#5 · Lotus
Jim Clark
Two-time World Champion (1963, 1965). Indianapolis 500 winner (1965). Killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in 1968. Generally regarded as the most natural driver of the 1960s.
25
Race wins
32
Podiums
33
Pole positions
2
Championships
Why he matters
Clark won 25 of the 72 Grands Prix he entered — a 35% strike rate that exceeds Hamilton’s, Schumacher’s, and Verstappen’s career numbers. He won championships in 1963 and 1965 with Colin Chapman’s Lotus, and was the first non-American to win the Indianapolis 500 since 1916. In 1965 he won the F1 title and the Indy 500 in the same year.
He died at age 32 in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in 1968 — a tyre failure on a wet, fast straight. The shock of his death changed the safety conversation in Grand Prix racing for the first time.
How he drove
Unforced, light hands on the wheel, very early on the throttle. The peers who survived him — Stewart, Hill, Surtees — describe Clark as the driver who made driving look easiest. He was also a kind, quiet man, which made his death all the harder for the small mid-1960s F1 community.
Why to remember him
- The 1965 season — Indy 500 win in May, then F1 championship the same year.
- The 1967 Italian Grand Prix at Monza — lapped the entire field, then had a tyre puncture, came back from a lap down to lead with two laps remaining, and ran out of fuel on the last lap. Still cited as one of the greatest drives.
- The Jim Clark Memorial Room in Chirnside, Scotland — a small village shrine maintained by people who knew him.