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Any Race, Anywhere. The victory was worth $1,820—a pittance compared to the $168,500 Clark won at Indianapolis on May 31 (TIME, June 11). It was also worth nine points toward his second Grand Prix championship, boosted his 1965 total so far to 27—ten more than his closest competitor. And it proved, for the nth time, that James Clark, O.B.F., of Edington Mains, Chirnside, Berwickshire, Scotland, is the world's quickest man on wheels. It was only nine years ago that Clark drove in his first auto race, only five years ago that he sat behind the wheel of a Grand Prix car for the first time in his life. Today, at 29, he is the man to beat in any kind of race, in any kind of car, on any kind of track, anywhere.
Clark has raced and won in rearengined cars, front-engined cars, sports cars, grand-touring cars, saloons and Formula Juniors; on asphalt in South Africa, on dirt in Australia, on concrete in England. In 1963 Clark became the youngest Grand Prix champion in the history of motor racing, set another record by winning seven out of the ten events that counted toward the title. His 1965 record so far is even more impressive: three Grand Prix entered, three Grand Prix won. In five short, incredible years, Clark has won 16 world championship Grand Prix races—more than anybody else, including Britain's fabled Stirling Moss, who spent eight years winning 14, and Argentina's five-time World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio, who had 16 when he quit racing at the age of 47. Says Moss: "In terms of sheer native ability, Jim probably has more than any champion in history." Lotus Designer Colin Chapman puts it even more emphatically: "Jim Clark is the greatest racing driver the world has ever seen."
That covers an awful lot of drivers and an awful lot of races. Auto racing is as old as the second automobile. The first organized race was exactly 71 years ago, in 1894, and it was won by a bowler-hatted French nobleman named Count de Dion (later to be immortalized by having a racing rear axle named after him), who drove his steamer from Paris to Rouen, a distance of 79 miles, at an average speed of 12.6 m.p.h. Daredevil De Dion could not possibly have guessed the contagion he was spreading. Other races followed quickly—to Bordeaux, Marseille, Dieppe, Nice, Trouville, all the way across the Continent to Vienna. The British were a little late joining the fun: in the early days, by law, British motorists had to be preceded by men on foot crying their approach. But by 1903, on the Continent, 3,000,000 fans were turning out to watch a road race from Paris to Madrid. In the U.S. a year later, a Dearborn, Mich., farmer's son was advertising his Ford as "the fastest car in the world"—and proving it by clocking 91.37 m.p.h. on the cinder-covered ice of Lake St. Clair. And it was not long before an enchanted U.S. public was thrilling to the exploits of a whole new set of heroes—Barney Oldfield, Ralph De Palma, and the mysterious "Baron von Rickenbacher*—helmeted hotspurs who risked life and limb in the glorious pursuit of speed.