Racing Green by Chapman Kit;

Author:Chapman, Kit;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

CHAPTER NINE

Matters of Life and Death

In 2008, a triptych by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano was unveiled at the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco. Titled Tension, Timing & Triumph, the vignettes showed Sir Jackie Stewart’s victory at the 1971 Monaco Grand Prix: his wife Helen watching his lap times on a stopwatch; the imperious cool of Stewart, already a world champion, marching to his car; the couple’s embrace at his victory. Or, perhaps, an embrace thankful that Stewart had survived.

A few years after that Monaco triumph, Stewart was in the closing stages of the 1973 season, driving for the dominant Tyrrell team. He’d already won the championship and had secretly sworn the final race – the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen – would be his 100th and last. The plan was to hand the lead driver baton to his teammate and friend, 29-year-old François Cevert. It was a secret even Helen didn’t know. On the morning of Saturday, 6 October, the cars began qualifying. Eager to prove himself to the team, Cevert was hunting for pole, slipping through a fast series of turns on the far side of the track known as the Esses. Handsome, charming and talented, Cevert was the model of a relentless racer. Taking the turn in third gear, he ran on to the left kerb, slid across the track and hit the right guardrail. This spun the car back across the racing line, this time at a 90-degree angle, where it hit the far barrier at almost 150mph. When the marshals reached the scene, they didn’t even try to get Cevert out of the car: he had been almost decapitated. Stewart arrived, saw his friend, teammate and successor dead, and drove back to the pits. When Lotus’ Colin Chapman saw Stewart climb out, the story’s tragedy was writ large among tears in the Scot’s eyes.

Cevert was gone. Stewart was done. Tyrrell withdrew from the race and Stewart walked away from the sport with 99 starts to his name. He valued his life more than a round number.

Stewart had been a racing safety advocate long before his decision to leave the sport. At Spa in Belgium in 1966, he’d skidded off the track at 165mph, crashed through a telephone pole and shed and ended up trapped in a farmer’s outbuilding. The steering column had buckled and pinned his leg, and the fuel tank’s contents poured into the cockpit, drenching him in gallons of easily ignitable fluid inches away from heat and flame. There were no jaws of life – the tools firemen use to cut people from cars – available. ‘Steering wheels weren’t removable in those days,’ says Mark Gallagher, former Formula One executive with Jordan, Jaguar and Cosworth, and an expert on the history of the sport. ‘He was trapped and he was convinced he was going to burn to death.’

Stewart’s life was saved by fellow drivers Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant, who hauled him out of the wrecked car. But Stewart’s woes were only beginning.

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