Jimmy's Year

To look at his open Scots face and listen to his Lowlands burr, it is hard to believe that Jimmy Clark, 27, leads a double life. For part of the year, he is a hard-working Berwickshire farmer who tends to his sheep and Aberdeen Angus. But for the rest, on Europe's Grand Prix circuit, Clark races fast cars. "The new Stirling Moss," his opponents call him, and the recently retired master concurs. Says Moss: "Jimmy is the last man I'd want to see in my rearview mirror."

A Bit Obvious. That is a view few seem likely to get. The starter's flag had barely fluttered at last week's 273-mile Grand Prix of France before Clark's green-and-yellow Lotus shot into the lead. Roaring down Reims's long straightaway at 180 m.p.h., Clark set a new lap record of 131.147 m.p.h., and coasted across the finish line more than 1 min. ahead. The victory, Clark's third in 22 days, ran his season's point total to 27,* and gave him a virtual hammerlock on the 1963 Grand Prix championship. "It's a bit obvious, isn't it," said a rival driver. "Clark's a lot faster than anybody else."

His parents have known it all along. Jimmy's mother used to be a terrible backseat driver until, in a fit of filial exasperation, he took her around a corner flat-out just to show that everything was under control. She has since learned to relax and wave happily at friends as he tools along at 90 m.p.h. or so--though she still refuses to watch him compete.

In 1958, Jimmy won 20 races and the Scottish Speed championship. Two years later, he signed a pro contract with Colin Chapman's Lotus factory team.

A Bit Odd. It took Designer Chapman until last year to work the bugs out of his Grand Prix Lotus, with its rear-mounted Coventry Climax engine.

But then Clark won the Belgian, British and U.S. Grand Prix, barely lost the world championship to Graham Hill when his Lotus sprang an oil leak in the season's final race. Bad luck still plagued Jimmy at the start of the 1963 season: his gearbox suddenly seized while he was leading the Grand Prix of Monaco. Then, on Memorial Day, Clark tried his hand at Indianapolis in a specially built Lotus-Ford, came in second in a controversial race many people think he should have won. He has not lost since. In the rain-drenchec Belgian Grand Prix, he led from start to finish while holding his loose gear lever in place with one hand, steering with the other, and trailing a 20-ft.-long rooster tail of spray. The following week he scored another victory at Zandvoort in the Dutch Grand Prix.

Among the hard-living racing types, Clark is something of an oddball. He never smokes, rarely drinks, owns "two or three, I think" suits of clothes. He refuses to hire a business manager ("I don't want to be bandied around like some blooming new soap powder"), and once turned down a publisher's offer with a curt: "I just don't want to write a book." He regards racing as something akin to painting or music--an art, in which perfection is probably impossible but still worth trying for. Sometimes he worries about whether he likes the sport too much for his own good. "I almost wish I could stop enjoying it," he says, "so I could give it up."

* Drivers are allowed to count only their six best races, get nine points for first, six for second, four for third, and so on down to one for sixth.

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