Racing God JIM CLARK - By far the greatest driver ever - no doubt. He is and was "The Best of the Best" (Fangio, Senna, Prost, Stewart and countless others about Clark). No other driver in history until today was so superior as Clark - No other driver as so much "Grand Slam" - Pole/Win/Fastest Lap/Leading every lap of the race - like him. And all that from just 72 starts... ! This man is the Olymp of driving - the Michelangelo of racing - a dynamic art at the highest level. So smooth, so precise, so fast....simply out of this world. One, who won in Spa by 5 minutes (!) in monsoon rain with only one hand at the wheel (!) because of gearbox trouble...One, who takes back a complete lap (!) in Monza and back into the lead... One, who took pole on the original 22,8 km Nürburgring track by 9 (!) seconds and more....One who won Indy by 2 whole (!) laps... In 1965 he had the most succesful year of a driver in the history of the sport: He won the F1 World Championship, the Tasman Series with F1 cars, the Indy 500, the British and French F2 Championship, the British Touring car Championship, totally over 50 (!) victories in one season !!!! For eternity and by lightyears unmatched in the sport. That`s just some examples of his mesmeric unique genius...
Congratulations for your precise comment. I fully share your opinion for 55 years now and fully agree with your point of view: The grandee Jim Clark was and still is the most gifted racing driver that ever lived.
@@richardmccaughey5928 and the brake pads too. Clark would go 4, 5 races with the same pads whilst his team mate Graham Hill had to have his changed after every race
Thank you, sir. I followed racing closely in the '60s and still recall that April morning in '68 when I was saddened and stunned by Jim Clark's fatal accident.
I saw Jim Clark race many times, mainly in club races and the occasional F1/F2 race. Never have I seen a more exquisite car control and speed as Clark throwing a Lotus Cortina around Brands Hatch and Crystal Palace. The phrase "poetry in motion" is a cliche, but in this case, it was true. Never missed an apex or braking point. The most naturally gifted driver I ever saw - and I attended hundreds of races in the 1960s. I once saw him come third in a crippled F2 car which was stuck in 5th gear. If it wasn't for having to slow down at Druids hairpin then accelerate with zero torque on the exit, he would doubtless have won that race too, in just 5th gear.
Clark - the best of all time.................alone at the top. I sincerely hope Venezuela can escape the cold communist clutches of China, Cuba and Russia and become a free nation once again. If someone is not from Venezuela, they should be asked to leave..............they are not the solution, but part of the problem. Those nations don't care about what is good for Venezuela, but only what is good for them. Trust them not. The world is watching.
Greatest driver EVER Fangio acknowledged that Clark was ,could drive anything competitively .tragic loss I still get a lumping my throat when I see this quiet genius film stories and only wonder what might have been if he hadn't gone to Hockenhiem that April weekend.
Alain Prost was the smartest driver, Mansell the bravest, senna the absolute fastest and most determined but Jim was the greatest WHY? because he had the most god given natural tallent of them all.
Not only the best f1 driver, but (my opinion I bet among many) The Best Driver/GentlemenDriver Earth has witnessed & The Bar of Excellence that everyone, even multiple World Champions, multiple Indy500 Champions & any Weekend Warrior just racing as a hobby dreams they could emulate. I know I wish I had racecraft skill, stamina, intelligence & humbleness!!
Not only the best f1 driver, but (my opinion I bet among many) The Best Driver/GentlemenDriver Earth has witnessed & The Bar of Excellence that everyone, even multiple World Champions, multiple Indy500 Champions & any Weekend Warrior just racing as a hobby dreams they could emulate. I know I wish I had racecraft skill, stamina, intelligence & humbleness!!
A lot of you asking why Clark was better than senna and the others; Clark raced when the cars were unreliable. When his car ran perfect he won all those races but one, on that day he came second. Also; when senna, Schumacher, Hamilton and co started they had to practice a lot in the wet to get fast but Clark never practiced. He jumped in and was instantly fastest wet or dry without having to try! Senna and the others had to dig very deep for their speed but Clark put very little effort in he just had it in him. He never cut others up and never asked his team mate to pull over or have no1 driver status. He really was almost from another world. The greatest EVER.
A fantastic telling of the story of the race, thanks Peter. Did Colin Chapman's 'no safety margin' approach win more races for Lotus than it cost? I can only imagine the kinds of risks that Clark took to make up that time on his competitors, in an era where the downside of pushing your luck could literally be fatal. To lose the victory due to running out of fuel must have been heart breaking. Was refueling allowed in that era? - could Lotus have added fuel during the tyre change? Anyway thanks for the video, hopefully your Clark videos will be included in the new Clark museum at Duns.
I wonder what Rob Wilson would have to say if he coached Clark? Something in the lines of: "That was perfect" "I have nothing to add" "Please show me how you did that?"
Of the 72 Formula One Grands Prix that Jim Clark raced in, on 46 occasions some sort of mechanical failure on the car either dropped him out of the race or slowed him down dramatically. Of the remaining 26 races in which the car ran 100% reliably until the end of the race, Jim finished second on one occasion. Of the remaining 25 races, he won all of them. This is whilst racing against Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill and John Surtees. Four men who won nine World Championships between them. In the history of F1, in fact in the history of Motor Sport, it is not a matter of how you rate the drivers. There is Jim Clark.............................................................................and then there are the rest.
This simple statistic is lost on current observers of F1 who wax lyrical about Schumacher, Senna and others. NOBODY can say that they won all but one race in their F1 career when the car ran faultlessly from start to finish. Nobody. We can only ponder the likely results if he had lived for another 5 years and driven cars with equal pace and better reliability.
Jim’s my all time fave but many - including Enzo Ferrari and Ferdinand Porsche - were quite sure Tazio Nuvalari was the best past, present and future. You can read about The Flying Mantuan in Robert Dailey’s “Cars At Speed”. Incidentally, this may be the best book ever written on ‘50s, early ‘60s GP racing.
Joe Cool Jimmy winning 25 of 72 races reminds me of a dirty joke going around our grammar school in the ‘50s. Seems a fourth grader goes home and tells his mother he won a contest for having the biggest dick. “You didn’t pull out that monster, did you? His mother said, shocked. “No, m’am. Just enough to win.”
@@jockellis "I don't believe in bad luck. I do believe in something done wrong" Jim Clark (1936 - 1968) Regards from a 56 year-old venezuelan citizen who in February 2018 emigrated to Chile searching a better way of life.
The irony being Jimmy didn’t actually think he’d done anything special. It was that easy for him. Probably 1 of a handful of races he had to race at his maximum abilities 10/10ths...
Chapman says never drove 10/10ths, very safe driver, didn't want to die....but Chapman said he wasn't sure about this race as he said when he went out after the puncture he seemed to have the bit between his teeth
I saw one at Sandown Park in Melbourne, for about 40 minutes. Sliding the 49 through the curve at the Dunlop Bridge lap after lap. The curve disappeared in 1984. I never saw anyone else do that.
Never Hamilton. Never Schumacher. Never Senna. Never Prost. Never Fangio. Jim Clark is the greatest of all time. No other driver had that perfect combination of skill in a race car and balls to the walls bravery.
I've seen images of Clark after this race that show a man who had given his all, physically and mentally; the exhaustion was writ large on his face and slumping body. It reminded me of similar images of Fangio after Nurbrgring in '57 when he had done a similar performance. He vowed never to push so hard again and after the race he was spent.
Jim Clark the best driver of all time. period. But what a line up of drivers, aces on aces, a truly glorious era of racing, never again! unfortunately today we only have sadness, a piece of the shadow of these people who built the sport that I loved so much out of enthusiasm... never again, unfortunat
I’m so old that I remember Peter Windsor when he had hair. There was an interesting story circulating in the paddock as to how he was convinced to sell the rights to the name of the Brabham team . . .
It's true that Jimmy caught up marvellously, of course, but Graham was the one a lap ahead and was uncatchable, even by Jimmy, but Graham broke down. PS Isn't it now accepted that Jim ran out of fuel because he drove so much faster even than he usually did that day, therefore using more fuel than Chapman thought possible.
Chapman seems not to have realized that he had drivers who could get more out of cars than most others and chose to make them less than sturdy. I used to run slaloms in my 1960 Porsche Roadster which on the roads, at the speeds I drove, returned up to 43 mpg. In a slalom it got less than 1 mpg.
@@jockellis Great point, I've always thought Chapman must have quietly 'toughened up' the 1968 Lotus after Clark died in order for Graham to win the Championship without it breaking down too much because of his tough driving style. Look at 1967, Graham did all (or nearly all) the testing of the Lotus 49 and broke down in the GPs nearly every time, and Jimmy with his beautiful delicacy won 4 times ! That's not meant to detract from Graham, I think that, today, he's underrated, he's certainly for me in the top 10 of all time.
If they had considered splashing a few liters of gasoline (was that permitted then? maybe not...) in the 5 minutes it probably took to change the flat, the outcome of the race would have been very different.
"Leisurely pit stops"...not anymore. Nowadays, the racecar barely comes to a stop, before heading out of the pits, with fresh tires, and a full load of fuel.
It ain't Jim Clark greatest race at all.... and I will explain you why by his monza lap by lap time statistics; He was in no way faster than team mate graham Hill that day ....Just get and read the lap chart in the book AUTOCOURSE 1967 annual, and you 'll see by yourself. I am not cheating at all....
Racing God JIM CLARK - By far the greatest driver ever - no doubt. He is and was "The Best of the Best" (Fangio, Senna, Prost, Stewart and countless others about Clark). No other driver in history until today was so superior as Clark - No other driver as so much "Grand Slam" - Pole/Win/Fastest Lap/Leading every lap of the race - like him. And all that from just 72 starts... !
This man is the Olymp of driving - the Michelangelo of racing - a dynamic art at the highest level. So smooth, so precise, so fast....simply out of this world. One, who won in Spa by 5 minutes (!) in monsoon rain with only one hand at the wheel (!) because of gearbox trouble...One, who takes back a complete lap (!) in Monza and back into the lead... One, who took pole on the original 22,8 km Nürburgring track by 9 (!) seconds and more....One who won Indy by 2 whole (!) laps...
In 1965 he had the most succesful year of a driver in the history of the sport: He won the F1 World Championship, the Tasman Series with F1 cars, the Indy 500, the British and French F2 Championship, the British Touring car Championship, totally over 50 (!) victories in one season !!!! For eternity and by lightyears unmatched in the sport. That`s just some examples of his mesmeric unique genius...
Beautiful, heartfelt presentation - thank you. Jim Clark was someone really special. I'm not ashamed to write that I cried when he was killed.
Me, too
This was probably the single greatest ever drive in F1 history. JC was and still is the most gifted racing driver that ever lived
Congratulations for your precise comment. I fully share your opinion for 55 years now and fully agree with your point of view: The grandee Jim Clark was and still is the most gifted racing driver that ever lived.
Don't forget fangio in Germany in 1957
@@mrvontrips yeah my 2 favourite drivers of all time, and the 2 best
I don't know if it was one of Clark's mechanics that said it, but he would use half the tire tread of his competitors. That's how smooth he was!
@@richardmccaughey5928 and the brake pads too. Clark would go 4, 5 races with the same pads whilst his team mate Graham Hill had to have his changed after every race
Thank you, sir. I followed racing closely in the '60s and still recall that April morning in '68 when I was saddened and stunned by Jim Clark's fatal accident.
I saw Jim Clark race many times, mainly in club races and the occasional F1/F2 race. Never have I seen a more exquisite car control and speed as Clark throwing a Lotus Cortina around Brands Hatch and Crystal Palace. The phrase "poetry in motion" is a cliche, but in this case, it was true. Never missed an apex or braking point. The most naturally gifted driver I ever saw - and I attended hundreds of races in the 1960s. I once saw him come third in a crippled F2 car which was stuck in 5th gear. If it wasn't for having to slow down at Druids hairpin then accelerate with zero torque on the exit, he would doubtless have won that race too, in just 5th gear.
So agree .the most naturally gifted racing of all. Could and did drive almost anything. Still have my 1965 MK1 lotus Cortina. Rog. Pacific sunset.
Sorry. I meant racing driver. Rog
Jim Clark was the GREATEST race driver in the history of motor racing. PERIOD!
"I don´t believe in bad luck. I do believe in something done wrong"
Jim Clark (1936 - 1968) Regards from Venezuela.
Clark - the best of all time.................alone at the top.
I sincerely hope Venezuela can escape the cold communist clutches of China, Cuba and Russia and become a free nation once again. If someone is not from Venezuela, they should be asked to leave..............they are not the solution, but part of the problem. Those nations don't care about what is good for Venezuela, but only what is good for them. Trust them not.
The world is watching.
Greatest driver EVER Fangio acknowledged that Clark was ,could drive anything competitively .tragic loss I still get a lumping my throat when I see this quiet genius film stories and only wonder what might have been if he hadn't gone to Hockenhiem that April weekend.
Fangio says Clark is indisputably the greatest driver F1 ever. I include Fangio there...Fangio, like Clark, was a fantastic person
So much Senna talk, but no driver in the world was as great as Jim Clark.
Chico Bicalho Senna agreed with you . Also , Juan Manuel Fangio said Clark was the best ever !
Tom Selebert > Clark > Senna
@@jonnies tom selebert?
Yes he was the best and the most gifted of all with Lewis not far behind. Rog.
@@jonnies who is tom selebert?
Seeing all the F1 race videos on TH-cam, I just can’t get any enthusiasm for those past April 1968.
wow, puts Sennas 1985 efforts into true perspective, thank you peter.
Alain Prost was the smartest driver, Mansell the bravest, senna the absolute fastest and most determined but Jim was the greatest WHY? because he had the most god given natural tallent of them all.
I believe Jim Clark was the smartest, bravest, fastest, and by all means, the greatest F1 driver ever.
Not only the best f1 driver, but (my opinion I bet among many) The Best Driver/GentlemenDriver Earth has witnessed & The Bar of Excellence that everyone, even multiple World Champions, multiple Indy500 Champions & any Weekend Warrior just racing as a hobby dreams they could emulate. I know I wish I had racecraft skill, stamina, intelligence & humbleness!!
Not only the best f1 driver, but (my opinion I bet among many) The Best Driver/GentlemenDriver Earth has witnessed & The Bar of Excellence that everyone, even multiple World Champions, multiple Indy500 Champions & any Weekend Warrior just racing as a hobby dreams they could emulate. I know I wish I had racecraft skill, stamina, intelligence & humbleness!!
A lot of you asking why Clark was better than senna and the others; Clark raced when the cars were unreliable. When his car ran perfect he won all those races but one, on that day he came second. Also; when senna, Schumacher, Hamilton and co started they had to practice a lot in the wet to get fast but Clark never practiced. He jumped in and was instantly fastest wet or dry without having to try! Senna and the others had to dig very deep for their speed but Clark put very little effort in he just had it in him. He never cut others up and never asked his team mate to pull over or have no1 driver status. He really was almost from another world. The greatest EVER.
I think any driver who drove the death traps in the 50s' 60s and 70's were the bravest. Mansell was a drama queen.
Thank you Peter. Your stories are terrific
Thank you Mr. Peter Windsor!!
A fantastic telling of the story of the race, thanks Peter. Did Colin Chapman's 'no safety margin' approach win more races for Lotus than it cost?
I can only imagine the kinds of risks that Clark took to make up that time on his competitors, in an era where the downside of pushing your luck could literally be fatal.
To lose the victory due to running out of fuel must have been heart breaking.
Was refueling allowed in that era? - could Lotus have added fuel during the tyre change?
Anyway thanks for the video, hopefully your Clark videos will be included in the new Clark museum at Duns.
Don't know how I missed this one. Well done Peter.
at least you could show us jim clark driving his fast car fast to shows us his amazing car control. we will like to see that..
a timely and touching tribute thank you Peter. SH.
Jim was the greatest driver of the 60s.A true world champion and brilliant in every type of motorsport.
I wonder what Rob Wilson would have to say if he coached Clark?
Something in the lines of:
"That was perfect"
"I have nothing to add"
"Please show me how you did that?"
Of the 72 Formula One Grands Prix that Jim Clark raced in, on 46 occasions some sort of mechanical failure on the car either dropped him out of the race or slowed him down dramatically.
Of the remaining 26 races in which the car ran 100% reliably until the end of the race, Jim finished second on one occasion. Of the remaining 25 races, he won all of them. This is whilst racing against Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill and John Surtees. Four men who won nine World Championships between them.
In the history of F1, in fact in the history of Motor Sport, it is not a matter of how you rate the drivers.
There is Jim Clark.............................................................................and then there are the rest.
This simple statistic is lost on current observers of F1 who wax lyrical about Schumacher, Senna and others. NOBODY can say that they won all but one race in their F1 career when the car ran faultlessly from start to finish. Nobody. We can only ponder the likely results if he had lived for another 5 years and driven cars with equal pace and better reliability.
I'm copying and pasting this. Thx this will end a lot of arguments
Jim’s my all time fave but many - including Enzo Ferrari and Ferdinand Porsche - were quite sure Tazio Nuvalari was the best past, present and future. You can read about The Flying Mantuan in Robert Dailey’s “Cars At Speed”. Incidentally, this may be the best book ever written on ‘50s, early ‘60s GP racing.
Joe Cool Jimmy winning 25 of 72 races reminds me of a dirty joke going around our grammar school in the ‘50s. Seems a fourth grader goes home and tells his mother he won a contest for having the biggest dick. “You didn’t pull out that monster, did you? His mother said, shocked.
“No, m’am. Just enough to win.”
@@jockellis
"I don't believe in bad luck. I do believe in something done wrong"
Jim Clark (1936 - 1968)
Regards from a 56 year-old venezuelan citizen who in February 2018 emigrated to Chile searching a better way of life.
The irony being Jimmy didn’t actually think he’d done anything special. It was that easy for him. Probably 1 of a handful of races he had to race at his maximum abilities 10/10ths...
Chapman says never drove 10/10ths, very safe driver, didn't want to die....but Chapman said he wasn't sure about this race as he said when he went out after the puncture he seemed to have the bit between his teeth
"No creo en la mala suerte;
sí creo en algo que se hizo mal"
Jim Clark (1936 - 1968)
Piloto escocés de Fórmula 1.
Campeón Mundial en 1963 y 1965.
I saw one at Sandown Park in Melbourne, for about 40 minutes. Sliding the 49 through the curve at the Dunlop Bridge lap after lap. The curve disappeared in 1984. I never saw anyone else do that.
Never Hamilton. Never Schumacher. Never Senna. Never Prost. Never Fangio.
Jim Clark is the greatest of all time. No other driver had that perfect combination of skill in a race car and balls to the walls bravery.
I've seen images of Clark after this race that show a man who had given his all, physically and mentally; the exhaustion was writ large on his face and slumping body. It reminded me of similar images of Fangio after Nurbrgring in '57 when he had done a similar performance. He vowed never to push so hard again and after the race he was spent.
Great story. Love to hear more of them. 60s racing at its finest.
Jim Clark the best driver of all time. period. But what a line up of drivers, aces on aces, a truly glorious era of racing, never again! unfortunately today we only have sadness, a piece of the shadow of these people who built the sport that I loved so much out of enthusiasm... never again, unfortunat
Well over looked as the best driver ever , he is never mentioned. He would have gone on the be the best had he not been killed. R.I.P. JIM.
Nice episode this one, thankyou as always Peter. Hey I like your shinny black tie Pete! o7
I’m so old that I remember Peter Windsor when he had hair.
There was an interesting story circulating in the paddock as to how he was convinced to sell the rights to the name of the Brabham team . . .
It's true that Jimmy caught up marvellously, of course, but Graham was the one a lap ahead and was uncatchable, even by Jimmy, but Graham broke down.
PS Isn't it now accepted that Jim ran out of fuel because he drove so much faster even than he usually did that day, therefore using more fuel than Chapman thought possible.
Chapman seems not to have realized that he had drivers who could get more out of cars than most others and chose to make them less than sturdy.
I used to run slaloms in my 1960 Porsche Roadster which on the roads, at the speeds I drove, returned up to 43 mpg. In a slalom it got less than 1 mpg.
@@jockellis Great point, I've always thought Chapman must have quietly 'toughened up' the 1968 Lotus after Clark died in order for Graham to win the Championship without it breaking down too much because of his tough driving style.
Look at 1967, Graham did all (or nearly all) the testing of the Lotus 49 and broke down in the GPs nearly every time, and Jimmy with his beautiful delicacy won 4 times !
That's not meant to detract from Graham, I think that, today, he's underrated, he's certainly for me in the top 10 of all time.
Peter Windsor loves the sound of his own voice.
After Clark's death, Formula One was a competition of "Also Rans."
If they had considered splashing a few liters of gasoline (was that permitted then? maybe not...) in the 5 minutes it probably took to change the flat, the outcome of the race would have been very different.
Best driver for me and also Jochen Rindt
"Leisurely pit stops"...not anymore.
Nowadays, the racecar barely comes to a stop, before heading out of the pits, with fresh tires, and a full load of fuel.
The best there ever was.
It ain't Jim Clark greatest race at all.... and I will explain you why by his monza lap by lap time statistics; He was in no way faster than team mate graham Hill that day ....Just get and read the lap chart in the book AUTOCOURSE 1967 annual, and you 'll see by yourself. I am not cheating at all....
If for no other reason, IMO, Sir Jack deserves his knighthood for saving Jim’s life twice.
The music ruined this for those who are hard of hearing.