(See Cover) "Moteurs!"
The command rang out at 3 p.m., and for one long moment last week, all the klaxons of hell seemed concentrated at Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne Mountains of France. Electric starters whined. Engines coughed, belched smoke, bellowed and shrieked defiance at the wind. Yelling officials rushed wildly about, collaring reluctant mechanics and dragging them to the safety of the pits. The Tricolor flag fell. Gears crashed, tires squealed, and to a roar from 50,000 spectators, 17 Formula 1 racing cars hurtled off the starting grid for lap 1 of the French Grand Prix—oldest auto race in the world.
Gradually, as the howling machines disappeared into the hills, a hypnotic hush came over Clermont-Ferrand. In the pits, the loudest sound was the ticking of stop watches as mechanics and managers paced nervously to and fro. Even the public-address announcer stopped his chatter. The grandstand crowd sat in silence—eyes riveted on a spot 400 ft. below, where the winding asphalt track curled like a thin, black snake between two green hills. There, any second now, the leading car would appear. The noise came first: the rising nasal whine of a V-8 engine echoing off the hills; the gastric grunts as its driver worked down through the gears from fourth to second for a 60-m.p.h. curve; the throaty snarl as he stepped on the throttle, flashed into the open at 90 m.p.h. and vanished around still another bend.
Who was it? The car was green. No. 6. Driver wearing a blue helmet. Who else? "Clark!" somebody shouted, and suddenly the crowd was chanting: "Clark! Clark! Clark!" Sure enough, just 3 min. 29 sec. after it had left the starting grid, Jim Clark's Lotus-Climax swept around the last left-hand bend into full view of the cheering stands. "C'est formidable!" gasped one awed Frenchman. Sighed another: "C'est termine"—It's all over.
And so it was. After just one lap, Clark was already 2 sec.—or 100 yds. —ahead of his nearest pursuer. But for 39 more laps, he coolly, relentlessly poured it on until he had lapped all but three of his rivals, smashed the official lap record (82.39 m.p.h.) three times in succession and 15 times in all—even tually raising it to a fantastic 90.59 m.p.h. He did it on a course that he had never even seen until two days before the race, a course that ranks as one of the toughest in the world: 51 curves and 102 gear changes per five-mile lap, an average of one gear change every 2 sec. And he did it in a four-year-old "training car" instead of the new, 32-valve model he wrecked in practice when the suspension snapped at 80 m.p.h. ("a bit breathtaking, that"). When he finally coasted under the checkered flag, he was far enough ahead (26 sec.) that the only thing he could see in his rearview mirror was his own face.