When You're No. 2 You Drive Harder

In March of 1964 Stewart was offered a test drive by Ken Tyrrell, who was running the official Cooper Formula III team. Bruce McLaren, a man with seven years of Grand Prix experience, was there. It was the first time Stewart had ever driven a single-seater car, a car "made to motor-race," as he put it, and he went quicker than McLaren, who until then "had been like a god" to him. Offers to drive poured in, and Stewart ran 53 races that year, winning 28. By Christmas he was driving a Lotus team car in the South African Rand Grand Prix; he won one heat and broke down in the other. Dan Gurney, explaining Stewart's quick success, says, "He's raced a lot of miles. A lot of guys don't run in three years what he ran in one."

Stewart is slightly taller than Clark—5 feet 8—has heavily muscled shoulders and weighs 154 pounds. He has a strong Scottish accent, whereas Clark has an upper-class British accent. Stewart has smallish eyes that crinkle into a winning smile but which, at other times, tend to make him look sleepy—which he is not. From the start he set a high price on his services, and when he recently rejected a contract offer from Dunlop Rubber, they wound up paying him two and a half times as much. He draws $1,260 starting money per Grand Prix race ("I don't call that a very good deal, do you?"), but he gets retainers from Dunlop, Shell and BRM and makes his own deals for other races. He would not go to Indianapolis until John Mecom Jr. paid him heavily. "I don't care whether I race for John Mecom or the President of the United States," Stewart says. "I'm a professional, and I expect to be paid a fee, win or lose." He has taken over his father's business, has spread himself into five companies and now shares Clark's lawyer and accountant, crowing that these men no longer make the mistakes they probably made when they started with Jimmy and that this will save Jackie Stewart plenty of money. Stewart won more than $25,000 at Indianapolis and may earn as much as $100,000 this year. "The way I see it, I'm a young businessman who is about to make a great deal of money," he says.

As for physical fearlessness, Stewart will tell you he hates racing on the N�rburgring, the 14-mile, 175-curve circuit through the Eifel mountains southwest of Bonn. "It's bloody terrifying," he says. "Take the Fuchsr�hre. You go down there the first time in fourth gear, and you say to yourself that you ought to be able to do it in sixth gear flat out. So the next time around you go down that hill in sixth gear at 163 miles an hour, switching back and forth from one side of the road to the other, the trees and hedges going by in such a hurry that you can't see anything but greenery, and you think, my God, I'm going too fast; I'm not going to have enough time to do everything. The car is leaping about, and every time it leaves the ground you have to put a bit of a lock on so it will be pointing the right way when it comes down. And then in the dip at the bottom of the hill the G forces are tremendous. You're squashed down in your seat, the suspension isn't working and you realize that you can't control the car anymore. It is going to take its own line up the hill, and you wonder what that line will be, and you can't even get your foot off the accelerator and onto the brake accurately—you probably only get a corner of it. The car goes up that hill like on tram tracks and you can't steer it, and you wonder where it's going to go, all the time trying to come down two gears, get it slowed enough to get around the lefthander and then the right, left, right coming up next—I tell you it's bloody terrifying.

"But the second time you do it, you know that the line it's going to take up the hill is all right. Your mind and body are synchronized to elements you're competing against, and it is all clear to you—it seems to happen in slow motion. It's like a fighter who sees the punches coming in slow motion and so is able to avoid them.

"It won't terrify you again until the next year," says the new voice in Grand Prix racing, "when there have been some improvements on the car and tires and you go down there a little bit faster."