John Colum Crichton-Stuart (1958-2021). Dilemma of the regal or the celebrated. Anonymity was impossible. Second fiddle to Ayrton Senna at Lotus 1986; winner at Le Mans with Jaguar in 1988. No 774 on The Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated £158 million.
Read MoreDutch Grand Prix 1967
I asked Facebook and Twitter about this picture. That’s me behind Jim Clark’s Lotus photographing its new engine during practice at Zandvoort. I started commenting on it then mis-keyed and couldn’t find where it came from, but delving into my photographic archive I was pleased to find the pictures I was taking that day (below - Jim Clark’s legs on the right) in front of the Lotus pit.
Read MoreDaniel Sexton Gurney
If you wanted to portray a great American you would create somebody like Dan Gurney. Lean, tall, talented, good-looking, lit with a broad Californian smile he personified all the best of the country. His All-American Racers of Santa Ana, founded with another great, Carroll Shelby, inspired the Anglo-American Eagle that in 1967 won the first victory for an American grand prix car since 1921. American as baseball and apple pie, Dan embraced Britain and its racing car engineering from rural Rye, Sussex next door to Harry Weslake. Britain embraced Dan.
Read MoreClark's Crucial Brands
In his prologue to Black Sheep in the Fast Lane Ian Scott-Watson recalled Jim Clark’s crucial debut race against Colin Chapman:
"There were three Lotus Elites on the front row at the 1958 Brands Hatch Boxing Day. The sun was taking a Christmas break and it was cold. It was the first time Elites had raced one another and bookies were offering “evens” on Colin Chapman its designer and 3 to 1 on Mike Costin, who had worked on the car’s development. For the first and only time I placed a bet on a motor race, half-a-crown (12¼p), the loose change I had in my pocket.
Read MoreRacing Baronet and Flying Scotsman
John Whitmore’s death in April cut one more link with Jim Clark. In 1959 they drove to tenth place at Le Mans in a Lotus Elite and remained firm friends up to Clark’s death in 1968. Sir John Henry Douglas Whitmore Bt was European Touring Car Champion in 1965 in a Lotus Cortina. He shared his town flat in Balfour Place Mayfair with Clark and Jackie Stewart so often they called it their Scottish embassy.
Read MoreZandvoort: Ford-Cosworth DFV wins first time out
Owing to his tax exile status Jim Clark was not able to take part in testing the first Lotus 49, completed during May 1967. The first time he saw it was when it was unloaded from the transporter at Zandvoort. Its basis was not unfamiliar, for it was an evolution of Chapman’s Lotus 43, the abbreviated monocoque designed for the stop-gap, complicated, overweight but cleverly conceived BRM H16 engine of 1966, which Clark had taken to its only grand prix win in America.
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