SUNDAY TIMES: Motoring 11 June 1989 Eric Dymock

***Charterhall 1958. Jimmy Stewart (left) Jackie Stewart (right with raham Birrell and Gordon Hunter. Picvture Eric Dymock***

Anybody who knew Jackie Stewart before he ever sat in a racing car can say quite truthfully that he has not changed much. He celebrates his fiftieth birthday today essentially the same self-opinionated, cruelly ambitious, yet engagingly successful individual he was when I met him nearly thirty years ago. Over lunch last week at a shooting party, inevitably hosted by one of his long-time sponsors, Ford Motor Company, he bounced and pontificated in the way that has kept him a chat-show favourite on five Continents.

He bounced and pontificated and name-dropped just as shamelessly, when he was selling Jaguars from the family garage in Dumbarton, when it was his brother Jimmy, not he, who was the local hero racing driver. Jimmy Stewart cut short a promising career at the wheel after crashing heavily at Le Mans. His mother worried endlessly until Jimmy, a gentle, unaggressive son, hung up his helmet.

Jackie, in contrast, raced despite her protests, although he concealed the fact for a time under a nom de guerre. I still have programmes from races at Charterhall, the old airfield circuit in the Scottish Borders where drivers such as Ron Flockhart, Innes Ireland, Jim Clark, and Stewart cut their racing teeth, with entries in the name of AN Other. As a subterfuge it was doomed; Jackie Stewart won so many races so quickly that his success could not be concealed for long.

Stewart's craving for success was dealt a severe blow when he was passed over in the selection for the British Olympic clay-pigeon shooting team in 1960. He decided instead to discover whether he shared his brother's skill at the wheel. In the early part of 1962, he hired Oulton Park for the day, and took two cars belonging to a wealthy Dumbuck customer, an Aston Martin DB4GT, and a Marcos GT, together with the garage's Jaguar E-Type demonstrator to see if he could match Jimmy,s lap times.

***Dumbuck customer Barry Filer with his Aston Martin, Jackie at ther wheel, during the Oulton Park terst session. Picture Eric Dymock***

Only a handful of people were present. There was a shooting chum from North Wales, a couple of friends from Glasgow, one a golfer, one a motor trader, Jimmy Stewart, a mechanic, and me. We held the stopwatches that told their own story, - of three world championships to come, and a total of Grand Prix victories that exceeded even those of Fangio and Jim Clark, and has only now been beaten in an era when there are twice as many Grands Prix to be won.

The names Jackie drops now are grander than the whisky brokers or minor industrialists who used to buy Jaguars from Dumbuck Garage. Royals such as Juan Carlos or Constantine are always good value for buffing up the reflected image. So is Sean Connery, another Scot who has made the big time and has a good deal in common with Stewart.

Jackie is fond of emphasising his humble origins, yet they were less humble than some. The Stewarts could afford to indulge their sons in clay pigeon shooting or motor racing and run big Austin-Healeys when the rest of the world felt itself lucky if it could afford an Austin A 35.

***Jacxkie Stewart, Goodwood 1960s. Picture Eric Dymock***

The Stewarts always knew the right sort of people, such as Bob McIntyre, the brilliant Scottish racing motor-cyclist, killed at Oulton Park in 1962, whose death affected Jackie deeply. It inspired a crusade for safety that changed the face of motor racing during the years in which Stewart drove his 99 Grand Prix races. He retired on the eve of his hundredth after his team-mate François Cevert died during practice, - Jackie's regard for his family mellowed over the years, compared with the hard line he had taken with his mother.

Why, he argued, should a young racing driver pay for a mistake with his life? The result of his campaigning could be seen on television two months ago, when Gerhard Berger's Ferrari crashed out of the San Marino Grand Prix and burst into flames. Without the safety protection so tirelessly advocated by Stewart, Berger would beyond peradventure, have paid for the breakage on his car with his life.

Stewart's eye has lost none of its cunning. He can still get into a current Grand Prix car and drive it within a fraction of the time of a current young hotshoe. He is still the most complete racing driver ever, combining consummate skill at the wheel with careful racecraft, and a talent for salesmanship that invariably obtained the best effort from his engineers, his team manager, his sponsors, and the press.

He also returned good value. His enduring relationship with Ford, for whom he now tests production cars, engineering their safety as carefully as he ever engineered his own, is testimony to that.

The old arrogance has softened. Most of the tautness that put him out of racing for the best part of a season with a stomach ulcer has gone. Not all of it; he retains enough to keep him thinking fast on his feet and is never above a verbal put-down where he thinks it is needed.

Jackie Stewart has no need to prove anything to anybody now. He is successful, wealthy (not so wealthy he will assure you, that he could sign huge cheques or sit back and do nothing), fit, and enjoys life. He has been saying he would like to travel less for years, but continues to follow the highly mobile, restless regime which gives him more flying hours than the average airline pilot. He remains, above all competitive in spirit, in almost everything he does. At Fifty, as ever, the name of Stewart's game is still winning.