It has been 50 years since the great Jim Clark was killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim.
In my opinion Clark was the greatest driver that I have watched in my lifetime. He won 25 grand prix races and two world championships during his short reign and would have gone on to many more had he lived longer.
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He was leading the 1968 championship when he was killed.
Clark was out of this world, he almost always made lightning starts and went off into the distance with haste.
He would then go into cruise mode once he had a half minute lead and made it look like a Sunday afternoon drive to the chequered flag.
I remember reading Autocar in October 1963 where it reported from the London Motor Show that Clark had the fastest recorded reaction time of 0.24sec out of thousands of people tested!
The next best was just over 0.3sec by an RAF P1 Lightning fighter pilot.
This together with marvellous eyesight, balance and anticipation contributed to the beautiful smooth application of his art as he strode away from everybody.
I clearly remember in 1968, at the South African Grand Prix in Kyalami, standing between Jukskei and Barbeque, watching Clark steadily pull away from the field with the smoothest of arm movements compared to the prodigious to and fro movements by team mate Graham Hill as they four-wheel drifted their cars through these two mighty corners at very high speed and Clark was gaining about half a second a lap.
Clark was truly mighty and remains my racing hero of all time.
It’s off to Baku this weekend for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix which should be extremely interesting after an exciting start to this year’s racing.
Is it Red Bulls turn again to pull a rabbit out of the hat? And can Mad Max keep it all together for a change for the whole race?
He has been unlucky but then we all know you make your own luck.
We cannot discount Daniel Ricciardo either. Mercedes could come back strongly as they are desperate for a win and Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are both capable of doing the trick.
Ferrari, however, are still favourites. South African guru, Rory Byrne and the design team have produced a wonderful car while both Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen are driving at the top of their form.
One of the two should win the race but who knows in Formula One?
My only other comments are, let’s watch the ‘also rans’ with the expectation of a surprise or two. Can the Honda-powered Toro Rossos do something special?
TV times are Saturday 9am on SS6 for qualifying and Sunday 1pm on SS6 for the start of the race.
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