The day once you show why you are considered the GOAT
Spa, however, is total madness. Pure. I’ve never refused a job but I, this place, hate it. It seems absurd to me to run on such a dangerous circuit. The speeds are what they are, at the bottom of Monza you go even stronger. There, however, since the days of Nuvolari there have been containing networks, before the trunks of the Royal Park.
Not in Belgium. The absence of the most basic safety measures is disconcerting. On Friday of the Grand Prix the roads are closed and good luck. Very few guard-rails, just straddling the embankments that support the old billboards. For the rest, the state roads that connect three villages of a forest. Reflective stalls, paint to delimit the roadways and nothing more. Just a few bales of hay – frankly useless, we fly at 280 km/h on aluminum cans filled with gasoline -, stacked by compassionate owners of the half-timbered houses overlooking the track, hide deadly corners of concrete. Anyway, most pilots end up among the trees or, if they are lucky, straight between the beams of a barn.
The pilots’ appeals are useless. In Spa you run. The teams, attracted by substantial starting prizes, do not blink; the prestige of the Grand Prix is undeniable and no one dreams of deserting it. In addition, it is the second event of the championship after Montecarlo: winning here means having a fast single-seater on a circuit much more representative than that of the Principality.
Then, in 1963 I play the world championship at the wheel of the Lotus 25: an unbeatable jewel. Fragile, very fragile, but unbeatable. In all the tests of this Grand Prix I will have completed yes and no about ten revolutions due to problems with the ZF gearbox that connects the V8 Climax to the wheels. Graham Hill, the reigning champion, is in Pole Position at an hourly average of 217 km/h. The track record. Once again, pure madness.
This morning it rained. Strong. Throughout the morning. It only stopped at 2 p.m., and the track is still damp when we are on the grid. Down the flag and from the third row I’m first. I take the ascent of Eau Rouge in front of everyone.
I run like this, like Ascari before me. I tend to fly, I greet the group and see each other again on the podium. The car is the only space where I am not indecisive in life. In stupid things like in those series, from level crossings to love stories, outside the cockpit I’m eternally doubtful. In front of the red steering wheel of the Lotus coloured in green and yellow, however, I only know how to go strong. Strongest of all.
At the end of the first land, Hill and I have a 15” lead over the group. At round number 16, when I mark the fastest land of the race (3’58”), Graham is detached by 26”. From that moment, however, the storm returned.
This time it’s strong, very strong. The track is immediately fooded. Even the bravest photographers, usually on the side of the road in the hairpin bends, shelter themselves under the canopies of the houses. I continue, because I have to, but many of my colleagues go off the road. I see them accumulating on the side of the track, often with cars in an accident, even if there is no lack of reliability problems on such a demanding track. The change of my Lotus continues to create problems: in fifth gear I have to keep the lever in place, driving with one hand (it’s not a legend, it really went like this, in conditions like those witnessed by the cover photo! Ed.)
Double different competitors, at a certain point it even seems to me all. The only one who can review me, when I relax in the final laps by taking off times close to 7′, is Bruce McLaren.
After 32 laps I finally see the checkered flag. I’m first. Happy with the victory, but above all not to see this place again for another twelve months.
Jim Clark, who hated Spa-Francorchamps, won the Belgian Grand Prix by completing the 451,200 kilometres of race in 2 hours, 27 minutes and 47.6 seconds. Until the ‘remount’ of Bruce McLaren, he led the race having doubled all the competitors. They reached the finish line in six out of twenty parties. The New Zealander (Cooper) crossed the finish line with 4 minutes and 54” delay; Gurney (Brabham) and Ginther (BRM) at one lap; Bonnier (Cooper) and de Beaufort (Porsche) at two laps.
Yet I couldn’t stand that track…
JIM CLARK
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