heard that, that I started to recover again.
I would say that I believe in life after death and
I believe souls never die and that Jim’s still with
us in many ways. Everyone is.
F1 Racing: Obviously he’d made a huge
impression on you both with the way he
conducted himself both in and outside the
cockpit. Was he a charismatic man? What
made him so special?
Nigel Roebuck: He was intensely charismatic –
Jimmy’s voice had a quality. It was a light voice...
PW: A soft Scottish burr, wasn’t it...?
NR: Yes, it was. And it had a kind of a mid-
Atlantic twang...
PW: And I think he had a feel, a taste, for colour
and shape as well. The helmet said it all really.
The dark blue with the white peak. Everything
always looked right. His overalls always looked
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when he wore glasses, he wore Ray-Ban
Wayfarers. He just looked great all the time.
And he dressed in a very conservative Scottish
Borders way. But he always looked great.
F1R: One of Jimmy’s qualities that has passed
down through the decades is his sheer speed and
the immaculate driving style. Was that apparent
when he was racing?
PW: Absolutely. The thing about Jimmy was how
he liked to get into the corner early and extend
the straight – that’s kind of how he describes
it in his autobiography. Colin Chapman [Lotus
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next to him once in a Lotus-Cortina and Jimmy
was doing this and Chapman was saying: “What
are you doing?! You’re turning in too early!”
And he said: “No, no, I like to do that.” Jimmy
was doing it naturally and didn’t really want to
talk about it or even think about it that much,
because it was so natural to him.
Jackie Stewart says that Jim never spoke with
him about the detail of driving, ever. Not because
he didn’t want to give away the information,
but probably because he didn’t want to start
identifying it within himself, in case it made
him change. He could just do it. And certainly
when I saw him drive, the overriding impression
compared with, say, Graham Hill, Chris Amon,
or Piers Courage, was that Jimmy had this ability
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right on tiptoes but everything was very soft and
incredibly co-ordinated.NR: Jimmy’s skill was a mysterious thing to me.
I’d grown up watching – and worshipping –
Stirling Moss and always thinking: ‘What does
he do that the others don’t? Why is he just plain
better than the rest?’
You could watch him and he was silky-smooth
and everything else, but beyond that, where
was he making up the times? Because it wasn’t
obvious. It was the same sensation watching
Jimmy – you watched what he did and you could
obviously see that he did it supremely well, but
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he made up the time.F1R: You can see some of his driving qualities in
pictures like one of him exiting a corner at the
Nürbürgring, during the 1965 German GP, which
he won. He’s kicking up stones, on the limit, but
Clark and the car look totally under control...PW: And that’s a classic example of Jimmy, in the
Lotus 33B. We kind of took Jimmy winning for
granted. But pictures like this show it wasn’t soClark rose to prominence
in Lotus cars overseen
by Colin Chapman (left)At Monaco Clark’s panache was
always evident, though reliability
cost him several potential wins,
such as 1964 when he qualified
on pole but finished fourth