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Jim got untracked in 1964—at Indianapolis as well as on the Grand Prix circuit. Last year's Indy 500 was the bloodiest in years, with two drivers dead, five injured in a fiery crash on the second lap. Clark missed that by being ahead of the pack. But speed did him no good when the tread peeled off a tire at 150 m.p.h. and the left rear wheel of his Lotus collapsed. Old Indy hands had to admire the way the "sporty-car" driver from Scotland held his bucking car steady and braked it to a stop on the infield grass ("Of course," added Rodger Ward, "if he didn't, his tail would've been a grape"). The same evil luck dogged Clark in Europe all summer: he won three out of his first five Grand Prix, seemed well on his way to a second straight championship when all sorts of little things started going wrong. In France it was a hole in a piston, in Germany a broken valve. Clark did not win another race, but still he lost the championship to Ferrari's John Surtees only because his sump ran dry on the last lap of the last race, the Mexican Grand Prix.
This year it's different. In his smashing victory at Indianapolis last May 31, he led for all but ten of the 200 laps, became the first foreigner to win the Indy 500 since Dario Resta in 1916. There was nothing remotely close, either, about South Africa: wearing a corset to ease the pain from a slipped disk in his back (souvenir of an Alpine snowball fight), he became the first man ever to top 100 m.p.h. on East London's tricky, twisting track, coasted home a comfortable 31 sec. in front. At Spa last month, thunderstorms made the trip a little dicier than Jim expected ("It was damn dangerous out there"), but he still scored his fourth-straight victory in the Belgian Grand Prix and left the rest of the field strung out 1½ miles behind.
Little Compensations. The trouble with being a hero is living up to it, which for Clark means living on a dead trot. After his triumphant win at Clermont-Ferrand last week, Jim flew directly to London, spent most of a day processing requests for autographed photographs from U.S. fans. Then it was off to Reims for a business appointment, back to England for a day of test driving at Silverstone, and back to Reims again—this time to practice for a July 4 Formula II race. Ahead on the schedule: a Ford junket to Switzerland, a race in Britain, a trip to Rouen, a movie filming in Scotland, and the Dutch Grand Prix. This frantic life has its little compensations. Fortune, for one: his income from racing this year will top $230,000, and Edington Mains is busily in the black too, producing barley for Scotch-whisky distillers, sheep for wool, and cattle for slaughter. He has his Scottish sheep dog, Sweep, who pines for him while he is away—and his flaxen-haired girl friend, Sally Stokes, who travels with him and tends a stop watch in the pits.