Jackie Stewart: 'Hamiton should have won'
.JPG "F1 legend Sir Jackie talks about being branded a ‘certifiable halfwit’, dealing with dyslexia, and new F1 star Lewis Hamilton.")
24 October 2007 For Sir Jackie, the crucial moment came when He told Keith Collantine: “Lewis shouldn’t have been doing what he did.” Jackie Stewart retired from F1 in 1973, but he still lives his life at 200mph. I meet up with him as he blasts around the country promoting his new book and giving interviews. While everyone around him is whipped up into a froth of activity – fetching books and cups of tea and ferrying the likes of me around – Sir Jackie takes it all in his stride. He was legendary for his smooth, unruffled but wickedly fast driving. He still operates with incredible care and precision, whether he’s signing his autograph or giving an interview. He analyses Lewis Hamilton’s heart-breaking championship defeat with the wisdom of one of F1’s greatest champions. In a languid Scots drawl he tells me: “It’s a shame he didn’t win the championship when he crashed in “He could have changed tyres before they got so bad,” he says, “That’s a combination of the team’s responsibility and his. “In my opinion he didn’t need to win that race, he only needed to do enough to secure the world championship.” He gives me this perfectly worded and impeccably reasoned answer without a moment’s hesitation, while signing dozens of volumes of his memoirs. Dyslexia Even someone who knows nothing of his past glories can see he is a tremendously capable individual. Yet the years of struggling with dyslexia in his youth led him to title one chapter of his book, “Am I stupid?” He talks candidly about his learning disability: “When you’re on the scrap heap of education,” he pauses and fixes me with a dead straight stare, “it’s a very painful experience. “A lot of people just drop out, fall into crime, drugs and alcohol.” That didn’t happen to Sir Jackie, although he had some rough times on the way. As he says in his book: “Everyone thinks the scar on my face is from some heroic racing accident – the truth is I got beaten up on Dumbarton high street.” It was then he gave his life new direction. He discovered clay pigeon shooting and nearly joined the British Olympic shooting team. Then his passion for cars led him towards competing in local motor races. By 1965 he was in Formula 1 where, just like Lewis Hamilton today, the young Stewart immediately impressed. Champion by 0.08 seconds
“That was a big thing for me,” says Sir Jackie, “because I won by such a small margin on the track – I beat Jochen Rindt by a few inches.” The victory was a triumph of lateral thinking. “I won because I made allowances for a gearshift that I’d have to make between the last corner and the finishing line,” Sir Jackie explains. He had tweaked his gear ratios so he could sprint from the final corner to the line without swapping cogs – and won by eight hundredths of a second. He credits his capacity for ‘out of the box’ ideas to his dyslexia. “I was at a school for children with dyslexia this morning. I said to them, ‘if you are dyslexic you have to think differently to everyone else.’ The clever folk all think the same way,” Sir Jackie notes. “So in a funny sort of way a dyslexic person, if they get sorted out in their own mind, and don’t let the insults about not being able to read and write get to them, can go out and find new ways of doing business.” Defeating the Nürburgring Sir Jackie’s ‘business’ for many years was winning races – 27 Grands Prix in 99 starts, a record at the time. He talks about the one that was arguably his greatest. “The Nürburgring in ’68 was probably my best race because I won it by four minutes in torrential rain with terrible fog,” he tells me. “Today the race would never have been allowed to start.” That greater regard for safety is also thanks to Stewart. During and after his racing career he agitated in favour of better safety standards in an era when dozens of drivers died every year. ‘Certifiable halfwit’ But he doesn’t see eye to eye with the current head of F1. Federation Internationale de l’Automobile President Max Mosley recently attacked Stewart as a ‘certifiable halfwit’ after the former champion criticised the FIA. Stewart is plainly unhappy about it but doesn’t get agitated: “As president of the governing body of the sport to make such disparaging remarks lacks dignity. “He’s quite a radical man in many ways. I was offering an opinion – which I’m perfectly entitled to. The governing body sometimes take the attitude that anyone who questions their actions is out of order and shouldn’t be doing it.” But he insists he’s not after Mosley’s job: “I’ve been asked on several occasions to and go up for election but I’ve never said I would do it. Customer from hell Stewart’s F1 successes were mostly achieved with Ford power and he continued his association with the company after the end of his racing career. “Jac Nasser, the former Ford boss, called me the ‘customer from hell’ - my job was to keep the engineers honest,” says Sir Jackie. “I was able to help the engineers recognise that whether it was ride, handling, steering, brakes or accelerator pedal modulation, whether it was an ashtray which was difficult to use or a door handle which was too noisy and cheap, it had to have attention paid to it. “If you feel something isn’t nice to touch or is poor quality, then that’s your impression of the product, regardless of how unimportant that little detail may seem.” It’s another example of Stewart’s imaginative thinking. Many content Ford drivers will know exactly what he’s talking about. Meanwhile Sir Jackie’s assistants have been twitching for some time, eager to usher him on to his next appointment, and yet no-one wants to interrupt him in full flow. I get a firm handshake goodbye on my way to the door – but not before Sir Jackie takes the chance to turn the questions on me. Using the same attention to detail he once applied to his cars, he wants to know my every thought about his memoirs. They are, of course, brilliant. Not a creaky door handle in sight. “Winning is not enough: The Autobiography” is published by Headline and available in all major book shops. Auto Trader links Previous interviews Auto Trader TV show presenters
Formula 1
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In 1969 he was champion for the first time.Page 1
