Jackie Stewart

1939-

Scottish race car driver

The name Jackie Stewart is synonymous in America with auto racing. The series he became a legend of, Formula One (F1), however, is virtually unknown in the States. Arguably the most watched sport internationally, F1 is the most advanced auto racing series in the world. From 1964-73, The "Wee Scot" established a race-win record in his trademark tartan helmet that remained unbroken in F1 for fourteen years. His driving style has been characterized as smooth, precise, persistent, consistent, and remarkably quick. Off the track, he is known to be good natured and humorous. Beyond his illustrious career, Stewart's greatest contribution to motorsports may be his relentless campaign for track and driver safety after surviving a crash in 1966. He became a household

name in the 1970s and 1980s as a commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports, and maintained a partnership for Ford Motor Company for three decades. The F1 squad he launched with his son became Jaguar Racing.

Put Down Gun To Get Behind Wheel

Stewart was born June 11, 1939 in Dumbartonshire, Scotland. He began competitive shooting at age fourteen, and discovered something he was very good at. After frustrating experiences in school, he quit at age fifteen to work at Dumbuck's, his family's garage, and apprentice as a mechanic. It was not until later that he was diagnosed with dyslexia, which explained his difficulties with learning. Stewart's brother Jimmy was an accomplished semi-professional driver for the Scottish Ecurie Ecosse team by the time Stewart first drove an old race car on the snowy streets of Dumbartonshire. When Jimmy crashed soon after, the younger Stewart was warned away from motorsports, and encouraged to pursue his marksmanship talents.

The young Scot excelled in shooting, winning British, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and English trap shooting championships between 1959-62. He began to find his way back to racecar driving against his parents' wishes after failing to make the 1960 British Olympic shooting team. He was twenty-three years old—a late bloomer in auto racing—when he drove his first race at the Scottish airfield circuit Charterhall in 1962. He also married his wife Helen that year. By 1963 Stewart was driving for his brother's old team, Ecurie Ecosse, and was noticed by race team manager Ken Tyrell. Stewart out drove Bruce McLaren, already an experienced F1 driver, in a test for Tyrell. McLaren would later head the formidable McLaren racing team. Tyrell's offer to let Stewart drive for him in the British Formula Three series in 1964, and Stewart's subsequent domination of the series, pushed the young driver into the spotlight as an F1 hopeful.

Stewart made a calculated decision about his 1965 start in F1 racing. He turned down an offer from the legendary Team Lotus to drive alongside fellow Scot Jim Clark in lieu of a more competitive spot alongside Graham Hill on the BRM team. Clark's firm position as Lotus' number-one driver would have placed Stewart chronically in his shadow. At BRM, the hungry young driver would be able to shine. At the time of his death in 1968, Clark was the winningest F1 driver in history, with twenty-five career wins. Though he drove for BRM in 1965, Stewart made his F1 debut in a Lotus car. He guest drove the Lotus, qualifying in pole position in the nontitle Rand Grand Prix in South Africa in December 1964.

Survived Near-Fatal Crash A Champion

Stewart placed in the top six spots, earning championship points in his first six Grand Prix races. He qualified in pole position for a nonchampionship race at Goodwood, and beat World Champion John Surtees into second place in the International Silverstone Trophy race. He beat teammate Graham Hill to the finish line at the 1965 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He finished the season third overall for the World Championship, an amazing finish for a rookie driver. The 1966 season started promisingly with a win for Stewart at Monaco, but technical problems kept him out of the competition for the remainder of the season, and he finished sixth in the World Championship. He almost won the Indianapolis 500 that year, his first, but mechanical failure took him out of the race with only eight laps to go.

When he entered F1, the sport was "horrendously dangerous," he is quoted as saying in Forbes. "There were no seat belts worn, the medical care was pathetic, and there was no firefighting equipment to speak of." Stewart witnessed the deaths of many friends and rivals during his racing career, Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt, and Francois Cevert among them. Like all F1 drivers of the time, Stewart was driving without a seatbelt when he crashed during the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps in 1966. He ran off the track while driving 165 mph in heavy rain, and proceeded to crash into a telephone pole and a shed before driving into a farmer's outbuilding. A ruptured fuel tank filled the cockpit with fuel, and could have ignited at the tiniest spark with Stewart trapped inside. He was extracted from what could easily have been a fatal crash, having suffered broken ribs and shoulder and rib injuries.

Chronology

Related Biography: Driver Jim Clark

Fellow Scot Jim Clark was the greatest racing driver on the track when Jackie Stewart entered F1. Competition between the legend and the rookie promised to develop into a rich rivalry, but Clark died before Stewart had fully hit his stride. Born March 4, 1936 in Kilmany, Scotland, Clark, like Stewart, went into racing against his parents' wishes. He proved his mettle at first in friends' cars, but began to attract attention in the Jaguar D Type he drove for the Border Reivers team. After plans for an Aston Martin Grand Prix team collapsed, he signed with Lotus to drive in the Formula Two and Formula Junior series. His relationship with the manufacturer carried him into F1 with the team, which was running the fastest cars, though not always the most mechanically reliable. He first raced F1 in 1960, and was a leading contender until his death. He won the World Championship in 1963, and was challenged by newcomer Stewart for the 1965 title, which he also took home. Reserved and gentlemanly, Clark preferred his family and farm in Scotland to the cosmopolitan life of an F1 driver. He was just beginning to come into his own in the spotlight when he died. Still considered by many the greatest racing driver in history, Clark was killed April 7, 1968 in a crash at Hockenheim.

Stewart emerged from the experience a lifelong champion of safety reform who instituted countless changes in auto racing safety regulations. He was able to return to the driver's seat after a few weeks, and never again drove without a seatbelt, full-faced helmet, and fireproof racing suit. BRM head Louis Stanley backed Stewart's safety campaign to improve track and car standards and medical facilities. Track improvements in the name of safety that were unpopular with circuit owners have now become

the norm. "If I have any legacy to leave the sport I hope it will be seen to be in an area of safety," Stewart is quoted as saying on the Grand Prix Hall of Fame Web site, "because when I arrived in Grand Prix racing, socalled precautions and safety measures were diabolical."

Went Out On Top

After a lackluster 1967 season with BRM, Stewart had outgrown the fading team, and signed on to drive once again for Ken Tyrell, who was heading up a new F1 team. The German Grand Prix at Nurburgring may be Stewart's greatest race, according to Formula One Art & Genius online. He drove the fourteen-mile, 187-corner track in torrential rain and with a broken wrist, and beat Graham Hill to the finish line. "I can't remember doing one more balls-out lap of the 'Ring than I needed to," he is quoted as saying online at Formula One Art & Genius. "It gave you amazing satisfaction, but anyone who says he loved it is either a liar or wasn't going fast enough." Stewart lost the World Championship to Hill that year, coming in second, but clinched his first World Championship title in Tyrell's Matra-Ford in 1969. He qualified at the front of the pack often during the 1970 season, but did not regain the World Championship until 1971. Stomach ulcers kept him off the track for many races of the 1972 season, but returned in 1973 to drive another World Championship season. Unknown to his fans, Stewart had decided early in the season that the year would be his last.

Just thirty-four years old, Stewart announced his retirement in 1973, after winning his third Grand Prix title. "The key in life," Stewart told Sports Illustrated in 2002, "is deciding when to go into something and when to get out of it." He broke Jim Clark's record with twenty-seven career Grands Prix out of 99 entered, a record that remained until Alain Prost broke it in 1987. He was named both Sports Illustrated 's Sportsman of the Year, and Wide World of Sport's Athlete of the Year, an honor he shared that year with football player O.J. Simpson . Stewart, who has admitted that he "got big-headed" during this time, according to ABC Sports online, is also quick to point out, humorously, that the race horse Secretariat was chosen third for the ABC honor. Secretariat apparently was not in contention for the World, British, and Scottish Sportsman of the Year awards, which Stewart also won in 1973. Stewart had managed to become a legendary racing driver while remaining alive and in one piece, which is in itself an accomplishment.

Retirement Was A Relative Term

He had managed to beat the odds in auto racing and had come out on top, but Stewart also was "just plain bored, burned out, restless," Duncan Christy wrote in Forbes. "Where was I going?" he recalled asking himself. "What else was there to do? It was the same old ground. I could have stayed on as a racing car driver. I mean, Mario [Andretti] is the same age as I am. A.J. Foyt is a lot older. But I would never have developed; I would never have expanded as an individual."

Retirement meant nothing to Stewart; it kept him out of the cockpit but, career-wise, he remained very much in the driver's seat. He has worked as an advisor and ambassador for several international companies, including Ford and Goodyear Tire. "I knew it would be a good way to make money without the capital investment and risk necessary when you go into business yourself." He signed a five-year contract as an engineering consultant for Ford Motor Company, working with Ford engineers to improve handling. "American cars used to be like pregnant elephants," he told U.S. News & World Report, "Now, at least, Fords have become lean and clean in their response."

Stewart also joined ABC's Wide World of Sports as a commentator, which made him a household name in the 1970s and 1980s. "Wide World of Sports had a considerable impact on my life in general," Stewart is quoted as saying at ABC Sports online. "As a race driver it projected me in a way in the United States of America. I would otherwise never have been able to be put in the minds of sports fans in America. It helped my commercial life, my business life, and it helped my racing life. It was a good thing for me to have done." He was voted Wide World of Sports' Personality of the Year in 1973, which he was particularly honored by. "There's not country in the world that could give your sports people … more focus or more illumination," Stewart told ABC Sports online. In "such a galaxy" of American sports personalities, it was a "big thing" to be non-American and win the award. Stewart also has admitted that his title, "winningest driver in the history of Grand Prix," was like currency in his many lucrative business deals.

Stewart moved his family to Switzerland to avoid strict British tax laws early in his racing career, and he has long been known for his globetrotting lifestyle. Stewart travels upwards of 400,000 miles a year on the Concorde or in his private jet. Though his friend Prince Charles did not knight him until 2001, Sir Stewart has always kept company with royalty and celebrities, who adore him. He has rubbed elbows with Sean Connery, Prince Edward, Steven Spielberg, and Jordan's King Hussein, to name a few. Beatle George Harrison taught his sons to play guitar. Helen Stewart is godmother to Princess Anne's daughter Zara.

Awards and Accomplishments

Where Is He Now?

Stewart founded a shooting school at Scotland's prestigious Gleneagle Hotel in the early 1980s. Nearly thirty years after joining forces with Ford, he signed on in February 2002 for another three years in research and development with the American auto company. He has served since 1995 as president of the Scottish Dyslexia Trust. He has also been on the boards of and a spokesman for Moet & Chandon champagne and Rolex watches. Stewart's wife Helen was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001 just eighteen months after their son Paul was told he had colon cancer, which went into remission. "For years she stood waiting to see if I would survive a race; now it's me waiting," Stewart is quoted as saying by Sports Illustrated in 2002. "The past two years are probably the toughest thing I've had to deal with in my life." Stewart's younger son Mark, who runs a television production company, is making a four-part documentary of his father's life called The Flying Scot.

All in all, Stewart's long-held record earns him status in motor-racing history, but his impact on the sport is much greater than statistics can show. Every driver on the track has Stewart to thank for the safety mandates he championed that have saved many lives. Because of his American media exposure, he is surely the most-known F1 driver in the States. But his reputation as a class-act sportsman and businessman are the result of a lifetime of integrity and good humor both on and off the track.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Henry, Alan. Grand Prix Champions: From Jackie Stewart to Michael Schumacher. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1995.

Periodicals

Bechtel, Mark. "Catching up with … Jackie Stewart, Auto racer September 6, 1971." Sports Illustrated (February 25, 2002): 19.

Bronson, Gail. "As stars hawk their hidden talents—some have more than a famous face and name to sell." U.S. News & World Report (February 17, 1986): 44.

Christy, Duncan. "Jackie Stewart aims to please." Forbes (May 10, 1993): 118.

"The art of pit-stop management." Economist (August 10, 1996): 52.

Other

"Grand Prix drivers: Jackie Stewart." GrandPrix.com. http://www.grandprix.com (October 30, 2002).

"Grand Prix drivers: Jim Clark." GrandPrix.com. http://www.grandprix.com (October 30, 2002).

"Jackie Stewart." Formula One Art & Genius. http://f1-grandprix.com (October 30, 2002).

"Jackie Stewart." Formula One Database. http://f1db.com (October 30, 2002).

"Jackie Stewart." Grand Prix Hall of Fame. http://www.ddavid.com/formula1 (October 30, 2002).

"Jimmy Clark." Grand Prix Hall of Fame. http://www.ddavid.com/formula1 (October 30, 2002).

"Stewart: Monaco and Indy were special." ABC Sports. http://espn.go.com/abcsports (October 30, 2002).

Sketch by Brenna Sanchez

Jackie Stewart

In a short career, Scottish race-car driver Jackie Stewart (born 1939) won 27 Grand Prix races and was world champion status three times on the Formula One circuit. Stewart was also an advocate of driver safety and after his retirement worked as a lively commentator for ABC-TV's "Wide World of Sports."

Often wearing his trademark tartan-patterned racing helmet, Stewart earned his nickname the "Flying Scot" for his speed on the race course and for his meteoric climb to the top of the world Grand Prix racing circuits. Racing for the first time in 1965, Stewart was one of the top drivers on the Formula One circuit into the 1970s. During his career, the sport was revolutionalized by design advances that made cars more aerodynamic and much faster. With 27 Grand Prix wins, Stewart combined a natural talent for the sport with a charisma that made him the darling of the media and an effective and outspoken advocate for race course safety.

Racing in His Blood

John Young Stewart was born in Milton in Dumbartonshire, Scotland in 1939. As a child he exhibited exceptional eye-hand coordination, and his father, a former motorcycle racer who owned a garage and sold Jaguars, had hopes that his youngest son would become involved in racing. Stewart grew up around cars and soon became an adept apprentice mechanic. Meanwhile, his older brother, Jimmy Stewart, went from a successful run of local races to qualifying for the British Grand Prix in 1953. Eliminated from the race at Copse after his Ecurie Ecosse car hydroplaned on a wet track, Jimmy Stewart was involved in an even more serious accident while racing at Le Mans, France, forcing him to leave the sport. Stewart's parents, thankful that their oldest son was still alive, discouraged their youngest son, 15-year-old Jackie, from taking up car racing.

Never a promising student, Stewart, who was dyslexic, left school prior to graduation. He soon took up clay target shooting. Competing in shooting tournaments in Scotland, he hoped to qualify to join Great Britain's 1960 Olympic team. His poor performance during the final round of the Olympic trials on his 21st birthday ended that plan, however, and Stewart returned home, believing he was destined to work at his father's garage.

A Formula Three Natural

In 1963, Barry Filer, a customer of the family garage, approached Stewart, then 24, and asked him to track-test a Formula Three car at England's Oulton Park speedway. His driving impressing several onlookers, and word went out to Cooper's Formula Junior team manager Ken Tyrell. Constantly on the lookout for new talent, Tyrell asked Stewart to come and try out for a position as driver. Taking over the wheel from experienced Formula One driver Bruce McLaren, Stewart held his own in the car, a Cooper F3, and soon matched and even passed McLaren's times around the track. Impressed by the young Scot's lightning-quick reflexes and cool demeanor behind the wheel, Tyrell offered him a place in his Formula Three team, and Stewart accepted.

Formula Three cars such as Tyrell's Cooper are scaled-down versions of Formula One race cars. Aerodynamically designed single-seaters with two-liter racing engines, these cars are designed to run close to the ground, corner on a dime, and attain speeds upwards of 165 miles per hour. Considered a junior version of Formula One racing, Formula Three has been the traditional stepping-up point for many future world champion race drivers, and as someone with fast reflexes and intense focus, Stewart was no exception.

During his three years on the Formula Three circuit, Stewart won the championship title easily, winning 11 of the 13 races he competed in and finishing a close second once. In 1964 he also won England's Express & Star Formula Three championship. He particularly enjoyed working with Tyrell–he would later comment, as quoted on the Formula Three website that his "British Formula Three Championship days were the best of my life.… It was fantastic winning all those races against some top names, and I think it really sent me on my way." Nonetheless, the Formula One circuit–which included the course in LeMans that had broken his older brother–beckoned. In 1965 the single-minded Scot left Tyrell and joined Graham Hill's BRM Formula One team.

Formula One Experience

Confident after his successes in Formula Three, Stewart traveled to South Africa, where he placed in his first race as a Formula One driver and won his first point toward the coveted world drivers' championship. That race set the pace for the rest of the racing season: during his eighth race for BRM at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, he got his first win, and by the end of the 1965 season Stewart was ranked third in the world drivers' championships behind Jim Clark and Graham Hill.

Stewart remained with Hill and BRM for two more years, and though his ranking went down he gained experience, including one event that would change his outlook on auto racing forever. The year 1966 held several disappointments, one of which was taking the lead at the Indianapolis 500 only to lose it in the last eight laps due to a scavenge pump malfunction. However, that paled in comparison to Stewart's experiences while competing in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa. A sudden downpour caused cars to careen off the track, and Stewart was soon among them. Sliding into a ditch, he found himself pinned in his car by the steering wheel, the side of his car crushed inward. Unable to escape, he lay helpless and in pain while fuel began leaking out, soaking his racing suit through to his skin. For twenty-five minutes he lay there, counting every second, while Hill and others in his crew dismantled the steering wheel in order to free him. With no doctors or medical facilities nearby, Stewart was deposited in the bed of a nearby pickup truck and remained there until an ambulance finally arrived. Taken to the track's First Aid center on a stretcher, he was placed on the floor, amid cigarette butts and other garbage, and lay there until yet another ambulance crew picked him up. En route to a hospital in Lié, the ambulance drivers got lost.

During the hours he lay on his stretcher, enduring severe pain, Stewart had a lot of time to reflect on his situation. He had fractured his collarbone, but his injuries could have been more severe. If they had involved internal bleeding, the lack of medical care and the lax emergency transportation would likely have meant his death; if it had been a spinal injury, as many at first feared, he could have suffered permanent disability and the end of his career. He also recalled the deaths of other drivers during the 1960s, casualties of the experiments and advances in Formula One technology.

"Something Sadly Wrong …"

After his experience at Spa, Stewart worked with BRM team leader Louis Stanley to campaign vigorously for improved emergency services, better safety barriers around race tracks and the introduction of safety-related devices in race cars. As he was quoted as noting in a biography for the Grand Prix Hall of Fame website, "I realized that if this was the best we had there was something sadly wrong: things wrong with the race track, the cars, the medical side, the fire-fighting and the emergency crews.… Young people today just wouldn't understand it. It was ridiculous."

Stewart soon recovered from his injury and returned to complete the 1966 season, finishing in seventh place. The following year would be his last with Hill: the redesigned car Stewart was assigned to drive proved useless on the track. Ending 1967 in ninth place, a frustrated Stewart reconnected with Tyrell, who by now had established a Formula One team and quickly signed the Scot to drive his Matra Ford.

Proving that his lackluster performance in the world drivers' championships the previous year had been the result of Hill's BRM car rather than a lack of driver ability, Stewart ended 1968 in second place, despite battling the winding course in Nürbugring, Germany, in the pelting rain and the discomfort caused by a recently fractured wrist.

First Championship Season

Driving a Matra MS80, Stewart won his first world championship for Ken Tyrell's team in 1969; he was also named British Formula One champion. During the season he charted up winning points by taking the trophy in seven out of the fourteen races he entered.

The following year proved to be a disappointment. Problems with the Ford chassis in Tyrell's Matra cars forced Stewart from several races, and the Scot raced for Tyrell in only the Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. Grand Prix that year. Desiring to finish the season out, he raced for March and finished 1970 in fifth place.

By 1971 Tyrell had begun to build his own cars. Stewart gladly returned to the Tyrell fold and won his second world drivers' championship. The following year he was again sidelined because the tension of the track had begun to take its toll on Stewart's health. Plagued by stomach ulcers, he nonetheless persevered, ending in second place despite missing several races.

In 1973, 34-year-old Stewart chalked up his third and final world drivers' championship. His decision to end his career after his 100th race had been made at the start of the racing season. But at the Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, New York, Stewart and Tyrell walked away from the planned final race because his friend and teammate François Cevert was killed in a crash during the race's qualifying round. As Stewart would later comment to March Bechtel of Sports Illustrated, "The key in life is deciding when to go into something and when to get out of it."

With 27 wins in 99 starts, Stewart scored a total of 360 points during his nine-year career, and led at some point in 51 of those 99 races. His record of 27 Grand Prix wins would stand for two decades, until bested by Alain Prost during the 1987 race at Estoril.

A Head for Business

Popular with the press due to his intelligence, easy wit, and charm, Stewart was just as beloved among racing fans, and his advocacy of racetrack safety earned him the respect of many, both in and out of the sport. After his career in Grand Prix racing came to a close, he remained an active presence in the world of Formula One. For the next 14 years his heavy Scottish brogue could be heard in coverage of Formula One Racing on ABC's popular "Wide World of Sports" TV show. He also worked as an engineering consultant for the Ford Motor Company, continuing a relationship that had started on the track, and assisting the automaker in researching and developing new generations of Formula One engines. In later years he added such firms as Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to his client list.

A beloved figure in his native Great Britain, Stewart was honored by Queen Elizabeth with the Order of the British Empire in 2001. He was also inducted into both the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and the Sports Hall of Fame. Outside the world of racing, Stewart and his wife Helen, whom he married in 1962, raised two sons, Paul and Mark.

Combining his canny business sense with an equally strong sense of civic responsibility, Stewart founded a successful shooting school at Scotland's Gleneagles Hotel in 1985, and held seats on several corporations while also serving as president of the Scottish Dyslexia Trust beginning in 1995.

In 1997, Stewart became chairman of Paul Stewart Grand Prix Racing, a team he founded in partnership with his son Paul and Ford Motor Company. Signing drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jan Magnussen, Stewart managed his team from their first appearance at the 1997 Australian Grand Prix with the same intensity he once showed behind the wheel. Selling Paul Stewart Racing team to Ford in 1999 for 60 million pounds, a year later Stewart retired from active involvement in what was renamed Jaguar Racing, citing the desire to spend time with his family. As of 2003 he retained his role as president of the British Racing Drivers' Club as well as president of the Scottish Dyslexia Trust. He also remained an active role as a Ford Motor Company consultant, acted as trustee for the Scottish International Education Trust, was the Springfield Club's president, and acted as chairman for the Grand Prix Mechanics Charitable Trust. Stewart also was on the board of Moet & Chandon and was a patron of the British Dyslexia Association. He left Formula One auto racing a far safer sport than when he entered it almost four decades before.

Books

Legends in Their Own Time, Prentice Hall General Reference, 1994.

Periodicals

Financial Times, November 29, 2003.

Forbes, May 10, 1993.

Sports Illustrated, February 25, 2002.

Online

Gran Prix Hall of Fame,http://www.ddavid.com/furmula1/stewbio.htm.

Official Formula One Web site,http://www.formula1.com/.

Official Formula Three Web site,http://www.fota.co.uk/.

Stewart, Jackie ( John Young) (1939– ) Scottish Formula 1 motor racing driver. Stewart retired from racing in 1973 after winning what was then a record 27 Grands Prix. In 1997, he established his own Formula 1 racing team.