In 1955 Jim Clark’s cousin Billy Potts, wanted a stand-in for his regular co-driver in the Scottish Rally. They drove Potts’s Austin-Healey 100 to Clark’s first mention in a motoring magazine. Graham Gauld told Motor World they were 4 minutes late on the first day’s drive yet they had made motor racing history. Through Glencoe was the first time Jim Clark had driven at 100mph. The ink was scarcely dry on his competition licence. Potts: “We got moving well when suddenly another Healey overtook. That was too much. As we went faster I said for God’s sake canny Jim, steady. But within minutes I relaxed. All his ability was already there. He was an absolute natural.”
The family farms of Kerchesters and Edington Mains were up and running and as Dessin de Boivent Duffar portrayed in Champion magazine ten years later, Jim was taking his father’s Sunbeam Mark III on Young Farmers’ Rallies.
Talented artist and for many year Austosport’s photographer for Scotland the late Bill Henderson painted this for Jim Clark: Tribute to a Champion. It shows Potts’ Austin Healey No 111 with 19-year-old Clark in the passenger seat at the “Little” Rest-and-be-Thankful control on the Scottish Rally. Also waiting under the eye of AK Stevenson OBE, secretary of the Royal Scottish Automobile Club is the crew of Morgan Plus 4 Frank Dundas (in cap) and co-driver Eric Dymock.
JIM CLARK: TRIBUTE TO A CHAMPION.
Dove Publishing Ltd.
£22.50, Publishing April 2017
