Life at Loretto ignited Clark's passion for racing

Published on Wednesday 2 April 2008 23:09

WHEN Ayrton Senna contemplated and then answered a 13-year-old boy's question in February 1991 during a visit to an East Lothian school, he did so with the courtesy that not every reigning world champion might have afforded his tender-aged interrogator.

Alarmingly for the school's upper-brass, the subject was a thorny one. This was no audience plant, ordered to get things gently rolling with an insipid question about tyre tread. Instead, it dealt with the issue of Senna's then fractious relationship with his great rival, Alain Prost.

Rather than be taken aback, Senna was his usual, graceful self. In this young boy staring back at him from the floor he perhaps saw something of his hero, the late Jim Clark. The two-time Formula 1 world champion was the reason Senna – then preparing for a season which saw him lift his third and final world title – made the unusual step of addressing pupils in a lecture theatre at Loretto school in Musselburgh, where Clark, like many farmers' sons, had been sent more than 40 years earlier.

Loretto, Scotland's oldest independent boarding school, backs onto Musselburgh racecourse, but within its walls Clark grew interested in another form of horse power. His roots in agriculture meant he already had a passing knowledge of mechanics, with his family having originally farmed in Kilmany in Fife. When Clark was aged six he moved with them to Edington Mains, a 1200-acre farm near Chirnside in the Borders. Seven years later Clark was sent to Loretto after a spell at Clifton Hall prep school.

His biographer and friend, Graham Gauld, described Loretto as having had a "profound influence" on the young Clark, although this does not necessarily mean the regimented way of life – which applied to most such schools of the period, and included obligatory cold baths each morning – was to his liking. School simply helped shape him. It is where he nurtured an interest in motor sport while pursuing more orthodox teenage activities, such as hockey and cricket. Later confessing to having been "no scholar", he left before sixth form. But an important introduction in his life had already been made.

"During the years at Loretto until 1952 the seeds of an enthusiasm for racing had been planted," Clark wrote in 1964. "While I was there I started buying motoring magazines, and I read the three books on motor racing in the school library from cover to cover several times. I remember those rather special mornings when it was time to collect my weekly motoring magazine."

Next Sunday, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his tragic early death aged 32 during a race in what was then West Germany, the school will hold a memorial service in his honour. As well as current pupils, in attendance will be school contemporaries of Clark and members of his family. The will to mark the occasion grew from a recognition that time has not stood still since that afternoon in Hockenheim, however much it may feel that way. The 50th anniversary may prove too late for some, as even the 40th has done.

Clark's three surviving sisters will be present to hear tributes from David Coulthard and Dario Franchitti, Scots who were inspired by the legend. Franchitti has dedicated a room at his Scottish base in Dumfriesshire to his idol, who he emulated last year when he won the Indy 500.

Yet perhaps Sir Jackie Stewart's words will hold the most charge. He and Clark were best friends and labelled "Scottish speed twins" by newspapers in the Sixties. Stewart is currently in New Zealand and unable to attend the service, but has sent in his own contribution. When Clark died Stewart and his wife, Helen, had been planning to ask him to be godfather to their son, Mark. This was the effect Clark had on people. It was said he was like the North Star. You could guide your ship by him. In a glamour world of fast cars he remained an approachable figure, although he disliked the familiarity with which some greeted him. He was described as a Borders farmer first and foremost, a world champion second. Loretto, under then headmaster Forbes Mackintosh, helped instil such values.

"My use of the term 'profound influence' (in connection with Loretto] referred to my own view of the rounded nature of the man," said Gauld, from his base in France this week. "He was honest and open, but wary.

"I thought also that his moving to boarding school had perhaps given him a better grounding for being with and working with fellow boys, because at home he was the youngest child with four elder sisters, and no brothers."

Colin Carnie was an old school friend who followed him into the world of motor racing as a part-time correspondent. They lost touch when Clark left Loretto but their paths crossed again on the circuit.

"One of the next times I saw him was in Rheims in France," he recalled. "I had a roving commission from a magazine in Scotland called Top Gear. I went to the French Grand Prix and found Jim to be the most unpretentious man going. He had no difficulty getting me into the Lotus pit.

"He was a very charming and courteous man," Carnie continued. "Obviously I could not keep up with his involvement thereafter. He was living a very international life and I had to learn how to run a business. But there was certainly an era at Loretto when we shared motor sport magazines together, and talked of cars and their designs. It was a time of one's life when this was liable to happen because of the age one was at. I do think his interest in motor racing evolved at Loretto."

Senna made his pilgrimage to Loretto – he also insisted on stopping off at the Jim Clark Room in Duns, adding his own private Sao Paul address to the visitors' book – at the behest of Professor Syd Watkins, then medical chief for Formula 1. His step-son, Matt, was a pupil at Loretto at the time. The link between Senna and Clark became a more poignant one just three years later at Imola, of course. On May Day, 1994, Senna met his own death in the same violent manner as Clark. The world of Formula 1 knew again what it was to mourn its leading competitor, cut down in his prime.

Prayers were offered in the school chapel then, just as they were on 7 April, 1968, when it is said Scotland experienced its John F Kennedy moment. Indeed, Martin Luther King's assassination had occurred just three days earlier, but even in an already traumatised America Clark's death prompted fresh grief. A Los Angeles DJ asked for all those driving to turn on their headlights if they were in mourning for Clark. An entire freeway lit up at midday.

Next weekend in Musselburgh his memorial plaque in Loretto chapel will be illuminated as present-day pupils are introduced to an enduring champion and an older generation gathers to remember one.

CELEBRATING A TRUE SCOTTISH SPORTING HERO

OF ALL this country's immortal sporting heroes, none was more celebrated at home and abroad than Jim Clark. Argentina's fabled champion, Juan Fangio, didn't hesitate to name him as the greatest motor racing driver who ever lived and when the Chirnside farmer was killed in a crash at Hockenheim 40 years ago, Scotland wept a bucket of tears.

For this young man, whose life was cruelly snuffed out at 32 after an explosive puncture sent his Lotus spiralling out of control on a wet circuit in Germany, was the perfect champion. Modest, shy and self-effacing out of the cockpit, at the wheel of any car he simply drove the vehicle faster than anyone else on the planet.

According to Jackie Stewart, who would pick up the mantle of champion after Clark's death, the demise of a friend, who won 25 Grand Prix races in 72 starts, was unbearable. "Jimmy's death was to motor racing what the atomic bomb had been to the world," he said. "Jim Clark was everything that I aspired to be, as a racing driver and as a man."

As his family, friends and admirers prepare to remember Clark this weekend at a memorial service organised by his old school, Loretto, it's safe to venture that in the decades since his death no Scot has made a wider impact on the world of sport and in our four-part series, which begins today, The Scotsman will celebrate his life and legacy.

When news of his death in 1968 reached California, a radio broadcaster in Los Angeles invited drivers who were in mourning to switch on their lights. In an instant, the freeways of LA were radiant.

Born in Fife in the spring of 1936, Clark was the only boy in a family of five, with four older sisters. At the age of six, his family moved to Edington Mains Farm in Berwickshire. He went to school in Chirnside before going to Clifton Hall and Loretto.

A racing enthusiast from his schooldays – he passed his test at 17 – Clark's parents were initially cautious about him becoming a rally driver. His first car was a Sunbeam Talbot and he quickly impressed as a natural talent in local races. When he met Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, at Brands Hatch in 1958, Clark's future as a driver was sealed.

He graduated to Formula 1 in the Sixties. An oil leak prevented him becoming world champion in 1962 and 1964 but he stormed to victory in 1963 and 1965. He also found fame in America after winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1965.

A man of integrity, Clark was a gentleman of the track who shunned the glamour of F1. Although he became a tax exile and never married, his dream was to raise a family in Berwickshire on the land where he was raised.

Instead, he was laid to rest in Chirnside and bequeathed the nation those snapshots of glory and a smile which endures as brightly as any star.

MIKE AITKEN