'I risked my mother's wrath in order to be a driver'

The entire Formula 1 career of Sir Jackie Stewart was a blur to his own mother who refused to accept his decision to climb behind the wheel, forcing him to enter races under a pseudonym.

Jeannie Stewart, the wife of Bob Stewart, a garage owner in Dumbuck, near Dumbarton, was so sick of the family's passion for speed, that Jackie, her youngest son was forbidden from following his father and brother's exhaust fumes.

After her eldest son, Jimmy, came to the end of his racing career, after three crashes, Mrs Stewart, who had come close to a nervous breakdown, declared that there was to be no more racing in the Stewart family. "If anyone has different ideas, they can leave - or I will," she warned.

Torn between his passion for engines, the lure of the open track and his love for his mother, young Jackie Stewart chose instead to enter his early races in Scotland by using the name: "AN Other."

Even when Sir Jackie's success was impossible to hide - he won 27 grands prix and three world championships during the 1960s and 1970s - the matter was never discussed with his mother, who refused to accept what her son did for a living. Only when he retired from racing in 1973 did she concede that he had spent the past 15 years behind the wheel of a racing car.

The extraordinary attitude of Jeannie Stewart is revealed by Sir Jackie in a BBC documentary, to be broadcast next week. In the programme, Scots on Speed, Sir Jackie said: "When I started motor racing I went under the pseudonym AN Other, so that she would never find out. She never accepted that I was a racing driver and we never discussed it. She never acknowledged that I ever won a grand prix, or I ever won a world championship."

He continued: "It was a game, but women can be quite difficult sometimes, very determined and very stubborn. When I went up to tell her I had retired from racing, she sat there and I said: 'Mum, I thought you'd like to know, I've retired from racing, I'm not doing it anymore.' She kept a straight face and just said: 'You're well out of it,' and then she had a big laugh."

The concern of Mrs Stewart for the safety of her youngest son was well-founded, as Sir Jackie built his career at a time when motor-racing was among the most dangerous sports on earth. Drivers who were competing between the years 1968 and 1973 had a two out of three chance of being killed, with as many as five drivers dying each season. In fact it was the death of Francois Cevert, the French driver, in 1973 during a training run, that finally persuaded Sir Jackie to retire on the eve of his 100th grand prix.

Yet during his career, in which he broke bones but never spilt a drop of blood, the driver spearheaded the campaign to make the sport safer. Today he proudly explains that more people drown while fishing than die in car racing.

It was the death of his fellow Scot and former flatmate, Jim Clark, who died in 1968, during a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in Germany, that inspired him to clean up the sport.

He said: "We shared a flat in London and called it the Scottish Embassy. We were two Scotsmen on the podium which was amazing and we became known as Batman and Robin. I was understudying him so there was no question over which of us was Batman and which was Robin.

"Nobody ever thought Jim Clark would die in a racing car. Because of the way he drove, he wasn't the type of driver who went off the road."

In the BBC documentary Sir Jackie said his legacy in motor racing would be his attempts to make the sport safer in the wake of Clark's death which has had the effect of saving the lives of hundreds of other drivers. He said: "That year there were four consecutive months where drivers died. It was a horrible time in motor racing where safety was pathetic. I made up my mind I had to change safety in motor racing, and not many people wanted to take it on because it was certainly not the most popular thing to be doing.

"It was a very tough period. I was lucky because I was winning grands prix and world championships during the period I was active in safety and I would complain like hell about a race track. I said: 'If you don't cut that tree down I won't race.'"

Sir Jackie, who failed his 11-plus exam twice and grew up believing he was stupid, only to be diagnosed as dyslexic in his early forties, said he was spurred along the track by a second inferiority complex, this time towards the English.

"The Scottish thing is something special," he said. "There is a focus, a determination and a fear of not succeeding or looking inferior because you come from 'up there'. I remember when I went down south to begin with, I thought they thought I had heather growing out my ears. I had to do better because they'd think I was a country yokel and wouldn't be able to do well."

In spite of her son's duplicity, Jeannie Stewart may have been expected to be secretly proud of her son's success. However, Jimmy, Sir Jackie's elder brother said: "I don't think she ever forgave him for it."

Sir Jackie's son, Mark, who made a documentary about his father, said: "I remember she had a very loud laugh and had a strong character. But there is no doubt that like many Scots she could be a bit dour."