Chapter One - Formula 1
Jackie Stewart is remembered for many things: absolute precision and smoothness of driving, his safety crusade, and flying in the face of the convention that Formula 1 had to be a death-trap. Stewart’s nine-year F1 career was literally sport-changing, says Paul Fearnley
Stewart got the better of a tense battle with Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari during the 1971 Spanish GP, which took place at Montjuïc Park – the undulating track in central Barcelona. In the team’s first full season as a manufacturer, it was Tyrrell’s maiden Formula 1 World Championship victory and it went on to win the title for constructors for the only time in its history. Note the cars were running on fully slick tyres, freshly introduced to F1 by Firestone
There is humour in its retelling – featuring as it does nudity, a distinguished English gent with military moustache, shocked nuns and a ‘Carry On’ ambulance journey – but it wasn’t funny at the time. Stewart’s fearsome crash after a sudden deluge on the opening lap of the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, which saw him run through a telegraph pole and a shed before an 8ft drop onto a farm’s front patio and which resulted in burns, broken ribs and internal bleeding, was Damascene.
One year earlier, at the same circuit and in similar conditions, he had finished second and brushed aside winner Jim Clark’s concern on the podium: “Sure, I’m fine. What’s the problem?” Stewart’s ‘Rocket Ship’ was accelerating still and he was enjoying the ride: a point in South Africa on his world championship debut with BRM; second in the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch; pole position and joint fastest lap in Goodwood’s Sunday Mirror Trophy; and victory – the International Trophy at Silverstone – in only his fifth Formula 1 race. Come September, he would be keeping a cool head during a typically frenetic slipstreamer at a Monza without chicanes to win the Italian GP.
But these were deathly circumstances – flimsy cars on ballsy circuits – and Stewart, who incredibly shed not a single drop of blood during his career, would lose more than 50 friends to the sport. In 1968 the toll was one per month.