With Girdle & Glue

People were beginning to whisper about Scotland's Jimmy Clark, 28. Two years ago he was the world's No. 1 race-car driver--the Grand Prix cham pion, winner of a record seven races. In 1964, it looked like the same story all over again when Clark won three out of the first five Grand Prix races. Then everything went wrong.

A broken valve cost him the German Grand Prix. A shaft snapped in Austria, a tire blew in the Indy 500, an oil line burst in the Mexican Grand Prix after Clark had led for 64 of the 65 laps. Britain's John Surtees won the 1964 Grand Prix championship; Clark finished third. To top it off, he got into a friendly snowball fight in the Italian Alps last month, twisted his back, and wound up with a slipped disc. The experts wondered: Was Clark washed up?

Cracking a Ton. They got their answer. Strapping himself into a surgical corset, Jimmy slid gingerly into the cockpit of his rear-engined Lotus and roared around South Africa's East London race track at 100.10 m.p.h.--the first time anybody had "cracked a ton" (topped 100 m.p.h.) on the tricky, twisting track.

A time trial and a race are two different things. The 210-mile South African Grand Prix was the first big race of the 1965 season; 50,000 fans turned out to watch, and everybody who was anybody was there--Champion Surtees in his Ferrari; Britain's Graham Hill, the 1962 winner, in his B.R.M.; Jack Brabham, 1959 and 1960 champion, in his own Brabham-Climax. But Clark's practice lap had won him the pole position, and the starter's flag barely fluttered before he shot into the lead. By the 13th lap, he was already lapping stragglers. Twice, he shattered the official track record, and on the 84th lap, he zipped around the 2.4-mile course in 1 min. 27.4 sec. to break it a third time--clocking 100.33 m.p.h. Smiled Lotus Designer Colin Chapman: "He must have an itch in his corset."

Checking the Checker. Across the finish line he sped, slowing almost to a stop when an official gave him the checkered flag of victory. In the pits, Chapman screamed and waved a sign with a big number 1 on it. The official had goofed: Clark still had a lap to go, and Surtees was closing in. Furious. Jimmy stomped down the throttle; the Lotus snarled around the track once more, coasted into the pits--the winner by a comfortable 31 sec. "Imagine," sighed an awed South African fan, "what Clark could do if he were feeling fit."

With his Lotus finally functioning perfectly and nine points chalked up toward the 1965 Grand Prix championship, Clark quickly forgot the pain in his back. "It feels good to be back on top again," he beamed. Come June, factory mechanics will replace his Lotus' 195-h.p. V-8 Climax engine with a hush-hush 16-cylinder job that is supposed to have something of the same effect as gluing two of the old engines together. "Nothing much to it," shrugged a Lotus engineer. "We are simply picking up a bit more power, that's all."

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