to offer Jim his seat.  Jim looked the car over – he knew 23s pretty well by then – and accepted straight away. He put in a lap that would enable him at least to qualify.  It would, I think, also be the first time that Jim drove a car sponsored by a company from outside the motor racing sphere:  Al had arranged backing from “Honest” Ed Mirvish, a Toronto-based discount store owner.  Jim was amused by the concept;  if he had time, he agreed that he would visit the shop before returning to the UK.f1257_s1057_it0465

This was a big event by Canadian – even North American – racing standards.  The driver line-up included Dan, of course, plus Jim Hall in the front-engined Chaparral, Lloyd Ruby, Daigh, a racer-mechanic who lived in Long Beach, Ca, Graham Hill (who had withdrawn from Indy and had flown to Canada from Monaco) in the rapid BRP Lotus 19, Jim’s friend, Sir John Whitmore, in the Frank Costin-re-bodied SMART (Stirling Moss Automobile Racing Team) Lotus Elan, and Roger Penske in Mecom’s Zerex Special (a car that Bruce McLaren would later use to kick-start his own team).  Even so, the media at the time made very little of Jim Clark’s appearance.  All the local talk was of drivers like Ruby, Gurney, Hall, Penske, Jerry Grant and Daigh – and of the reigning World Champion, Graham Hill.  Jim, “only” second at Indy two days before, and in a much less competitive 1.5 litre Lotus 23, earned but a footnote in the local newspapers.  After all the glitz and attention of Indy, Jim liked it that way.  The weather was gorgeous in Canada; he worked for two days at Mosport with his little team in the little-car section of the paddock.

I think this also highlights another side of Clark’s professionalism: Jim wasn’t concerned with always racing cars that made him look good in the public eye; he wasn’t afraid to finish second – or lower than second – if that’s the way things went:  his priority was always to give 100 per cent – and that meant driving with a team he could trust and in a car he liked.  Lotus never built the strongest cars in the world – but that was another subject.  Driving for Lotus – driving any Lotus – was about loyalty to Colin Chapman and about choosing a balance.  What Lotus gave away in reliability they usually made up for with speed.  Jim was prepared to accept that balance up to a certain level; and in Canada, in Al Pease’s Lotus 23, he found a level that at least represented par.  When Jim was out there, driving the unfamiliar black car in this relatively minor race (by F1 World Championship standards), he was nonetheless driving absolutely on the limit.  That was his code.TN_Mosport-1963-06-01-069

As it happened, Jim had a lot of fun in Canada.  He quickly began to race in company with a young American who had made his way with an Austin Healey Sprite and then a Turner, and was now having his first race outside the USA in a yellow, ex-Ian Walker, Lotus 23.  Skip Barber would go on to establish the biggest, and most successful, racing school in North America but on this Saturday, in late May, 1963, he was definitely a kid on a mission. “Mosport was a wonderful circuit,” he would say later.  “Blind brows, changes of camber and barriers close to the circuit – where there were barriers.   I trailored the 23 up from Connecticut, where I was based.  I was so new to it that I didn’t even realize that they used imperial gallons in Canada.  “I had bought one of the two Ian Walker 23s that raced in North American in 1962.  It was used-up but successful – yellow with a green stripe down the middle. The Player’s 200 was a big event in North America – and in Canada, particularly, where they had major races in the spring and then in the fall.  This eventually led to the Can-Am, of course.  There was good prize money and starting money.   And there was a big crowd at Mosport. The atmosphere was electric.

“Jim’s spec was identical to mine – a 23 powered by a 1500 Ford pushrod.  We had no chance against the twin-cams, let alone the big-bangers.  I’d only done two short races with the car before Mosport so this was definitely a step into the unknown.  I don’t remember meeting Jim during practice or before the first heat, but between races I asked Al if he could lend me, or sell to me, a new set of brake pads.  He replied that he would have to ask the driver (who happened to be standing right next to him!). Jim was extraordinarily gracious: he pretended to think about it for a second or two but clearly he was never going to say no. “This probably sounds a bit pretentious, but we had just had a tremendous, 100-mile race in which we had been separated by maybe three yards the whole time, with me in front.  WM_Mosport-1963-06-01-015He was very complimentary and very nice.  I remember him saying ‘I’ll see you in Europe’…but of course I didn’t even know where ‘Europe’ was.  Jim told a friend of mine later that he had thought about tapping me a few times during the race but my response was that he would have needed to have been a bit closer to have pulled that off.  In the second heat he passed me but then I re-passed him on the same lap.  We ran the same way almost until the end, when one of the RS61 Porsches blew up in front of me.  I went so far off the race track that I couldn’t find my way back.  I’m not kidding.  I was in the tunnel exit of the infield, buried in heavy grass.  After that, we just packed up and went home.  And Jim flew back to Europe.  It was as quick as that.  I never even thought about asking Jim to help me meet people, or even to introduce me to people in the paddock.  I never even considered it.”

Jim’s race was similar in essence to one he would enjoy a couple of years later at Lakeside, in February, 1965.  Like Barber, Australia’s Frank Matich would race that day wheel-to-wheel with Jim Clark – Jim in the works Lotus 32B-Climax, Frank in the powder blue Team Total Brabham-Climax.  Like Barber, Frank would forsake an international career for a racing life at home.  Both drivers earned Jim’s respect.

The 1963 Player’s 200 was won by Chuck Daigh;  Graham Hill retired with a blown engine.  Jim Hall was second, Dan third, Penske fourth.  Jim eventually finished eighth overall (and third in class). John Whitmore amazed the crowd (and Barber, who had never seen an inside wheel so far from the ground) before the differential seized on the SMART Elan.  John then drove with Jim back to Toronto and flew with him to London and thus on to the Mayfair flat.  The two of them were scheduled to race at Crystal Palace on Whitmonday, 24 hours later.

Captions, from top: Skip Barber in his ex-Ian Walker Lotus 23 leads Jim Clark in the Al Pease “Honest Ed’s” Lotus 23.  Jim is wearing his new Bell magnum, complete with white peak; Honest Ed’s discount store in Toronto (as it was in 1963);  the sponsor’s signwriting was relatively large by ’63 standards; Skip and Jim as they spent much of the Player’s 200 Photographs: Skip Barber Collection; Peter Windsor Collection_Mosport-1963-06-01

Posted in Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , ,
30 May 2013
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Jim Clark – Rookie of the Year

As we continue Jim Clark’s 1963 season as it happened, race by race, we find Jim back at Indy – this time for the 500 proper.  Monaco, on May 26, already seems an age away…S2580001

They made it back to Heathrow, Jim Clark, Dan Gurney and Colin Chapman – and then onwards to New York, Chicago and Indianapolis.  The frustrations of Monaco, by the time they checked-in to the Speedway Motel, already seemed an age away.  Now Jim was in another world – a world he wasn’t sure was him but which he saw as part of his professional life.  Interview after interview, autograph after autograph.  At the Team Lotus garage in Gasoline Alley the talk, as the race approached, was of pit stops, tyre wear and fuel consumption.  Lotus were set on a one-stop race.  The quick Offys, they knew, would probably have to stop three times.

In practice, Jim Endruweit and the boys had been changing three tyres (not the inside-front) and adding 40 gallons of fuel in about 20 seconds; now the Ford Motor Company decided to provide two additional wheel-changing “experts” for race day.  This unsettled the boys.  Mistakes began to creep in.

At this point I can do no better than to hand over to Jim himself and the lucid interview he gave to Alan Brinton shortly after the race:

“The race came upon me rather as a surprise.  All of a sudden we were there with the thousands of spectators in the grandstands and all the promotion that goes on to make up this amazing event.  We all paraded round for one lap behind the Pace Car, which was driven at a very slow speed.  I couldn’t get the Lotus to run properly in bottom gear, so if we had used only third and fourth, like the regulars, we could have well been in real trouble right at the start.

“Jim Hurtubise, whose Novi was ahead of me on the front row, got stuck in gear as we crossed the start line, and I suddenly found myself right up his exhaust.  I backed off and slammed on the brakes.  There was a mad rush all around me.  Hurtubise got his gear sorted, disappeared into the distance, and I found myself right in the thick of the pack.

“Our cars are a lot lower than the Offys, and this meant that it was extremely difficult to see what was really going on.  There was also a great deal of smoke and dust (as well as a heck of a lot of noise!) and all this made for confusion.

“Anyway, all hell was let loose at the start, with 33 cars rushing round in a tight bunch.  After a couple of laps trying to keep out of everyone’s way I found myself sitting right behind Dan Gurney, who had made a good start in our other car.  This was something of a help, because, since his car was as low as mine, I could at least see what was going on ahead, and could keep an eye on the leaders.

“At this stage there were about a dozen of us going round together in the leading group.  This was a good position to be in, because we reckoned on picking up some useful time in the pit stops.  I found that I could run with the Offys on the straights and, being so much smaller and lower, I was getting a great tow.  Getting through the corners was an entirely different matter:  the Offys have one groove for the turns and there is no chance of beating them during the actual corner, even though our cars could have gone quicker through the turns.  So the general programme was to rushing up the straights and then go relatively quietly – for us, that is – through the corners.S2580003

“Throughout the race I was given signals about Parnelli Jones and his Watson-Offy because there is no doubt that he is far quicker than any other driver in these big Indy specials.  At one point it was obvious that he was getting away from me, so I pressed on for a bit to make up time.  I got past Dan after about 100 miles, and when Parnelli made his first stop after 62 laps we moved into first and second places.

“Parnelli’s stop was very quick and so he began to catch us again.  I held the lead until I came in after 95 laps to change three wheels and take on fuel.  We found we still had eight gallons left, so we could have started with less, as it turned out.  My stop took 33 seconds, however – and it felt even longer.  By the time I was back I had dropped to third.

“One of the extra chaps brought in by Ford was a huge, burly fellow with a long background with the Offys.  This chap forgot that I had a four-speed gearbox and tried to push me away from the pits as if I was in second.  As I shot forwards I could see him rolling over in my mirrors – he had gone flat on his face when I let in the clutch.  For a moment I thought I’d run over him!

“Parnelli extended his lead to about 40 seconds as he began to run on lighter tanks again and I worked my way back to second.  Unfortunately, the yellow light came on just as Parnelli was due in and he made his second pit stop without losing the lead.  We worked out later that he had gained something like 20 seconds on the road during that yellow light period!

“For his third and final stop Parnelli did the same thing – came in during a yellow period, when the rules say that no car must alter its position.  Now I realized that we had really gained nothing from our one-stop strategy.  It was plain that I was going to have to try to race Parnelli for victory.  The car was running beautifully and I got right up to him, catching him at about a second a lap.

“Then I noticed that his car was smoking.  My immediate thought was that he wasn’t going to last….but he just kept going, throwing out oil and smoke and leaving a trail around the track that made things incredibly slippery.  I had a big sideways moment and only just managed to collect the car.  On the next lap, Eddie Sachs spun right in front of me, also on the oil.  I managed to avoid him but it was close.

“I decided it would be more prudent to settle for second place.  From what I could work out, Parnelli’s car threw out a lot of oil for a short period and then pretty well stopped once the oil level had reached a certain point.

“Anyway, it was a disappointing finish to the race.  We might also have done better if we’d had a bit more local knowledge.  For example, when I was leading during a yellow light period, I had to put in nearly a whole lap before I got the green – even though the rule is that the leader should get the green first.  There’s also a question of whether you can improve your position under yellows in relation to the car in front of you or the car which is actually one ahead of you in the race as a whole.  “We didn’t protest – and I’m glad we didn’t.  I would have liked to have won but I wouldn’t have felt happy to have done so by getting Parnelli black-flagged.  Having said that, I don’t think Parnelli would even have been on the same lap as me at the end if there hadn’t been any yellows.   There were a lot of rows after the race.  Eddie Sachs came to blows with Parnelli but Colin and I were satisfied that we had at least shown that the Offys can be beaten by a European design.  As for Parnelli – and remembering that he, too, had to drive on his own oil – I think he did a damn fine job.”S2580002

I would add that Jim’s performance must also be seen in the context of the power differentials.  His modified Ford Fairlane engine developed about 350bhp.  The Offys and Novis produced about 400bhp – as seen by their one-lap pace in qualifying.  The post-race fisticuffs to which Jim refers actually occurred on the following morning, when Eddie “The Clown Prince” Sachs accused Parnelli of causing his spin.  Rufus Parnelli responded by whacking Sachs in the mouth.  In protest, neither Sachs nor Roger McCluskey attended the prizegiving.

David Phipps, who worked closely with Team Lotus at Indy in 1963, calculated later that the yellows were on for a total of about 50 minutes in the race and that in one yellow-light period Jones gained 27 seconds on Jimmy (not 20 sec).  Colin Chapman additionally reckoned that Jim lost about a minute in all the yellow light periods combined.   That’s unheard-of by today’s standards;  back then, though, with Team Lotus pioneering a new era, Jim and Colin were very wary of expecting too much too soon – politically speaking, at any rate.

Jim’s second-place prize money amounted to $56,238.00, or just over £20,000 at 1963’s rate of exchange.

Flying straight to Toronto, Jim left Indy immediately after that prize-giving, for he was scheduled – amazingly – to drive a poorly-prepared Lotus 23 at Mosport on Saturday, June 1.  From a Lotus 29-Ford to a Lotus 23 in two, hectic days.  Such was now the life of the sheep farmer from Duns, Scotland. In his Leston track bag, in company with his new Bell Magnum, smeared with oil, lay his Pure jacket and his Dunlop blues, neatly ironed and ready to go.

Captions, from top: Jim, in the middle of the second row, with his engine coughing a little, is concerned by the slow speed of the Studebaker Pace Car.  A few minutes later he would be boxed-in behind Jim Hurtubise’s slow-starting “Hotel Tropicana Special”;  flashback to late 1962, when it all began:  Jim peels his Indy Rookie stripes from the F1 Lotus 25-Climax; a traditional Scots welcome for Indy’s runner-up Photographs: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Peter Windsor CollectionUSA-Canada 2006 149

Posted in Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , ,
27 May 2013
7 Comments

La Bananeraie

1963 Monaco Grand PrixJim Clark’s 1963 season (continued)

From Indy Qualifying, Jim flew to Nice from London, where he had been staying on Monday and Tuesday in the apartment of his friend, Sir John Whitmore.  They had first met in 1959, when they had shared Ian Scott-Watson’s Lotus Elite at Le Mans, and they had stayed in touch ever since.S2520004  Their bond, ironically, had been their shared despair after Alan Stacey’s death.  A farmer like John and Jim, Alan had been hugely helpful to Whitmore in the early years.  At Le Mans in ‘59, with Alan now on the verge of a full F1 career and driving at Le Mans a factory Lotus 17 with Keith Greene, the three of them had had a ball, with Alan very much playing the role of the mentor. Early in that Le Mans week, over dinner at the Team Lotus hotel in a little village away from the main town, John had read aloud a report in L’Equipe about one of the drivers having an artificial leg.  Jim, still very new to motor racing, was both appalled and disbelieving.  “Disgusting,” he said, making it unclear whether he was talking about the lies in the article or the concept itself.

Jim was up bright and early the following morning, in his usual way, and knocked on the door of the room being shared by John and Alan.

“Come on.  Wake up.  Rise and shine.  Time to get going.”  Then silence.  Jim had seen Alan’s prosthetic leg lying on the floor by the bed.  The next sound was of Jim’s feet, running as far away as possible.

A few days later, John and Alan were still laughing at Jim’s embarrassment…

Alan was killed at Spa the following year in a Team Lotus 18 – in the second Grand Prix of Jim’s career – when, it is said, he hit a bird at high speed.  (Some people close to Team Lotus are convinced that the steering column broke on Alan’s car and that the “bird” story was merely a cover.)  Jim was of course devastated – but thought instantly of John, who had been even closer to Alan.  Thus the mateship.600112_22

John’s small two-bedroom, two-bathroom flat was in Balfour Place, Mayfair – an ideal location for racing drivers on the move.  The Lotus factory at Cheshunt was half an hour away.  And London was great for Heathrow and Gatwick airports, Crystal Palace, Brands Hatch and of course the A1 – the road to Scotland.  After days – weeks – of non-stop travel, these two days in Mayfair for Jim offered a welcome break.  John’s wife, Ghinsella, caught up with Jim’s washing – including his blue Dunlop overalls – and Jim finalized the detail arrangements of his travel over the next few weeks.  He would return immediately to Indianapolis after Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix;  then he would race at Mosport; then, two days later, he would race at Crystal Palace.  He’d return to Balfour Place at that point before leaving for Spa, for the Belgian GP.

Nice was bright and sunny when Jim and Colin arrived on Wednesday, May 22.  They drove out to Monaco by the coast road, stopping on the way to check in to their regular hotel in Eze sur Mere.  S2550010Little more than a railway station and a small café today, Eze in 1963 was somewhat more prosperous, boasting a couple of good restaurants, a garage and a small market.  The Team Lotus hotel, La Bananeraie, was perfect for the group’s needs, boasting a spacious, secure, three-car garage out the back in which the Lotus 25s could be housed.  Towing race cars to circuits on public roads was not only normal back then;  it was a part of the show.  Spectators would line the streets, awaiting their favourites – and sometimes, if the travel distances was short, the cars would be driven under their own power.  Nothing clears a crowd faster than a quick blast of Ferrari V12…20179.tif

Jim had brought with him to Europe his newly-painted Bell Magnum helmet and wore it for the first time at Monaco on Thursday, when he was fastest.  The overall look was completely different:  it was as if the slightly thicker Bell had been specifically designed for the gorgeous, slow-slung lines of the Lotus 25.  And Jim again wore a white peak!  It was as if the ’63 season was entering a new phase, and the Jim Clark era was now upon us.

Jim was unnerved for a second or two on Thursday when he spied a black cat running across the track by the pits.  He wasn’t about to label himself “superstitious” but, in that world, back then, he wasn’t going to go out of his way to walk under ladders or spill salt on the table.  He was delighted, then, to see the car suddenly freeze and scamper back the way it had came.  Nor was he reluctant to tell a few of his friends about it, either!

Practice over – and the temporary pole secured – Jim then joined his fellow drivers in a GPDA meeting at the Hotel Metropole.  These gatherings had been a regular fixtures at F1 races ever since the drivers had first got together in a formal way at Monaco, in 1960.  As a group, they were now respected by the team owners and by the circuit organizers – something that couldn’t be said about the drivers’ group of the 1950s, the UPPI (Union of Professional Pilotes International).  Jo Bonner presided over the GPDA meetings;  Autocar’s Sports Editor, Peter Garnier, recorded the minutes for posterity.  As well as discussing important safety and organizational issues, the drivers also took time to talk to one another.  In Jim’s case, he was keen to learn about Dan Gurney’s first drive in the new Brabham (Dan had been eighth quickest on a troublesome day) and to discuss the growing shortage of Coventry Climax Mk 111 engines.  Just as Dan had been obliged to miss Silverstone, now Jack Brabham himself was flying straight back to England to pick up a replacement for the engine that had failed that morning.  There was also general chit-chat about the new, sticker Dunlop R6s, now re-designed around the 1962-spec 28 deg cord angle.  In theory, this greatly improved the tyre’s breakaway without detracting from its better adhesion.  A bit like Pirelli reverting to Kevlar casing in 2013!

Problem was, the new Dunlops were also in short supply.  The bulk of them would only reach Monaco, by truck, late on Thursday night.

Matters of Moment in that GPDA meeting:  the prize for the best-run Grand Prix would go to Zandvoort.  The Taffy von Trips trophy for the best private entrant would go to Count Carel de Beaufort; and Graham Hill would receive a Roy Nockolds painting for winning the 1962 World Championship.

F1 practice was also held on Friday back then – but at the absurdly early hour of 7:30am, by which time two Formula Junior sessions had also been staged.  The idea was to have everything over by 9:00am, thus allowing the town to go about its usual business.  The track was cold but Jim was faster still.  Then, with the day still ahead, it was all over.  Jim  joined other drivers on Carribee, the yacht hired by Ken Gregory (Stirling Moss’s manager) and the former driver, Mike McKee.  S2560001After a few hours in the sun, enjoying life with his mates Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney and Lorenzo Bandini,  it was back to Eze for a look at the cars and an early dinner at La Bananeraie.S2550013  It turned out that Cedric Selzer and the boys had had a relatively easy day with the 25s – particularly as a nice blonde seemed to have joined the team as wheel-polisher and go-fer.  Jack Brabham, meanwhile, had flown his own single-engined Cessna 180 back to England to pick up a replacement Climax engine.  He planned to be back in Monaco by late afternoon but was held up by bad weather in France.  He didn’t make it until about 5:00pm on Saturday – by which time the Climax in Dan’s car had also burned a piston.

Jim was again quick on Saturday afternoon, when the session was run from 2:00pm – 3:15pm.  Perenniel gearbox worries aside, the 25 was running perfectly – so much so that Jim was happy to run full tanks for most of the afternoon while he pushed the R6s to the limit.  (With more grip on line, he was only a second slower than his Thursday, empty-tank, pole time.)  Jim also completed a few laps in the spare car (fitted with the old carburettored Climax engine), lapping as quickly as the Ferraris and fourth-fastest overall.  The Brabham engine issues remined dire but everyone was deeply moved when Jack stood aside to let Dan have the only spare Climax for the race on Sunday.  Drawn to Jack because of his decision to run a Lotus 24 for the first half of the previous season (while he was working on his own car) – and also because of the Indy ties with Dan – Colin Chapman then offered the spare Team Lotus 25 for Jack to race on Sunday.  The 1959-60 World Champion readily agreed, even though he would be unable to put in a single lap with it before the flag dropped.

Serious work over for the day  – Jim was on the pole from Graham Hill, John Surtees, Innes Ireland and Dan Gurney – everyone settled back to watch the Formula Junior race. An electrical problem had ruined his day when he was leading the FJ race by a mile in 1960, so he was not really surprised when Peter Arundell, who had won his heat in the Team Lotus 27, retired from the final early with a blown engine.  Richard Attwood went on to win in the MRP Lola from an excellent Frank Gardner (Brabham).S2550014

Sunday, May 26, 1963 was a gorgeous day – much like May 26, 2013.   There were no support races;  instead, great F1 drivers from the past were paraded in open sports cars.  Prince Rainier drove a few laps of the circuit in his Porsche Super 90.  The drivers, staring at 100 laps of Monaco, gathered in the pits beneath the trees.

Louis Chiron, Clerk of the Course, presided over a shambolic drivers’ briefing on the grid.  Photographers pushed and shoved;  some drivers listened, others joked with friends.  “Remember it is a sport,” said Chiron.  “Good racing, good driving, good amusement and God bless you.”  As Bruce McLaren later, “We knew how hot it was going to be and we knew that it wasn’t exactly going to be very amusing…”

Jim was instantly in trouble.  In total contrast to his full-tanks run on Saturday, his engine coughed badly under acceleration.  He couldn’t believe it.  Perhaps it was a plug or something.  Perhaps it would clear itself over the opening lap.

It did not.  The mis-fire persisted.  Graham had unsurprisingly out-dragged him into Ste Devote and down out of Casino Square, and into Mirabeau and the Station Hairpin, he was all over the BRM.  Out on the seafront, however, and on the fast run through Tabac and towards the Gasworks Hairpin, the BRM pulled away as it was a 2-litre car.

Jim couldn’t understand what was happening.  And so he just drove with the problem, trying to apply the power in different throttle loads – and trying, of course, to find ways of braking so late that he could sustain an attack.

It’s interesting to note, I think, that very, very few reports of the day mention Clark’s problems in this early phase of the race.  Observers and spectators were enthralled, instead, by Jim’s attempts to outbrake Graham and his BRM team-mate, Ritchie Ginther, into the Gasworks Hairpin – and by the BRM drivers always regaining the initiative under acceleration.  It never occurred to reporters that Clark was adjusting his driving in order to compensate for a problem.  They saw Jim hit the cement dust bags protecting a fire hydrant with the left rear wheel on about lap 15 and they put it down to “Clark under pressure”.   They saw Jim throwing the 25 around with armfulls of opposite lock and they just assumed he was having fun…

It was when the engine problem began to go away that Jim worked out for himself what had been happening:  “The trouble stemmed from the two little pipes which stuck up behind my head and above the engine.  These were fuel tank breathers and at the start, with full tanks, they tended to blow excess fuel out of the top whenever I accelerated hard.  This would blow fuel straight back down the injector pipes and thus richen the mixture.  The engine would bang and splutter.  It was murder.  Whenever I was out on my own with no-one around I could scramble through the corners and have the car running properly before anyone noticed but when, in the early phase of the race, I was fighting both Graham and Ritchie, I kept losing places.  I’d pass Ritchie into a corner and then there would be this bubble, bubble, snort, bang and while I was trying to clear the system Richie would pass me again.  Eventually, though, I managed to get with it, pass Ritchie and pull away.  Of course, as the race progressed, less and less fuel came up the breathers and the trouble gradually disappeared.”

Jim was leading easily – just as he had led the FJ race in 1960 and then again the Grand Prix in 1962 – when it all went suddenly, finally, wrong.  Wary of the gear selection trouble that had coloured the early-season races, he was now changing gear nice and precisely, easing the lever into the next slot without any strain.  Suddenly, into Tabac, changing from fourth to third, the gearbox jammed.  He still had drive – in fourth gear – but the gear lever was in “neutral”.  He tried the lever again – and suddenly the car was in second, spinning itself to a standstill in the middle of the Gasworks Hairpin. Declutching did nothing.  The car was locked in second.  Jim’s first reaction was to jump from the 25 and thus to warn a fast-approaching Graham Hill, who at that point was ten seconds behind.  Then, drained, he walked quickly back to the pits.

19069.tif

Thus ended Jim’s first Championship Grand Prix of 1963.  The gearbox problems would continue (both Trevor Taylor and Jack had transmission problems in the race) but Cedric Selzer was not slow in coming up with solution to the fuel mixture issue:  he fitted a motorcycle tap to the cockpit for Spa and gave Jim an instruction he would never forget:  “It’s like a factory.  It opens up and it closes down!”

They had an early night at La Bananeraie:  on Monday, May 27, Colin, Jim and Dan flew from Nice to London on the 6:00am BOAC Comet. From there, via New York and Chicago, they would fly again to Indianapolis.  The 500 would take place on Thursday, May 30.

Captions, from top:  Lap one, Monaco, 1963.  Graham Hill leads for BRM, with Jim lying second in the mis-firing Lotus 25-Climax.  Then come Ritchie Ginther (BRM) and John Surtees (Ferrari);  Jim Clark and Sir John Whitmore compare notes at Le Mans in 1959 while Ian Scott-Watson’s Lotus Elite is given unscheduled attention.  Ian can be seen to the right of Sir John’s legs – and that’s Jabby Crombac with arms folded; Jim shares a laugh with the very excellent Alan Stacey;  La Bananeraie as it is today, now run by the grandson of the of the original owners.  It’s overgrown but Bohemian:  the bulk of the hotel is now an artist’s studio but the bar is still pretty much as it was; F1 cars often split the everyday traffic en route to the track.  This is (I think) Bernard Collomb’s Lotus 24; Louis T Stanley’s shot of Jim aboard the good ship Carribbee after early practice on Friday.  Note the Dunlop race trousers!; the garages around the back of La Bananarie; the bar/restaurant where Team Lotus refreshed in May, 1963; Cedric Selzer (right) and Colin Chapman (checked shirt) shepherd Jim back to the Lotus pit after his retirement. Photos: Sir John Whitmore, Louis T Stanley, LAT Photographic, Peter Windsor Collection

Posted in F1, Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , ,
19 May 2013
16 Comments

Indy: Second Row for rookie Jim Clark

moremsportshistorySilverstone and that dramatic escape behind him, Jim Clark returned to the cauldron they call Indianapolis, this time residing at the Speedway Motel.  He and Dan Gurney were ready to roll on Monday morning – and to apply, therefore, the finishing touches to their all-important qualifying attempts.  If they didn’t make it on this first weekend there would be no Monaco Grand Prix.  It was as simple as that.  And if there was no Monaco Grand Prix, Jim Clark’s 1963 F1 season was going to become unnecessarily tough.  After losing the title in 1962 by a single point, and now having won Pau, Imola and Silverstone in quick succession, he was keen to keep the momentum going.

Jim was delighted to find that Hinchman and Bell were true to their word.  His brand new overalls were, he thought, a little on the gaudy side – but this was Indy; and the race suit, critically, met all the USAC regulations for flame resistance.  Hinchman didn’t seem to be in the business of two-piece suits (of the Dunlop type to which Jim was now accustomed), so this one-piece overall featured a neat little belt with a silver clip-buckle.  Once he’d decided that regular shirts and pullovers were a little too casual, Jim had never worn anything but blue Dunlop overalls – first in one-piece form and, since 1962, with a separate topped tucked into the leggings.  Now, as he tried on the Hinchmans for the first time, he saw in the mirror a completely different person.  The shiny overalls were a base primrose-yellow with mid-blue stripes down the arms, pin-striped in red.  There seemed to be no logic to the colours but he liked them all the same.  His name was embroidered at an angle below the left chest zip pocked and on the right side was a Pure logo.  Jim shrugged and packed the suit into his Leston bag.  He’d wear it in the car but, between runs, he would change quickly back into his sea-island cotton polo and slacks or perhaps his shirt and tie.  He also found a new Pure jacket waiting for him in his hotel room.  He liked it.  It was dark blue – his colour – with blue and white cuffs and collar.   Very Border Reivers.  And the Pure badge was neat and tidy.  Without even thinking about the implications for Esso, he decided then that this jacket would not only be useful at Indy but also in Europe.images

The new Bell Magnum felt only slightly heavier than his Everoak but was considerably thicker all over.  A neat white peak was clipped into place by four big studs – a significant improvement over the strap/stud arrangement that had caused so much trouble at Spa the year before, when the peak on his Everoak had been blown loose by the rush of air at high speed.  Problem was, the Bell was finished in plain silver.  Jim wanted to wear it right away, enabling him to get used to it in the build-up to qualifying.  In the meantime he would see if Bell could prepare another Magnum in dark blue.  It wouldn’t be ready for qualifying but he’d be able to take it back with him to Europe to use at Monaco.

Jim was amazed by the size of the crowd at the Speedway that Monday – and in the days that followed.  More and more, he seemed to be in demand.  Whenever he was in a public area they jumped on him for autographs and in Gasoline Alley the media were all over him.  For the perspective of a fan at the time (albeit 1966), read Don Fitzpatrick’s comment associated with our 1963 Silverstone International Trophy report.

There was a shortage of Halibrand wheels at Indy – itself a function of the trend-setting 15in Firestones being run on the Lotus 29s;  Dan, not completely comfortable with his set-up, spun his blue-and-white car into the wall; and the wind gusted up as Jim’s qualifying run approached:  it was tense and it was time to go to work.

Jim described his qualifying run thus:

“On the day of qualifying there was a fair-sized wind blowing at Indianapolis.  I knew I wouldn’t get another opportunity, and, though quite a number of cars had been out and had failed to qualify because of the conditions, I had to make a real effort.

“It was a tense time, with the wind blowing in 35mph gusts and the car was very twitchy indeed.  Three hours previously I had been going around pretty steadily at about 151.5 mph, and Colin timed one lap at 153 mph;  but these speeds were not possible when I went out for the official trials.

“Dan’s practice crash had caused some embarrassment, because he wrote-off two of the wide-rimmed wheels I was due to use on my car for qualifying.  So I did my qualifying with none of the rims matching – two wide ones on the outside wheels and narrow ones on the inside.

“Anyway, after a few minutes of gritting my teeth and fighting the wind gusts, I eventually managed to qualify at 149.750 mph, which put me in the middle of the second row.tumblr_m1lr6nfOXQ1r53nlzo1_500  You know, it’s amazing what a difference the track temperature and air temperature make to lap speeds at Indianapolis.  I went out one day and couldn’t do anything better than 148 mph.  Colin was trying to sort out the reason, and though he did everything he knew, the car just couldn’t be got round any quicker.  We realized later that the speed was being cut by the heat, and we also realized that at that time all the other drivers had parked their cars away and weren’t troubling to go out.  Local knowledge does help!

“The technique for the lap was relatively straightforward:  I dabbed the brakes going into each turn and had to smack them pretty hard when I had a full load of fuel aboard.  The difficulties about Indianapolis are the lack of distinguishing features around the circuit and the fact that there is no apex on the four turns.”

Jim had made it – and so, in the spare Lotus 29, painted in Jim’s green and yellow colours, had Dan.  They could relax.  And they could begin the rushed trip, with Colin, back to Europe.  Practice for the Monaco Grand Prix would begin on Thursday, May 23.S2530001

Captions from top: Jim, wearing new Hinchmans, in nail-biting mood as he listens to the pre-qualifying drivers’ briefing and draw; Middle: Jim loved the blue-and-white Pure jackets that came with the American oil company’s Indy sponsorship (via its Ford connections).  He wears it here over his Esso-badged blue Dunlops!; Above right: the official Indianapolis portrait of Jim Clark; Above: Jim, in the new silver Bell Magnum, after qualifying the Lotus 29 on the second row.  Around him, from left to right, are Colin Chapman, Jim Endruweit, David Lazenby and Colin Riley 

Pictures: Indianapolis Motor Speedway; Peter Windsor Collection; LAT Photographic

Posted in Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , ,
11 May 2013
7 Comments

High Fives for Clark at Silverstone

moremsportshistoryFirst, though, the build-up to that May 11, 1963, 15th International Trophy Race:

Indianapolis became a steep learning-curve as the month of May gathered pace.  As well as embracing the ways of the idiosyncratic Speedway, and all that comes with it, Team Lotus faced the additional problems of being newcomers amongst the old guard, of initiating the winds of profound technical change and of trying many all-new components thus related.  Like big, aluminium, 4.2 litre Ford Fairlane V8 engines.  And Firestone tyres.  And Halibrand wheels.  And asymmetric suspension.  And seat belts.  And, yes, Bell Magnum helmets.

For most of the month of May, Jim, Colin Chapman and David Phipps, the talented photo-journalist, stayed in the house of Rodger Ward, the 1959 and 1962 Indy winner.   The days were relaxed by European racing standards, beginning with early morning tests, lunch work, more afternoon laps and then late-ish nights with the mechanics after early evening meals.   The issues were many:  the Dunlop D12s were quicker (Dan Gurney had lapped his Lotus 29 at 150mph while Jim was racing in Europe) but the Firestones were more durable.  With one pit stop to the roadsters’ two or three, Lotus could enjoy a big advantage even before the race was underway.  To achieve that, however, they needed to run the less grippy Firestones.

This, in turn, caused a furore.  Firestone built special tyres for Lotus around 15in wheels but then quickly found themselves under pressure from the Americans, who also expected the same, larger, footprint tyres for their roadsters (which normally ran 18in wheels).  AJ Foyt in particular took umbrage.  Expecting Firestone to be swamped, he approached Goodyear about using their stock car (NASCAR) tyres.  They agreed.  And, with that, the great Akron company began its single-seater racing history.

The switch to Firestones had additional implications for Jim.  Until now, he had worn at Indy his regular, light blue, two-piece Dunlop overalls, complete with Esso and BRDC badges.  With Ford’s engine supply now requiring the Lotus 29s to use Pure fuel and lubricants, those overalls were obviously redundant.  What to do?  Dan introduced Jim to Lew Hinchman, the local owner of a large garment and uniform factory.  Lew, whose father, JB,  built fire-retardant overalls for many of the American drivers, was in the process of making a dark blue, Ford-logo’d one-piece suit for Dan.  Why not make one for Jim, too?  Jim was measured up in the sweaty Team Lotus garage one lunch break (air-conditioning units were forbidden by the Speedway Safety Police due to the WWII-spec wiring in the garages!) and Jim was told that the overalls would be ready for the first week of qualifying.  Dan also pointed Jim in the direction of the Bell Helmets race rep.  Dan had been using a leather-edged McHal for a couple of years, and loved it.  Even so, he was impressed with the new Magnum. And so here was a chance for Jim to put his trusty Everoak out to pasture.  Jim examined the new silver helmet and decided to try it in the build-up to qualifying.  For Silverstone, next weekend, he would nonetheless race with the Everoak – for the last time, as it turned out.

Between runs in this leisurely week at Indy, Jim also had time to shape-up his travel schedule for the following weeks.  It would go something like this:

Tue, May 7: return to England (via Chicago). Pick up Lotus-Cortina at Heathrow. Drive to Silverstone. Check in to Green Man hotel. Thur-Fri-Sat: International Trophy F1 race, Silverstone. Sat, May 11: immediately after the race, fly with Colin and Dan Gurney to Heathrow in Colin’s Miles Messenger. Take flight to Chicago via New York. Change at Chicago for Indy. Check in to Speedway Motel. Begin testing Monday morning. Sat, May 18: Indy qualifying.  Leave Sunday, May 19, for London. Stay with Sir John Whitmore in Belgravia. Two days at the factory at Cheshunt. Wed, May 22 : fly to Nice from Heathrow. Check in to La Bananerie at Eze sur Mer. Thur, May 23-Sun May 26:  Monaco GP. Mon, May 27:  leave at 4:00am for London. Take flight to Chicago and then on to Indy. Thur, May 30: Indy 500. Fri, May 31: fly to Toronto and then drive on to Mosport. Sat, June 1: Players’ 200 sports car race (with Al Pease’s Lotus 23). Drive afterwards to Toronto. Take evening flight to London. Mon, June 3: Whitmonday Crystal Palace sports car race (Normand Lotus 23B). Wed, June 5: Leave London with Colin for Spa (Belgian GP).

In other words:  phew!  There was of course no internet back then; transatlantic phone calls were both a novelty and expensive.  Communications with the UK were via telexes and telegrams. Flight bookings were handled by Andrew Ferguson’s office in Cheshunt but re-arranged in the US by David Phipps.  And the tickets, of course, were big, carbon-copied wads of coupons. Jim’s black leather briefcase was literally jammed to the hilt.

There was little time, though, as one Indy issue followed another, to wonder if it would all be feasible.  If Jim didn’t qualify on the first weekend, for example – what would happen?  Would he miss Monaco or would he foresake Indy?  Given the powers behind the Indy effort – Ford, Firestone, etc – probably it would be Monaco.  For now, though, it was heads-down:  there was not a moment to spare – or even to think about the bigger problem.

In the midst of all this, Silverstone turned out to be a golden Saturday to be forever savoured. Thursday and Friday, by contrast, were best forgotten.  Dunlop were pushing R6 development to new frontiers;  Jim, as at Snetterton, found the Lotus 25 to be all over the place on the new tyres.  On a cold and windy Thursday, jet lag or no, he couldn’t find anything approaching a sweet spot with the car – and this was with exactly the chassis (R5) in which he’d been so quick at Aintree (on R5s).  He was only fifth that Thursday, focusing as he was on trying to make the car work just through Stowe and Club.   If he could find a balance there, he reasoned, then he could probably make up for deficiencies over the rest of the lap.

The mechanics – Jim Endruweit, Cedric Selzer Dick Scammell, Derek Wilde and the boys – worked through to six o’clock on Friday morning, rebuilding Jim’s car with yet another set-up change.   Perhaps, in addition, the rebuild might uncover a more fundamental chassis fault…

To no avail.  Saturday was cold and wet;  as all-weather as the new Dunlops undoubtedly were, little could be learned about a dry-weather balance.  The grid therefore being defined by Thursday’s times, Jim tried team-mate Trevor Taylor’s car for a few laps.  A spin at Copse capped an unremarkable day.  Innes Ireland, what’s more, would start from the pole in the BRP Lotus 24-BRM – a chassis that Jim had always liked.  Graham Hill was second in his trusty 1961/62 BRM, Bruce McLaren third in the new works Cooper and Jack Brabham fourth in his BT3, his engine down on power after a rushed rebuild.  Poor Dan Gurney had flown over with Jim from Indy but for him there would be no F1 debut with Brabham:  there was a dire shortage of Climax engines in this build up to the season proper, highlighted by Jack’s frequent runs up and down to Coventry.  Jack was more than ready to let Dan race the one and only BT3 at Silverstone but a short test at Goodwood confirmed that Dan was much too tall for Jack’s cockpit.  He would have to wait until Monaco to drive his tailor-made car.

This race was also notable for the appearance of the new 1963 Ferraris driven by John Surtees and Willy Mairesse.  Powered by regular V6 engines (with V8s rumoured to be on the way), the new cars showed glimpses of promise amidst predictable teething troubles.  This would be Surtees’ first F1 race for the Scuderia (and his first F1 race of the season;  the beautiful Lola GT, a forerunner of the 1964 Ford GT and a car with which Surtees had been closely involved form the outset, also had its maiden appearance this Silverstone weekend.  In a portent of the drama that was to explode three years later, Big John practiced the Lola on Thursday but was then forbidden by Ferrari from racing it on Saturday, even though the Sports Car Race was the last event of the day.  John appointed Tony Maggs in his place;  the South African started from the back of the grid and finished an excellent ninth.)

After Thursday’s all-nighter, and given the slight repairs that needed to be made to Trevor’s car after Jim’s spin, Colin decreed late on Friday afternoon that the boys should not overdo it.  “Just put everything back to standard on both cars.  Try to finish by nine. Get an early night.”

This they attempted.  After packing the 25s back into the transporter and driving it to their regular garage on the outskirts of Towcester, they race-prepared the cars to standard spec before repairing to their hotel, the Brave Old Oak, in time for a half-past-nine drink at the bar.   A “quick drink” then evolved into an all-nighter of a different kind – the liquid kind.  Come Saturday morning, as the bleary-eyed Team Lotus crew hustled their transporter through the early-race traffic, all the talk was of the blonde girl who worked behind the bar…Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden attended the 1963 International Trophy;  and the weather doffed its cap. A warm spring sun quickly replaced early cloud.  One hundred thousand spectators poured through Silverstone’s gates, filling the grandstands and the grass banks right around the circuit.  The British Grand Prix may have been but a couple of months in the future – here, at Silverstone – but the fans could not get enough.  A clear example of how less is definitely not more – providing the product is right. In the Team Lotus transporter, between laughs, Jim Clark reflected on the good news:  today they would forget the R6s.  They’d race R5s.  Dunlop wouldn’t like it but there you go.  A race is a race.A masterpiece of a race.  Jim started on the second row but was quickly up to second place, trailing his friend Bruce McLaren for a couple of laps before slicing past and pulling away.   Suddenly he had a Lotus 25 around him.  Suddenly he had balance and feel when on Thursday he been obliged to drive mainly on reflex, dumbing the understeer with induced flick oversteer.  Now he was four-wheel-drifting the 25 through Copse, Becketts, Stowe and Club.  Now he was using every inch of road through Woodcote and again past the pits, making the art of ten-tenths driving look sublimely simple.

18609.tifHe won it – and he won it with ease.  It was a Clark Classic on the old R5s in Lotus 25/R5.  Bruce finished second and Trevor drove well to make it a Team Lotus one-three.  Innes, quick all weekend, finished fourth – but not before recovering from a big spin at Woodcote, the thick tyre smoke of which effectively ushered-in a new era – the era of the soft-compound Dunlop R6.  Never before had rubber been so burnable – or so sticky.   Innes revolved the 24 at high speed – probably on oil dropped by the Surtees Ferrari, which eventually retired – but kept the car on the Ireland.  A few years before, the odds of that happening would have been too small even to contemplate.   Now, if we can combine those new grip levels with more compliant sidewalls, thought Jim and Colin, then we’ll definitely have a race tyre…

It was a fun day, too.  Sir John Whitmore was again magnificent in the Cooper S;  Mike Beckwith won his class with the Normand Lotus 23B;  Jack Sears scored the first of his many wins with the big Ford Galaxie – a car that Jim had driven over at Indy, when he was filling in some time one quiet day at the Speedway; Jim in Galaxy '62Graham Hill won the GT race in John Coombs’ lightweight E-Type; and Denny Hulme again won the Formula Junior race in the factory Brabham, just beating David Hobbs and Paul Hawkins.  Earlier that week, Jack himself had driven the FJ car, helping Denny with set-up and with a few circuit pointers.  Then there was the business with the Miles Messenger.  Racing over, Jim and Dan piled into the cramped four-seat cockpit; bags were stuffed into the small luggage compartment (no room for the trophy!); Colin fired up the DeHaviland Gipsy engine, opened the throttle…and nothing happened.  The old four-seater remained bogged in the Stowe mud, its wheels intransigent.   Out jumped an amused Silverstone winner and his buddy, Dan  – and off, in a lighter Miles, set Colin.  Even as the little aeroplane was gathering speed, Jim and Dan were scambling aboard.

Four connections and 4,000 miles later, the two Team Lotus friends were at Indy, ready to test on a warm Monday morning.

Captions from top:  Dan Gurney, in new Hinchmans, Colin Chapman and Jim Clark, still in Dunlop blues, talk wheels and tyres early in the Indy month of May;  Jim fingertips 25/R5 out of Becketts en route to victory; late in ’62 Jim had fun at the Speedway with a road-going Mercury Monterey.  Images: LAT Photographic, Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For more on Hinchman overalls: http://hinchmanracewear.com

Posted in Days Past, F1, Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
27 Apr 2013
7 Comments

Clark brilliant at Aintree

18303.tifJim Clark’s 1963 racing schedule now begins to gather real pace.  The back-to-back early-season European non-championship F1 races behind him, Jim returns to the farm for a couple of days before driving the 225 miles down to Liverpool for his third non-title F1 race of the season, the Aintree 200. (Jim will drive approximately 40,000 road miles in 1963.)  At Edington Mains there is always farm work with which to keep abreast but in addition there is plenty of racing-related admin, the relevant papers of which he files in his red leather desk folder.  A good example of Jim’s meticulous attention to detail can be seen in his correspondence with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Although the Team Lotus entries and surrounding paperwork are handled by Andrew Ferguson and – for Indy, 1963, also by David Phipps, the tall photo-journalist who had become a close friend of Colin Chapman – Jim receives a personal letter from the Speedway’s Henry Banks, inviting him to take part in an upcoming race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Bearing in mind that the FIA inter-change between drivers licenced to different sanctioning bodies was a brand new thing in America, Henry’s letter to Jim, detailing an “all-comers’” race on April 28, in retrospect seems logical.  The exact description of the event – “a 300-mile race for American-manufactured cars in the improved touring category (or what would later be known as NASCAR’s Yankee 300!)” – obviously catches Jim’s attention because his written reply is as follows: “Unfortunately, like Dan Gurney and Jack Brabham, I am flying back and forth between Europe and America at the moment and on that particular date we are scheduled to race at Aintree here in Britain…”

As he sits at his desk, Jim also takes stock of his upcoming schedule.  Hectic travel is of course not new to him:  early in 1961 he competed in three New Zealand internationals before embarking on his European season – and he had finished that year, and begun 1962, with four South African races, an outing at Daytona in a Lotus Elite and then a one-off race in a Lotus 21 in Sandown Park, Australia.  What now lay ahead, however, takes him into new territory.  Following Saturday’s Aintree 200, Jim and Colin will fly immediately back to Indy via Chicago (Jim’s third trip to the States since January).  There they will continue to run the Lotus 29s at the Speedway before returning on May 7, with Dan Gurney now joining the group, to race at Silverstone in the Daily Express Trophy meeting.   Then it will be back to Indy again, this time for qualifying, before flying back for the Monaco and European GP on May 26.  (Assuming Jim qualifies on the first weekend, that is:  if rain intervenes, or they run into problems, Jim would then have to miss Monaco in order to qualify at Indy on the second weekend.)  Following Monaco, he, Dan and Colin will then fly back to Indy for the race the following Thursday (Memorial Day).  Jim will then drive to Mosport to race in the Players 200 two days later, catch a Toronto flight to London that night and race at Crystal Palace, in the Normand Lotus 23B, on June 3 (Whitmonday).  Nor will there be a break after that, for the Belgian GP at Spa is scheduled for the weekend of June 7-8-9.

Jim takes all of this merely as part of his job.  Comets and Boeing 707s make flying more fun than it had been in the turbo-prop days – and economy seats are relatively wide and relatively long.  You can actually sleep on a trans-Atlantic flight – and the immediate necessity to have to drive a racing car does away with jet lag.  Beyond that, Jim’s parents had never wanted him to race.  Now, with this sort of schedule, and with reasonable chances ahead of him for some good results, he can at least justify racing as a profession from which he can earn a living.

Aintree is bathed in sunshine on Friday, April 26 – and Jim, running the Lucas fuel-injected Lotus 25, feels as good in the car as he had at Pau and Imola.  Compared with the carburettored 25 of 1962, the fuel-injected 25 provides a more useable power band, particularly at low revs. The new short-stroke Climax engine can also be revved higher, additionally enhancing torque and power. The biggest talking-point in the Team Lotus truck is actually of the ZF gearbox and the ongoing problem of the thing jumping out of gear (a subject Colin Chapman prefers his drivers not to mention to the press!).  The root cause of the issue is that the ZF was basically a four-speed gearbox adapted to take an extra cog. The welds, reduced to a minimum, habitually came away from the spline.Trevor Taylor’s car occasionally runs a strong, heavier Colotti five-speed gearbox but Chapman does not want to compromise weight on the number one Clark car. He continues to work away with pencil drawings whenever he has a spare moment but an ultimate fix will not achieved until new ZF gearboxes, with the selector mechanism on the side of the gearbox, are fitted for 1964.  For now, Jim spends so much time wondering if the 25 is going to jump out of top that he begins to develop a one-handed driving style, steering with the left hand and holding the car in gear with his right. Jim also has reservations about the new Dunlop R6s. He hadn’t liked them at Snetterton, where the 25 had felt more skittish than at any time in its life – and he had used last year’s R5s (based on the older D9 and D12 tyres) at Pau and Imola.  He would do so again at Aintree but Dunlop are keen to try a new version of the R6 at Silverstone in two weeks’ time.   (Talking about Snetterton, Jim is a little surprised to see Denis “Jenks” Jenkinson write in the latest edition of Motor Sport that Graham Hill had won in the wet there because “Jim Clark was out of practice, Hill having raced in Australia and New Zealand over the winter.”  So Jim’s endless testing of the Lotus 29 hadn’t counted?

Jim is easily fastest on Aintree Friday, loving the circuit on which he had won the British GP in 1962 – and the 1962 Aintree 200 (in the Lotus 24:  he had also been quick in the wet at Aintree in 1961, before the Lotus 21 blew an oil pipe.). Strangely, though, he looks unfamiliar in the Lotus 25 on Friday, wearing, as he is, the older, 1961-spec, smaller-eyepiece, goggles he’d last worn at Zandvoort in 1962.  For race day, Jim switches to his customary wide-lens Panoramas (with black tape across the top-third of the lens).  Still he wears his trusty, stone-nicked dark blue, peakless Everoak.1963 BARC 200.

Despite the unchanged R5s, Jim’s pole time had been 1.2 sec faster than his fastest practice lap at the British GP the previous July. Jack Brabham is second, 0.8 sec slower in his 1962 BT3, but non-starts when his Climax engine throws a piston late on Friday. (This failure has the knock-on effect of delaying the completion of Dan Gurney’s new Brabham for the Daily Express Trophy, ensuring that Dan will remain a frustrated spectator after the long flight over from Indy. It is probably because of some of these dramas, and because Dan had initiated the Lotus Indy programme in the first place, that Colin Chapman will have no compunction about lending Jack Brabham a Lotus 25 for the Monaco GP a few weeks later.)

Graham Hill, who at Aintree is still in his 1962-spec BRM, is 0.8 sec quicker than he’d been the previous July – but slower than Innes Ireland, who is very fast in the Goodwood-winning BRP Lotus 24-BRM. Ireland qualifies third, Hill fourth and Ritchie Ginther fifth, equaling his team-leader’s time in the second BRM. Trevor, again in gearbox trouble, will start from the inside of the third row in the carburettored Lotus 25.

What should have been a Clark walkover under leaden skies on Saturday turns out to be one of the best races of the 1963 season. The record crowd at the famous Grand National venue can hardly believe it when Jim Clark’s hand goes up at the start and the field swarms around him.  With the 25’s battery completely flat, Jim is totally helpless. Ted Woodley and the boys push the car over to the pits, fit a new battery – and the car starts perfectly.  Jim leaves the pits even as the field is well into its second lap.

Clark drives brilliantly in these early stages but clearly the car still isn’t right.  A fuel-injection-related mis-fire comes and goes.  Trevor, meanwhile, is running fifth and looking good.18316.tif

On lap 16 Colin Chapman thus makes the sort of decision that even the most hardened of Team Principals always dread:  he pulls in both of his drivers and instructs them to swap cars. (I spoke only a couple of days ago to Anita Taylor, Trevor’s sister, about this. “Trevor was only too ready to oblige,” she said. “Of course he wanted to win. He was also a friend of Jimmy’s, a colleague, a huge admirer. If Chapman thought it was best for the team, Trevor went along with it. He was that sort of man.”)

It is a beautifully-orchestrated manoeuvre.  Jim comes in first and is ready, waiting, as Trevor screams to a halt. Out jumps Trevor and quickly Ted Woodley swaps seats. In slides Jim. He has the rear Dunlops alight before Ted is even clear of the car.

So Jim Clark is now in Lotus 25 Number 4 and Trevor in Lotus 25 Number 3. Out in front, Ritchie Ginther gives best to Graham after taking an early lead; Innes is third, followed by Bruce McLaren in the new 1963 Cooper 66-Climax.

Jim Clark then produces a supreme display of class driving, perfectly-balancing the carburettored 25 through Aintree’s medium-speed corners, blipping the throttle on the slow ones to keep the revs in the useable band. He works his way back to an eventual third place.  His lap times are consistent to within tenths; his fastest lap – a staggering 1min 51.8sec – is 0.6 quicker than his pole time and a full 1.8sec quicker than his pole lap at the British GP in ’62.  This in a car with the 1962-spec, 175bhp engine.

Afterwards, Jim says simply this:  “I really enjoyed this race – even though I didn’t win it;  I enjoyed it more than a number of the Grand Prix events I was to drive during the season.”

Graham Hill wins Aintree (from Innes Ireland, Jim/Trevor, Ritchie, Bruce, Chris Amon in the Reg Parnell Lola and Trevor/Jim) – wins his second F1 race since clinching the championship only four months before; and Graham wins the Saloon Car race, too, again heading the Jaguar 3.8 battle featuring Roy Salvadori and Mike Salmon.  Jack Sears wins his class in a Ford Cortina GT;  Sir John Whitmore wins the Mini division;  Roy Salvadori leads home Innes Ireland in the big sports car event (Cooper Monaco, Lotus 19); our friend Mike Beckwith wins his class with the 1600 Normand Lotus 23B;  Pete Arundell and Paul Hawkins head the 1100 Lotus 23 class; and Denny Hulme, a new rising star from New Zealand, brilliantly wins a wet Formula Junior race in the new Brabham (from Frank Gardner, Pete Arundell and Mike Spence).

With no vested interest other than as a guy who loves motor racing, Bruce McLaren has this to say about Denny’s win:  “For a driver who professes not to be particularly good in the wet, I thought fellow-New Zealander, Denny Hulme’s win in the works Brabham FJ was very good.  For a couple of years he ran his own FJ Cooper as a privateer with very little outside assistance, and he did much better than anyone expected.  18297.tifHe is now being trained in the Brabham tradition by building, working on, and developing his own car.  He works in the Brabham racing shop under Jack’s watchful eye and his fine drive in the rain at Aintree was the result – his first really big win for some time, and a most convincing one at that.”   No surprise, really, that Bruce would sign Denny to his McLaren F1 team some five years later.

And, about Jim Clark’s performance at Aintree, Bruce is unequivocal: “It is interesting to note the way that Jim Clark is taking over the Moss role in motor racing.  After practice at Aintree on the Friday, a certain well-known driver said to me, ‘I’m very pleased with my car – very pleased indeed.  I’m only half a second slower than Clark’.  There was a time when the proud phrase ‘only just slower than…’ just had to refer to Stirling Moss.”

Note:  driver-swapping would continue through to 1964, when Jim took over Mike Spence’s Lotus 33 at the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.

Images:  LAT Photographic

Captions Top: Jim Clark dances with the throttle in Trevor Taylor’s carburettored 25. Middle: Jim in the early phase of the race in his own, fuel-injected 25. Bottom:  Denny Hulme made his name by winning the wet Aintree FJ race 1963aintree200   

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