Sir 'John Young Stewart',
OBE[1] (born
11 June 1939 in
Milton,
West Dunbartonshire), better known as 'Jackie Stewart', and nicknamed 'The Flying Scot', is a
Scottish[2] former racing driver. He competed in
Formula One between 1965 and 1973, winning three world titles. He also competed in the
Can-Am championship. He is well-known in the
United States as a
commentator of racing television broadcasts where his
Scottish accent made him a distinctive presence. Between 1997 and 1999 he was team principal in partnership with his son, Paul Stewart of the
Stewart Grand Prix Formula One racing team.
Early life
Jackie's early involvement with cars was in the family business, Dumbuck Garage, in Milton, where he worked as an
apprentice mechanic. His family were
Jaguar dealers and had built up a successful practice. Jackie's father had been a
motorcycle racer, and Jackie's brother
Jimmy was a racing driver with a growing local reputation. He drove for
Ecurie Ecosse and competed in the
1953 British Grand Prix, until he went off at Copse Corner in the wet. It was only natural that Jackie would soon become involved in
motor racing like his older brother.
After his brother was injured in a crash at
Le Mans the sport was discouraged by their parents and Jackie took up shooting. In
target shooting Stewart made a name for himself and almost made it to the
1960 Summer Olympics, only just missing the team.
But he took up an offer from Barry Filer, a customer of his family business, to test in a number of his cars at
Oulton Park. Stewart impressed all who were in attendance that day.
Ken Tyrrell who was running the
Formula Junior team for
Cooper heard of this young Scotsman from a track manager and called up Jimmy Stewart to see if his younger brother was interested in a tryout. Jackie came down for the test and took over a car that
Bruce McLaren was testing. McLaren at that time was already an experienced Formula One driver and the new Cooper F3 was a very competitive car in its class. Soon Stewart was besting McLaren's times, causing McLaren to return to the track for some quicker laps. Again, Stewart was faster and Tyrrell offered Stewart a spot on the team. This would be the beginning of a great partnership that would see them reach the pinnacle of the sport. But this was
1963 and Stewart still had a lot to learn.
Racing career
Jackie Stewart 1969 with the Matra-Cosworth at the
Nürburgring.
Tyrrell 003, the car that took Jackie Stewart to the World Championship.
In
1964 he drove in
Formula Three for Ken Tyrrell and won his first race at
Snetterton Motor Racing Circuit. Since Tyrrell did not compete in
Formula One at that time, he joined
BRM alongside
Graham Hill in
1965. His first contract netted him £4,000. On his debut in
South Africa he scored his first Championship point. His first major competition victory came in the
BRDC International Trophy in the late spring, and before the end of the year he won his first World Championship race at
Monza.
1966 saw him almost win the
Indianapolis 500 on his first attempt only to be denied by a broken scavenge pump while leading by over a lap with eight laps to go; however, Stewart's performance, having had the race fully in hand and sidelined only by mechanical failure, won him
Rookie of the Year honours, the only occasion to date in race history that a rookie winner (Hill, team mate at Indianapolis as well, and final leader after Stewart) was deemed surpassed in performance by another first-timer.
Also, in
1966, a crash triggered his fight for improved safety in racing. In lap one of the
1966 Belgian Grand Prix at
Spa-Francorchamps, when sudden rain caused many crashes, he found himself trapped in his BRM, getting soaked by leaking fuel. Any spark could cause a disaster. The marshals had no tools to help him, and it took his team mate Hill to get him out. Since then, a main switch for electrics and a removable steering wheel became standard. Also, noticing the long and slow transport to a hospital, he brought his own doctor to future races, while the BRM team supplied a medical truck for the benefit of all.
In
Formula One, he switched to
Ken Tyrrell's team where he drove
Matra chassis during the
1968 and
1969 seasons. His winning drive during the rain and fog of the
1968 German Grand Prix at the
Nürburgring, where he won by a margin of four minutes, is considered as one of the finest ever, even though his rain tyres were probably better than those of the competition.
Stewart became
world champion in
1969 driving a
Cosworth-powered
Matra MS80. Up until September
2005 when
Fernando Alonso in a
Renault became champion, he was the only driver to have won the championship driving for a
French marque and, as Alonso's
Renault was actually built in the UK, Stewart remains the only driver to win the world championship in a
French-built car. For the
1970 season, Matra insisted on using their own
V12 engines, while Tyrrell and Stewart wanted to keep the
Cosworth engines as well as the good connection to
Ford Motor Company. As a consequence, the Tyrrell team bought a chassis from
March Engineering, which Stewart drove with mixed success until Tyrrell built its own car later in the season. They were still sponsored by French
Elf fuel company, and Stewart raced in a car painted in French Racing Blue for many years.
Stewart went on to win the Formula One world championship in
1971 using the excellent
Tyrrell 003 and again in
1973. In the 1972 season he missed races due to
gastritis which was developed following frequent travelling, as Stewart also competed in the
Can Am series with a
Lola, and a
Ford Capri in the
touring car Group 2 European championship, with his F1 teammate
François Cevert and other F1 pilots, at a time where the competition between Ford and
BMW was at a climax.
His last and then record-setting 27th GP victory, came at the
1973 German Grand Prix at the
Nürburgring with a convincing 1-2 for Tyrrell. After the fatal crash of his teammate
François Cevert in practice for the
1973 United States Grand Prix at
Watkins Glen, Stewart retired one race earlier than intended and missed what would have been his 100th GP.
Racing Safety Advocate
During Stewart's F1 career, the chances of an F1 driver who raced for 5 years getting killed in a crash were two out of three.
[3]
At Spa-Francorchamps, he ran off the track while driving 165 mph in heavy rain, and crashed into a telephone pole and a shed before coming to rest in a farmer's outbuilding. His steering column pinned his leg, while ruptured fuel tanks emptied their contents into the cockpit. There were no track crews to extricate him, nor were proper tools available. There were no doctors or medical facilities at the track, and Stewart was put in the bed of a pickup truck, remaining there until an ambulance finally arrived. He was first taken to the track's First Aid center, where he waited on a stretcher, which was placed on a floor strewn with cigarette butts and other garbage. Finally, another ambulance crew picked him up, but the ambulance driver got lost driving to a hospital in Liége. Finally, a private jet flew Stewart back to the UK for proper treatment.
After his crash at Spa-Francorchamps in 1966, Stewart became an outspoken advocate for auto racing safety. Later, he would explain, "If I have any legacy to leave the sport I hope it will be seen to be an an area of safety because when I arrived in Grand Prix racing so-called precautions and safety measures were diabolical."
[4].
Stewart continued, commenting on his crash at Spa:
"I lay trapped in the car for twenty-five minutes, unable to be moved. Graham and Bob Bondurant got me out using the spanners from a spectator's toolkit. There were no doctors and there was nowhere to put me. They in fact put me in the back of a van. Eventually an ambulance took me to a first aid spot near the control tower and I was left on a stretcher, on the floor, surrounded by cigarette ends. I was put into an ambulance with a police escort and the police escort lost the ambulance, and the ambulance didn't know how to get to Liège. At the time they thought I had a spinal injury. As it turned out, I wasn't seriously injured, but they didn't know that."
"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. There were also grass banks that were launch pads, things you went straight into, trees that were unprotected and so on. Young people today just wouldn't understand it. It was ridiculous."
In response, Stewart campaigned with Louis Stanley (BRM team leader) for improved emergency services and better safety barriers around race tracks. "We were racing at circuits where there were no crash barriers in front of the pits, and fuel was lying about in churns in the pit lane. A car could easily crash into the pits at any time. It was ridiculous."
[5] As a stop-gap measure, Stewart hired a private doctor to be at all his races, and taped a spanner wrench to the steering shaft of his BRM in case it would be needed again. Stewart pressed for mandatory seat belt usage and full-face helmets for drivers, and today a race without those items is unthinkable. Likewise, he pressed track owners to modernize their track, including organizing driver boycotts of races at Spa-Francorchamps and
Nürburgring, until barriers, run-off areas, fire crews and medical facilities were improved.
Stewart's work was not appreciated by track owners, race organizers, some drivers, and members of the press. "I would have been a much more popular World Champion if I had always said what people wanted to hear. I might have been dead, but definitely more popular."
[5] However, his race wins, combined with his popularity with the public and his business savvy, prevented his message from being silenced. Certainly, after his victory in the 1968 German GP at the 187-corner old
Nürburgring Nordschleife course -- in a torrential rain, driving with a broken wrist, winning by more than four minutes -- no one dared question his bravery as Stewart pushed for better safety standards.
Today, Stewart's legacy as a safety advocate in auto racing is as great as his legacy as a race winner.
Complete Formula One results
() (Races in 'bold' indicate pole position)
★ Winner of the
BRDC International Trophy in 1965 and 1973.
Consultant, commentator, and team owner
Subsequently he became a consultant for the
Ford Motor Company while continuing to be a spokesman for safer cars and circuits in Formula One.
Stewart covered NASCAR races and the
Indianapolis 500 on American television during the 1970s and early 1980s, and has also worked on Australian TV coverage. As a commentator, he was know for his insightful analysis, Scottish accent, and rapid delivery, once causing
Jim McKay to remark that Stewart spoke almost as fast as he drove.
In
1997 Stewart returned to Formula One, with
Stewart Grand Prix, as a team owner in partnership with his son, Paul. As the works
Ford team, their first race was the
1997 Australian Grand Prix. The only success of their first year came at the rain-affected
Monaco Grand Prix where
Rubens Barrichello finished an impressive second. Reliability was low however, with a likely 2nd place at the Nürburgring among several potential results lost.
1998 was even less competitive, with no podiums and few points.
However, after Ford acquired
Cosworth in July
1998, they risked designing and building a brand-new engine for 1999. It paid off. The SF3 was consistently competitive throughout the season. The team won one race at the
European Grand Prix at the
Nürburgring with Johnny Herbert, albeit somewhat luckily, while Barrichello took three 3rd places, pole in France, and briefly led his home race at Interlagos. The team was later bought by Ford and became
Jaguar Racing in
2000 (which became
Red Bull Racing in 2005).
Honours
Stewart received ''
Sports Illustrated'' magazine's 1973 "
Sportsman of the Year" award, the only auto racer to win the title so far, and in the same year he also won
BBC Television's "Sports Personality Of The Year" award, and was named as
ABC's
Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year in which he was shared with American pro football legend
O.J. Simpson. In
1990, he was inducted into the
International Motorsports Hall of Fame. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
In
2001 Stewart received a
knighthood.
1
In
2002 he became a founding
patron of the
Scottish Sports Hall of Fame, and an inaugural inductee.
In
2003 The World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities presented Sir Jackie Stewart the Sport Shooting Ambassador Award
[1]. The Award goes to an outstanding individual whose efforts have promoted the shooting sports internationally.
Victories
★
Formula One World Champion 1969 Matra
★
Formula One World Champion 1971 Tyrrell
★
Formula One World Champion 1973 Tyrrell
Trivia
★ Stewart appeared in several UPS commercials in 2002 and 2003 as a consultant for
Dale Jarrett to convince Jarrett to "race the Big Brown truck".
★ Stewart rather anachronistically appears in a cameo in a 1977 episode of "
Lupin III" as a competitor in the 1977
Monaco Grand Prix.
★ Stewart was subject in the
Roman Polanski-produced film "Weekend of a Champion". In which Polanski shadows Sir Jackie throughout a race weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix.
★
George Harrison, a good friend of Jackie's, released a single, "Faster", in
1979 as a tribute to Jackie,
Niki Lauda,
Ronnie Peterson and fellow
Formula 1 race car drivers.
★ A parody of Stewart appeared in
Animalympics, known as "Jackie Fuelit". Fuelit was the commentator for the
100 meter dash, depicted like a drag race.
References
1. Honours in Scotland
2. Scots honoured in Queen's birthday list
3. http://www.formula1.com/teams_and_drivers/hall_of_fame/127/
4. http://www.ddavid.com/formula1/stew_bio.htm
5. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jackie_stewart.html
6. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jackie_stewart.html
External links
★
International Motorsports Hall of Fame, Jackie Stewart
★
Grand Prix History - Hall of Fame, Jackie Stewart
★
The Scotsman newspaper, Heritage and Culture, 'I risked my mother's wrath in order to be a driver'
★
The Herald newspaper (Glasgow), 'Sir Jackie, was not diagnosed with dyslexia until he was 42'
★
Jackie Stewart statistics
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