“I was fortunate to race in my era”

Jackie Stewart interview part 1

Posted on

| Written by

Sir Jackie Stewart’s racing career is the subject of a new book, “Collage”, which brings together newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs and all kinds of other documents from his life.

The three-times world champion talked to F1 Fanatic about winning the 1968 German Grand Prix in foul conditions at the Nurburgring, racing in multiple disciplines while competing in Formula 1, and more.

F1 Fanatic: There’s an eye-catching anecdote in the book about Ken Tyrrell telling you to go out and drive around the Nurburgring in the rain and fog in practice before the race in 1968.

Obviously that put me in mind of the race we just had this weekend. What was it like to drive in those conditions?

Jackie Stewart: I won a lot of races in the rain, but that doesn’t mean to say I liked it! I perhaps was more competitive in the rain, sometimes, but it wasn’t an enjoyable experience.

The reason I was so against it – and it’s very seldom that I Ken and I had major disagreements, and this was one of them – was I didn’t want to risk the car. And I don’t mean having a big accident, I mean just me damaging the car spinning off on a river of water.

The rain was so torrential that all the drains were getting blocked. At the Nurburgring there were just grass banks and mud would wash down and close apertures that would normally be there.

He, of course, was correct. Because as it turned out on that one lap I did I was able to bank where the major rivers of water were that were to play havoc with everybody.

Because it’s not just a question of flying off the road, it’s what happens when you hit a river of water. You’ve got to lift off immediately, you’ve got to try to collect the car, and in some cases it takes maybe 200 yards to get the car back under control.

F1F: Today, a race wouldn’t be started those conditions.

JS: Oh no, the race would never have been started.

F1F: After Korea some people have said the sport has become too risk-averse. Do you agree?

JS: Well, I don’t go along with that. But having said that, the design of a race track – and this is not being critical of a brand new race track, though I suppose I am being – ideally should be that no standing water would ever be there, because you would use the cambers in such a way that the water would always flow to a properly-designed drainage system.

Can you imagine the Nurburgring having that in 1968? Not possible. So it was part and parcel or driving at the ‘ring. As because the race was started for the entire period the rain was so severe that it was almost a new experience every lap.

I was lucky that, even though I am dyslexic, the one thing God gave me for whatever peculiar reason was a privilege in that I can remember every corner, every gearshift, every braking distance at the Nurburgring, 187 kilometres later and all these years later, too. During that race that intimacy with the track was what allowed me to win it by over four minutes.

And winning it by over four minutes was with me backing off. You’re only getting information twice a lap. Once as you past the pits, going from left to right, and once behind the pits, and again from left to right behind the pit wall. There was two sides to the pits at the Nurburgring, so you were on the south turn and you got more information.

But I couldn’t get much of that information because the lead was so big that by the time I had got round the south turn nobody had appeared behind me. So I knew once that I was more than 30 seconds in the lead on the first lap, and more than a minute in the lead on the second lap. So when you get up to two or three minutes in the lead you’re obviously not driving at ten tenths.

The argument about me going out in practice, to give a long answer to your question, was that Ken was right, and I was wrong. But I didn’t much like the idea because I was frightened I would do damage to the car when we might have had a good race out of it. If I had crashed in the morning you didn’t get the car back, usually, for at least an hour.

Collage - Jackie Stewart's new book

F1F: What did you make of Lewis Hamilton agitating for the race to be started in Korea?

JS: I think one of the good things about the drivers is that they’ve now got the GPDA [Grand Prix Drivers’ Association] back to being meaningful amongst themselves. Because it was kind of pooh-poohed by some people for a while – not just the drivers, but even the governing body.

When it comes to a decision of that nature you cannot go on one driver’s opinion in any case. I wasn’t there, so I can’t make a really good judgement on that.

But I think that’s a good element of the GPDA – being able to have some authority. Because no matter how knowledgeable [race director] Charlie Whiting may be he certainly doesn’t have anything close to the same knowledge as a Grand Prix driver. And it should be a Grand Prix driver of experience that makes these decisions.

F1F: How valuable were the races you did outside of Grand Prix racing – things like the Indianapolis 500 and the sports car races – to you during your career?

JS: They were terrific. They allowed the driver to be considerably more versatile. Because one day you’re driving a high-powered, 750hp Can-Am car, the next day you might be driving a Ford Escort.

You might be driving an Indianapolis car and then driving, as I was, a two-litre Formula 1 engine at Monaco in 1966. I came back from Indy, it was the three-litre Formula 1 but ours wasn’t ready so I drove a two-litre, an underpowered car by comparison.

All these cars had different characteristics, whether they were Can-Am cars, touring cars, sports cars or Formula 1 cars. You were also working with a variety of cultures, with different mechanics, team owners and so on.

And other levels of drivers, too. For example, if you went to a Can-Am race some of the Can-Am drivers were not so experienced. You go to a Formula 1 race and they really are experienced.

F1F: It seems there was a lot of rivalry too – in the book there’s an article where AJ Foyt is having a go at some of the Grand Prix drivers.

JS: Absolutely. But they were top line racing drivers – AJ was one of them, and Parnelli Jones, Mario Andretti, any of them.

The Formula 1 brigade might say ‘well, all they’re doing is turning left’, but these guys were highly skilled at what they did. I was very fortunate in that my career allowed me so experience so many different types of cars. Driving Richard Petty’s NASCAR car was an experience on its own and that’s not even mentioned in the book!

But you do things like that because you’re a top Formula 1 driver so you get opportunities to do things that other drivers might never get.

F1F: But today’s F1 drivers don’t seem to. Has the sport become too F1-centric?

JS: I think it has become too narrow. But I think that could change because there’s no testing now. And the drivers are free to do many more things that they would have done in past Formula 1 years.

But, then again, some of them might not want to do it because they’re so well-paid in Formula 1 that their contracts might restrict them if they twisted an ankle or slipped on a banana.

I think it would cause a huge crowd increase to a World Touring Car Championship race or the German Touring Car Championship if suddenly one of the top racing drivers from Formula 1 were to drive in it. Or a sports car event, even Le Mans if it didn’t clash with a Formula 1 race, because we all did that.

I drove the TT, for goodness sake, in an Escort with Chris Craft in 1970 when I was reigning world champion. We did all sorts of things then that don’t happen today and I think it would invigorate the sport enormously.

But then someone at McLaren or Ferrari or Red Bull or Renault or any of the top teams would turn around and say “look, we’re paying this guy an awful lot of money, what if something happens to him in one of these races? We can’t afford that to happen to him.”

F1F: It seems almost ironic that reasoning is used now when drivers are at far less risk of injury than they were in your time.

JS: Exactly. But times have changed and attitudes have altered. The money’s got bigger, the investments have got larger. So you’ve got to see the other person’s point of view.

When I look back I think I was very fortunate living in an era when we did so many different things and got the opportunities far and beyond what the other drivers get. That versatility made you, I think, a more complete driver. The different types of car – not just the power but the weight, the handling, everything.

We used to compete regularly against each other in Formula Two, for example. I didn’t do very well in 1967 because the BRM H16 wasn’t a great success but I won about four major Formula Two races where I was racing against Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt, Jack Brabham, Denny Hulme, Graham Hill, Chris Amon and Jacky Ickx… I mean, it was like a Formula 1 grid whether it was Pau or Albi or Rouen or Reims or Goodwood.

F1F: You seen a lot of change during and since your time in the sport and the man responsible for much of that change, Bernie Ecclestone, is 80 today. Is there a message you’d like to give him?

JS: Well I wish him a happy birthday! I think Bernie’s the perfect example of why nobody should retire. It keeps your mind alert, it keeps your body better, he eats well, he doesn’t drink, he’s a very dedicated man to what he does, with a huge amount of energy. And that energy has not diminished in any way over those years.

Many times we have disagreed on things and I have been quite vocal on that, but never against the fact that he has accomplished so much in the sport. It wouldn’t be what it is today had Bernie Ecclestone not been here. So I take my hat off to how he has created Formula 1 to be the global entity that it is today.

I don’t think anybody else could have done it. Eighty years of age and still hitting on all cylinders is quite an achievement.

Part two of this interview will be published tomorrow. In it, Stewart talks about the work to improve safety in Formula 1, how the drivers got the Nurburgring taken off the calendar in 1970 and his thoughts on the race for the 2010 world championship.

“Collage: Jackie Stewart’s Grand Prix Album” the signed, leather-bound limited edition book of 1,500 copies worldwide is available from Genesis Publications. Price £295.

Get the latest articles from F1 Fanatic for free via RSS, Twitter or our email subscription service. Click here for more information.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

51 comments on ““I was fortunate to race in my era””

  1. Even with his silly trousers and haircut, he is one of the best drivers world has ever seen

  2. Yes he was my first F1 hero

    1. Woow, u r following F1 for 40 years?! Nice, man, nice

  3. Fantastic interview. And so is, as always, Jackie Stewart. F1 is definitely too serious and professional. Kubica is the only driver I can think of that is racing elsewhere for fun.

    1. Kimi Raikkonen Did that…

      1. Does Kimi Raikkonen drive in F1 now?

        1. No at the moment his driving in WRC

        2. He did the finnish rally last year whilst being a formula 1 driver.

          1. I meant current F1 drivers.

        3. While Raikkonen was racing for Ferrari he did a snowmobile race in Finland under the name “James Hunt”

          https://www.racefans.net/2007/08/04/kimi-raikkonen-and-james-hunt/

          And don’t forget most of these drivers are involved with ROC which is fun for all of us to watch.

          1. And he did the powerboat races in a gorrilla suit!

    2. Here here.

      Money explains a lot of things, the stakes are way too high for drivers to dabble in other formulas.

  4. Interesting point made about drivers not participating in other forms of motor racing. I was wondering if part of the reason for this is because the sponsors don’t want to see drivers competing in other categories, where the team they are driving for is sponsored by someone else. I agree with Jackie about drivers having a much better idea of how the track is to drive than Charlie Whiting, but when the championship is at a point like this, you would be mad to think any of the drivers were telling the truth. And really, this is quite a shame, though I can’t think of any way to avoid it without avoiding the drivers’ opinions, which in itself would be mad. How’s that for a predicament?

    1. If you were McLaren, for example, paying a driver millions to win for you, you wouldn’t want him to miss races because he got injured doing some other race…

      1. Isn’t that how Jim Clark got killed? Racing in an Formula 2 race?

        Mind you back then, it wasn’t nearly as professional as now. From what I understand you raced because it was your livelihood. Or you didn’t eat.

        1. Yep, it was an F2 race at Hockenheim. One of the other drivers in the field was a certain Max Mosley.

          Bear in mind that in the 1960s it was possible to buy chassis off the shelf to run in F3, F2 and F1. Some teams ran cars in more than one category and the cars were still simple enough to be run by modestly funded privateers. Lotus made and sold cars for all three categories and it was a Lotus (a works Lotus, I think) Clark was driving when he was killed. The association between Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart went back to F3, and Tyrrell didn’t graduate to F1 as a constructor – not at first anyway.

          There were, however, easier ways to eat than being a racing driver…

      2. they were already too p’ed off with Montoya failing off a motorcycle 5 years ago…

      3. Sounds like Internation Football matches. Players play for their country, pick up an injury, and the club team has to take up the bill. Arjen Robben as an example was injured under the dutch federation and bayern muenchen are now stuck with the bill.

        1. they were already too p’ed off with Montoya failing off a motorcycle 5 years ago…

          Wasn’t he playing tennis? :P

          1. He was playing tennis on a motocross bike???

  5. Ive got a lot of time for Jackie and i love to just listen/read what he has to say in interviews and things, always intersting and with such little controversy to make it so.

    He says about what Bernie has done to make the sport what it is, but equally what Jackie did in the 60s & 70’s for the sport just cant be measured in how much money is flowing in F1 today, but the amount of people who can safley compete in it. A brave man both on the track and campaigning for saftey off it. Im so happy that he signed my hat at Goodwood this year!!

    1. Agree, Sir Jackie has done just as much for F1 as Bernie, not the least championing for safety way before it was popular to do so.

      If anyone wants to hear more of what Sir Jackie has to say, I’d highly recommend his book. One of the best reads you’ll ever have, and demonstrates that his talent did not just lie behind the wheel of a car. It’s a rare book that reduces me to tears, but this one did.

      1. tears ….. uhmmm . but with a name like pink….. just joking ! I’ve never been a fan of JS , in fact I have a small dislike for the man , which I guess is a bit unfair because , apart from knowing he won a few WDC’s , I know very little about him , but I think the dislike comes from each time I read a story he is involved in , it seems negative. Maybe I just fell on the ones like that by chance .

  6. Such a lovely article!

    Looking foward to the 2nd part..

    1. I’ll second that !

      Jackie is a legend and it’s great to see Keith getting an interview with him, I doubt I’d ever get bored of reading what he has to say.

    2. +1. Awesome interview, thanks Keith. I bet Mr. Stewart was pleased to be interviewed by someone who is a real F1 fan that knows a thing or two about the sport and its history.

  7. Great job, Keith!

    It’s always a pleasure hear what Sir Jackie Stewart has to say.

  8. I like what Sir Jackie has to say about competing in different motorsport series. I have long thought that if a driver raced cars other than F1 cars then it would make them a better all round driver and better F1 driver.

  9. CarsVsChildren
    28th October 2010, 17:20

    I read the whole thing with his accent in my head. it was brilliant.

    1. Ha! Me too!

      ——
      My comment was too short so I’ll type this sentence as well.

      1. I didn’t even think about it but I did it too. I wonder if we all do that unconsciously

  10. “Pau or Albi or Rouen or Reims or Goodwood.”

    Ah, seeing the great drivers back in Albi…

    Great job Keith on the interview !

  11. But, then again, some of them might not want to do it because they’re so well-paid in Formula 1 that their contracts might restrict them if they twisted an ankle or slipped on a banana.

    Favourite quote

    1. Actually makes me think of how great it is, that Kubica is allowed to do those Ralley events.

      Steward does give a nice interview, i like the guy.

  12. great article. good read, I always enjoy Jackie’s opinion.

  13. Ah Jackie Stewart the greatest among them all. One of the greatest drivers ever. My dream is to meet him one day. I would have so much to talk to him about. Absolute legend. Jackie Stewart my hero.

  14. a true legend, and a true gentelman. never say anything bad about anyone.
    Good interesting questions from keith like always.
    The way he talks, sometimes makes me believe if he could have been the best driver that ever lived, but then i remember there is senna and prost and the german master. But he is not far off any of them in any case. Even though i only saw him race on dvd, and it’s difficult to judge.

    1. Perhaps it might help if we distinguish a bit. There were some exceptionally good drivers in F1, but not all of them were true champions, because being a champion is not only about spinning the wheel well, but also about sportmanship, if you know what I mean. Jackie Stewart is a champion.

  15. Superb aritcle!

  16. Great interview. Maybe more articles / interviews with drivers from the past?

    Thanks

    1. I agree. Keith, this interview is so nice, but i would be very thankful to hear more interviews

  17. Great guy… definitely gonna buy his book. Sir Jackie not only seems so approachable and willing to share his experiences, he has great stories to tell. A true ambassador of motor racing.

  18. Having read ‘Winning Is Not Enough’ has opened the doors to the complications and fun of F1. The phrase “Oh no, not again” is not a pleasant one as it meant someone has died. Sir jackie Stewart was a major force for a safer world in motorsports.

    Drivers of this era should be thankful that deaths and injuries almost don’t exist anymore including fans too.

  19. i don’t know but is Jackie Stewart the man that can replace Bernie in FOM? I can’t think of anyone else!

  20. Wow, Keith. Sir Jackie Stewart? That’s fantastic you got an interview with him.

  21. Good interview, however the man can get rather repeatitive. No matter what his interview covers the same stuff comes up.

    Hes covered half of the shoe-ins in part 1 (Nurburgring 1968, Dyslexia), so Im predicting part 2 will make mention of laying on the floor at Spa with cigarette butts everywhere, and Cervert.

    Not a putdown, just a very accurate observation.

    1. And from a Scot too!

      (Well, I assume so from your username…)

      1. Given reports in recent days thats like assuming you’re from England if your name is Mohammed.

  22. He was a fantastic driver and he is always good copy. But f1 fans of a certain vintage have little time for him.

    For them he was responsible for the anodising of GP’s, of making everything so professional it lost its soul. My own opinion is not this as i only started watching in 1980 but i can see their point. However why not blame John Cooper for the ugly car era we’ve been in since 1959 as a result of them putting “the cart before the horse” ?

    Not sure about the Collage book but his autobiography is fantastic. His memory for detail is outstanding

  23. I think it would cause a huge crowd increase to a World Touring Car Championship race or the German Touring Car Championship if suddenly one of the top racing drivers from Formula 1 were to drive in it.

    But DTM has Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard?!

    OK, I take your point. ;)

  24. Fantastic! F1F Exclusive! Great job!

Comments are closed.