James "Jimmy" Clark (4 March 1936 - 7 April 1968) was a two time F1 World Champion. The Scot got his start in F1 at Zandvoort in 1960, when Lotus' Surtees preferred to go and do "the Isle of Man". He became the first to win the "brickyard" with a mid-engined car and in doing so also became the first driver to win that and the F1 title in the same year. Clark had quite a few remarkable performances. One of these came at the 1963 Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps, in extremely wet, foggy and rainy conditions. Starting eight on the grid he shot to first, passing also early leader Graham Hill (no small feat). Some 17 laps into the race, whilst rain was still coming down hard, he had lapped the entire field, with the exception of Bruce McLaren. At this point he was almost five minutes ahead of second place McLaren in his Cooper. Imagine that! This was the first of seven victories with Team Lotus. Jim Clark had a remarkable ability to adapt to whichever car he was driving. Whilst other drivers of that period struggled to find a good setup, he would simply set competitive lap times with whatever setup and ask for the car to be left like that. Of Clark's ability as a driver, Sir Jackie Steward said: "he was so smooth, he was so clean, he drove with such finesse. He never bullied a racing car, he sort of caressed it into doing the things he wanted it to do". Jimmy Clark was killed in a GP2 racing accident at Hockenheim, in 1968, due to a mechanical failure.
He was a truly remarkable driver, just as Ayrton Senna was.
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