I took this shot of Frank Williams and Ayrton Senna shortly before Ayrton’s first F1 drive – his Williams FWO8C test at Donington in July, 1983. There was no thought of an official “media announcement” or anything like that – both of them actually needed quite a lot of persuasion to pose by the race truck! Note Ayrton’s Porsche t-shirt
It was Spa – the old Spa. And it was wet. Atrociously wet. Thus Jim Clark scored his first World Championship win of 1963
And so they went to Spa. Jim traditionally stayed at the Val d’Ambleve near Stavelot and did so in 1963: the 25s would be towed to and from the paddock area every day. Jim flew with Colin Chapman and Trevor Taylor on D-Day, June 6. The Ardennes forest had nineteen years before been ablaze with the Battle of the Bulge. Practice at Spa would begin on Friday.
In the Clark track bag: his new, dark blue Bell Magnum helmet and rounded bubble visor Bell had given to him at Indy. All previous visors used by Jim had been attached to his Herbert Johnson or Everoak helmets by a crude strap and a single stud. After last year (1962), when the rush of air down the Masta straight had actually loosened Jim’s regular white helmet peak, obliging him to rip it off one-handed whilst winning the race, Jim was delighted to see that the new Bell visor was fastened by three big pop-on studs. With rain always on the agenda at Spa, this would be the perfect try-out. Left in the bag, therefore, was the white Bell peak he had used at Indy, Mosport and Crystal Palace (ready for Dan Gurney to borrow!). If it was dry, he would just run the helmet without the peak. If it was wet, and providing he liked it in practice, he would try the bubble visor.
Lotus had another airflow development, too: Colin’s latest idea involved a a large opening at the front of the screen and a lip on the cockpit surround. This would channel air up and over the driver, reducing buffeting and allowing the windscreen to be cut lower, thereby improving visibility. Again, the high-speed Spa circuit was the obvious venue on which to try the new device. In the dry, in 1962, Jim had won at an average of 133.98 mph – this on a lap that included a 40mph mid-corner speed at La Source hairpin. With more power from the flat-crank Climax, more grip from the Dunlop R6s and some significant re-surfacing, lap speeds – and top speeds – would be higher still in 1963.
It is hard to imagine today what it was actually like at Spa back then – out there on the old circuit, on a thin ribbon of public road bordered by such routine items as telegraph poles, phone boxes, concrete marker posts, sheer drops, clusters of trees and stone-walled houses. The drivers didn’t wear seat belts; the cars rattled and shook; and Jim, in the monocoque Lotus 25, was lying at about 25 deg to horizontal, his rear-vision mirrors right back near his helmet line so that he had some sort of angle of view. To see clearly in them, however, he had to turn his head consciously from side to side. This was another reason he avoided the helmet peak for Spa.
The right foot was held flat, hard down on the throttle, for minutes on end, even though the road was in reality only straight into and out of La Source, down the hill past the pits and on the sections of road immediately before and after the famous Masta kink (which was also taken flat in fifth – or sixth if you were a Ferrari or Richie Ginther trying BRM’s new six-speeder). The rest of the time, the drivers were threading their F1 cars through the needle, using all the road, accelerator against the stops. The lap length was 8.76 miles and the lap time was just under four minutes – or just over it, if you were Phil Hill in the new, disastrous, ATS, or Tony Settember in the new American F1 entry – the Scirocco-BRM.
After the simplicity of of the 23 at Crystal Palace, the 25 around Spa initially felt appalling. The high-speed oversteer was frightening…and still the dreaded ZF transmission kept jumping out of gear. Mid-corner.
Adding to the feeling of foreboding on the circuit that Jim had hated since his first appearance there, in 1958, when Archie Scott-Brown had lost his life, and then 1960, when both Alan Stacey and Chris Bristow had been killed in Jim’s second F1 race, Trevor Taylor was also in trouble in the second 25. After finally discovering that his car had been running only on two-thirds throttle at Monaco and then in first practice at Spa, Trevor would be dispatched from the pit lane on Saturday with a rear suspension bolt still lose. Unsurprisingly, he crashed heavily when the rear wheel suddenly canted inwards. A stone marshals’ post took the impact; Trevor, amazingly, was able to step free with a badly torn thigh muscle. Hero that he was, Trevor still started the race on Sunday in the spare 25.
Jim’s car felt little better on Saturday. I think this was one of the first examples of Jim not giving 100 per cent until he really needed to do so: Spa was dangerous enough as it was without having to stretch the limit in practice. He would always give his maximum in the race but in practice, until he was comfortable, particularly at Spa, he would leave some margin. As a last resort, as it turned out, Cedric Selzer and the boys fitted to Jim’s car the gearbox from Trevor’s crashed 25.
In between times, Jim tried the new aeroscreen (which he liked) and the bubble visor (which he didn’t); it’s convex shaped distorted his peripheral vision. He would revert, wet or dry, to his regular Panorama goggles and he would try the aeroscreen again at Zandvoort, at the Dutch GP.
Jim qualified only seventh at Spa after those two days of practice. Graham Hill was on the pole for BRM, with Dan Gurney alongside him in his new Brabham.
Then, third quickest, came the fiery Belgian, Willy Mairesse, playing the number two role to John Surtees at Ferrari. They formed up on a wet track.
As at Indy, I can do no better now that to hand over to Jim himself, this time as told to Graham Gauld in Jim Clark at the Wheel:
“I was right behind Willy on the grid. This set me thinking that he was inclined to be exuberant, to say the least, and that in his home race he would be rather anxious. I reasoned that a combination of an anxious Willy trying to take a Ferrari off the line in the wet at Spa was going to be exciting and that he might not take too good a job of it. I knew that if I got a good start I would have to take him on the pits side even if it meant going across the yellow baulk line. All this ran through my mind, sitting there, so that by the time the starter had raised his flag I had the Lotus on right lock and the clutch ready to bite. The flickered and came down, I let in the clutch with a bang, scooted forward and to the right of Willy, who, as I thought, was standing still with spray being sent up in the air by his spinning wheels. He just stood there without moving an inch. Mine was a legitimate start, but I didn’t expect, in my enthusiasm, to lead everyone away from the start from the front row but this is exactly what happened. As I went into Eau Rouge I glanced in the mirror and saw Graham Hill grimly on my tail and just pressed on. As I said earlier, it was wet and I enjoy driving in the wet, but, after all, this was Spa, and I kept well within my limits.
“At the end of the opening lap Graham was still on my tail but I didn’t know until later that we had both left everyone else behind and we had a ten-second lead. We stayed this way for quite a while and then I began to get the old gearbox trouble again. It started dropping out of top and on Spa this is not funny. You wind the car up to, say, 9,500rpm on the straight when suddenly all hell is let loose and you make a grab at the lever and pull it back into gear before you put the revs right off the clock. Once this happens you start waiting for it to happen again. By now, the problem was becoming acute. Here I was, with Graham Hill still on my tail, with a gearbox which threatened to do something nasty at any moment. I decided to drop 300rpm through the Masta kink for safety’s sake but I was still doing about 150mph. This meant that, as I approached the kink, I would be holding the gear lever in place with my right hand and moving my left hand down to the bottom of the steering wheel. 
I did this because the car has a nasty tendency on this kink to move from one side of the road to the other and I often needed correction. By keeping my hand low on the wheel I could twirl the steering wheel round with one hand and hold the slide – but doing this for lap after lap was not funny.”
Jim still retained the lead. Graham Hill faded and then retired. As another precaution, Jim began to take fifth gear corners in fourth, luxuriating in the feel of being to hold the wheel with both hands.
Then, in true John Frankenheimer fashion, the rain grew more intense. Visibility disappeared. Standing water drowned the valley. Jim added a full three minutes to his lap times..but still pulled away.
This is how Bruce McLaren described the downpour in Autosport the following week:
“The rain was bouncing two or three feet off the road. We were crawling around in the spray – and, for once, it was just as bad in the pit area, so the crews could appreciate how bad it was on the rest of the circuit. The mechanics were sheltering under their signal boards but, with two laps to go, I saw mine pointing excitedly down the road in a fashion that said ‘you’re catching someone. Get with it!’
“So I got with it, and, in another half lap, I could make out two huge palls of spray – two racing cars ploughing along in front of me. There was so much spray that it was hard to tell how far they were ahead, but I knew that one would be Jim, who had lapped me earlier, and I guessed that the other would be the second-place man, Dan in the Brabham. As I got passed the first conglomeration of steam and spray I was that indeed it was Dan. I passed Jim further up the hill, just in case that it was him that my pit had been referring to, but by now he had backed off considerably, so I guessed that it wasn’t. By passing Jim I gave myself an extra lap to do and he received the chequered flag behind me as I went on to complete the lap and take second place.” (This result actually put Bruce into the lead of the 1963 Drivers’ Championship and Cooper on top of the Constructors’ table.)
Bruce began that column thus:
“Relaxing on one of those after-race mornings with a cup of coffee on the patio of our hotel at Stavelot” (Jim’s hotel) “with the sun shining brilliantly and the birds feeling like Jim Clark and consequently singing…it was difficult to imagine that the previous afternoon we had driven though the worst thunderstorms I’d ever seen, let alone raced in.”
Jim was relieved to win – relieved to have survived. Both Tony Rudd (BRM) and Chapman (of course) had pleaded with the organizers to stop the race; Rudd had even sprinted across the track in order to speak to the Clerk of the Course face-to-face. Their requests had been denied. Jim stepped from the 25 smeared in oil, his blue Dunlops sodden. He quickly changed into dark chinos, a polo shirt and his Pure jacket (never mind the Esso sponsorship!). On the podium, up above the old pits, by the control tower, his wet hair slicked backwards, he cradled the traditional Spa bouquet. This was the first Grand Prix he had won more than once. A cup of tea – in the Esso caravan, of course! – was very much in order.
Zandvoort, two weeks later, was next on Jim’s agenda. There was at last time to return to London for a couple of days of fun – and then to see what was happening up on the farm.
Images: LAT Photographic; Peter Windsor Collection Captions from top: Jim streams past the pits in the late-race deluge; the Val d’Ambleve as it is today – little changed but for a very nice-looking timber extension out the back; Jim tried the Bell Bubble and the new aeroscreen during dry practice; another shot of the new visor/windscreen – note the carburettored spare 25 in the background. Trevor Taylor would race this after his practice shunt; side view of the new aeroscreen – note thicker, rather odd-looking “Team Lotus” signwriting, probably a result of this entire new top section being prepared in a rush at the factory; while Jim Clark began a long streak of peakless races at Spa, Dan Gurney used a standard Bell white peak in this race instead of his regular black; the exit of the Masta kink as it is today; modern F1 drivers, if they do see the old circuit, cannot imagine that this was a part of it all; Bruce McLaren and the Cooper team in their Stavelot garage on a practice night. That’s Eoin Young on the right: Eoin was Bruce’s right-hand-man and Autosport ghost-writer. Now retired in his native New Zealand, he became one of the world’s pre-eminent motoring journalists
Capping a hectic triple-header, Jim Clark wins for Normand Racing at Crystal Palace
It was remarkably straightforward, even for 1963. The Boeing 707 carrying Jim, Sir John Whitmore, Graham Hill and Stirling Moss touched down at London airport on the morning of Sunday, June 2 – and Jim and John repaired quickly to John’s Mayfair flat for a wash and change. Jim usually slept well on planes, particularly if he could find four free seats in economy, and this flight was no exception. Sunday was a free day – a day to regroup, to catch up and to enjoy England. Tracks from Please Please Me were constantly being played on the radio. I Saw Her Standing There; Twist and Shout; A Taste of Honey. The newspapers were full of Christine Keeler and the Profumo affair. Chris Amon had said he knew someone who knew Christine… Now, on this Sunday, he was delighted to be home, even if he wasn’t on the farm.
His Leston track bag packed with fresh Dunlops, his new blue Magnum and Westovers, Jim joined Sir John for the short drive to Crystal Palace in John’s Ford Zephyr early the following morning. Jim was entered in the Normand Lotus 23B for the main race on this Bank Holiday Whitmonday (the sports car race counting for the Autosport Trophy), and John would be back again in his works Austin-Cooper. Both did well in morning practice. Jim, feted as something of an “Indianapolis hero”, qualified the 23 on the front row, beaten only by the much more powerful Tommy Atkins Cooper Monaco of Roy Salvadori. John, too, was very sideways and very quick in the Austin-Cooper.
Thirty thousand people flocked to the Palace for the afternoon’s racing (entrance: five shillings for adults, two shillings for children), enticed by the presence of the reigning World Champion, Graham Hill (3.8 Jaguar), Jim Clark, Trevor Taylor, Jack Sears (Ford Galaxie), the best Mini racers in Europe and Salvadori. This was, too, the tenth anniversary of Crystal’s re-opening since WWII. The Indy 500 had not been shown on British TV (as in 2013!) but word of Jim’s brilliance had filtered through via the daily papers.
The atmosphere at this British Automobile Racing Club (BARC) international was relaxed and homely. Indy, thought Jim, as he stood on a balcony overlooking the pit lane, officials below him in cloth caps, tweed jackets and ties, seemed much more than an ocean away – as did Mosport. Here, at this lovely little circuit, full of fast corners and undulations, all was in order, all was as it should be. The 23 in Canada had been a handful. The Normand 23Bs, overseen by Mike Beckwith, were immaculate. The car was a delight to drive. And there – over there – there was Autosport’s photographer, George Phillips. He’d watch out for George during the race and give the 23 a bit of a tweak just to see if he was awake. And who is this, standing with David Hobbs, Bill Bradley and the boys over at the MRP (Midland Racing Partnership) Formula Junior truck? She looks nice…
Jim sauntered over, signing an autograph or two for the polite British enthusiasts.
“Jim! Brilliant job at Indy! Jim – have you met Sally Stokes…?”
Sally, the fashion model daughter of a military father, was at Crystal with friends in support of her local racing team (MRP). She knew Bill, David and Richard Attwood. Now she knew Jim Clark.
Jim made a better start than Salvo but the 2.7 litre Cooper-Climax ate the 1.6 litre twin-cam 23B for an early lunch as they hit the longer gears. Jim fell into second place. Trevor initially filled his mirror with his red ARS (Auto Racing Service) 23 – but then it was Mike, driving beautifully and quickly, who made it a Normand two-three. Trevor spun – and would spin again, late in the race, after a driving frantically back to fourth from P10. Jim inherited a win when Salvadori’s Cooper lost its gears with ten laps to go. Mike finished an excellent second and Keith Greene, of Gilby fame, finished third; Keith would go on to become Team Manager of the F1 Brabham team.
The Minis were outstanding. Sir John won the blast but the tyre smoke and the door-handles were what the crowd took home: Paddy Hopkirk pushed John all the way – as did the deliciously fast Christabel Carlisle. Then came John Rhodes and John Fenning – outstanding talents both. Jack Sears won again with the big Galaxie, from Roy Salvadori and Graham Hill; and Denny Hulme continued his run in the Formula Junior race, leading home Frank Gardner, Alan Rees and David Hobbs. Other drivers in the FJ race: Peter Revson, Chris Amon, Richard Attwood, Paul Hawkins and Mike Spence.
So much talent; so much fun.
Finally, as they sipped a beer or two in the paddock and pushed the racing cars back onto their trailers, and changed out of their overalls on the grass, by the back doors of their road cars, the day was over. It was British motor racing at its best; it was Jim Clark at his best – in a car as simple and as elegant as a Lotus 23, balancing slides with fingers and toes, absolutely on the limit, every corner, every lap, on an early-June Monday in London, in the tiny space that lay between the Indianapolis 500 and the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.
It was Jim, wondering if John could arrange some sort of second meeting with Sally…
Captions from top: Jim drifts the Normand 23B for the benefit of Autosport’s George Phillips; almost airborne – again! Indy, Mosport and now Crystal Palace – and in two days Jim would be off to Spa for the Belgian GP Images: LAT Photographic
Indianapolis was barely over when Jim Clark left for Mosport – for the next race on his crammed 1963 calendar
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.
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.
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. 
He 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
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