Jackie Stewart

He was certainly way before my time. I appreciate his vast amount of knowledge. I've learned things and implemented them in my own racing from his words, "economy of movement" etc. He is a legend though, but I don't comment on his race craft for obvious reasons.

 

Jakie was a bit before my time but for me, Jackie seemed to be missing the "balls to the wall" attitude like Senna, MS and some others had. Things were far different in his days and he was brave to basically not race if he felt it was too dangerous, but this may be what is doing him a dis-service. People seem to admire the supreme, win at all costs, mentality and Jackie was almost to opposite of that. No question that he was very talented and the best of his day. He just seemed to be too safety minded which, while not being a bad thing, seems to make people forget how great he truely was. His contribution to safety in all forms of racing is still felt today..........

 

He's in my top 5 list.

I also learnt a lot from his book on driving techniques.
Pete

 

he is on my top 5 list as well.

 

great driver, not so great commentator back in the old F1 televised days.

I agree his stance on safety reduced his efforts, how can you not admire a Phil Hill or Clark or character larger than life as Nuvolari that drove balls to the wall with no fear, they stand out.

 

I think he was as brave as the rest, just thought about the risks afterwards ... but if he needed that win, I don't think he would have chickened out.

The difference I think is that he understood car dynamics so damn well that he knew how to push a car to make it fast and any further was just slowing him down ... brilliant. But have a look at the old photos he's sideways like the rest, nearly brushing guard rails!

Pete

 

I believe he crashed only very few times; less than ten times perhaps. That's quite an achievement considering he won three championships and not always in the fastest machines.

 

One of the safest drivers out there. He is quoted as saying that he wanted to win Grand Prix at the slowest possible speed.

 

There are different types of drivers, I put JYS in the same category as a Prost and Lauda, Hunt, Schekter, Jones, Hill (either one), but I don't think he was a balls-to-the-wall racer like G. Villeneuve, Pironi, Arnoux, Senna, Mansell.

He was, IMO, in the PERFECT era ofF1 - If we knew then what we know now - if you were old enough - I bet most of us would rather follow F1 back then as opposed to today. I still maintain if you paint ALL of the cars today the same color (today), that 99% of us could not correctly name what each car is.

JYS confounds me, I can't figure out if he's a good 'announcer', or if he's stuck on himself...

 

He was terrified of the Green Hell, yet ran like a demon (no pun intended) there. He caught Colin Chapman's and Jim Clark's attention, so that's saying quite a bit about his talent. And, after the accident in which he was soaked in fuel, really spearheaded the safety movement in F1.

I've always been turned off by his race commentary, and the selling of his soul to Ford over the years...

 

Definitely one of the greatest racers of F1.

Not so terribly great in what he did after his racing days: Selling the "Stewart Team" was the best thing they could do and he really screwed the pooch as BRDC's boss in the negotiations re: Silverstone. I'm with Bernie on that one. Silverstone's facilities are way below standard today and that is AFTER Stewart finally gave in and "upgraded" the place. The proverbial Scotsman and penny pincher.

 

Add me to this. I watched him post F1 in series such as the CanAm. He commanded respect and got it.

Somehow, I managed to have breakfast with him just at the Speedway Motel restaurant prior to his ABC commentary of an Indy 500. He is genuine, funny, not at all conceited.

My best JYS story is after he retired and did ABC NASCAR commentary. On an overcast Friday for the Spring Atlanta NASCAR event, a small group of us gathered in the Petty garage to hear a fun exchange between Richard and Jackie. The proverbial F1 vs NASCAR debate. The result was Petty suggesting that Jackie take the #43 Dodge Charger for a few laps around the track. Problem, Stewart is much shorter than Petty, so extra padding had to be put on the seat back and wooden blocks had to be taped to the pedals. That did not stop Stewart, as after 5 laps, you could see on Petty's face that he was going to eat his words. Stewart would have qualified 5th on the grid for the Atlanta 500 in his first time behind the wheel of a stock car.

For me he is not only one of the top five F1 drivers, he is one of the top 10 drivers in the last 35 years in all racing series.

 

Regarding Stewart's safety concerns....he drove during a time when people were being killed and injured with alarming frequency. The drivers feet were ahead of the front axle with no protection, so a simple shunt today was, back then at least foot and leg injuries, if not more.

 

Yup.

It was actually after the Spa 1966 race, which saw rain and injuries that Jackie took the initiative and started discussions about safety.

Some of the scenes in "Grand Prix", the movie are real footage of the race in the dry and eventually the rain.

Here a few pictures of him and his cars I took at Goodwood 2006. They honored him at that event and I *believe* it was him who drove the first car (the wingless sixties F1).
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+1 Prost reminded me of Stewart, except Prost whined more.

 

You have this confused with the early-to-mid 80's, as far as the footbox is concerned. In the JYS era, they sat much further back - because basically they had fuel bags around them, and in the 80's the fuel tank was behind them.
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Franco great picture of the 84 Car.

 

Yes and no. While you are basically right in your statements and the Surer crash in South Africa was painful proof of that, the sixties/seventies cars weren't that much better in foot protection. Look at the mangled mess of e.g. Moss' car after his career ending Goodwood accident. That twisted pile of pipes ain't no safety zone for your feet either.

 

Moss's crash happened in 1962 when tube frames were still around. Stewart did not arrive on the scene until 1965 through 1973 when all F1 cars were monocoque. This is not to say they were safe. The safety aspects that JYS pushed relative to fire (a big problem thoughout the 1960's and even into the early 70's) was very welcome. I have always thought his opinions on the desirability of armco close to the racing surface were wrong. We saw the combination of that thinking along with improper installation of the barrier result in the loss of his teammate Cervert at the Glen.

My .02...A great driver who placed safety in focus for F1 allowing it to become a far more acceptable worldwide marketing vehicle who got a bit whiney and preachy as he got older.

 

Excellent post, true to the subject regarding Stewart's past and present.

 

I used to worry about armco but then in a reasonably large testing accident I hit the armco pretty hard. Hard enough to stuff my front and rear suspension and destroy a rim, and obvious a bit of body work.

The interesting thing was how much the armco flexed (as did my cars fibreglass body). I did not expect armco to flex like that and if did reduce the damage to my car AND in that flexing took a lot of force/momentum out of the car. Now when you hit a concrete wall that does not happen ...

... so I can see where Stewart was coming from.

Now moving on to the second topic, regarding Stewart and his preachy-ness. In particular with Silverstone I believe most people (including Tifosi12 ) miss-understood what I believe he was about, and that is maintaining tradition.

Every time a old race track pit complex is replaced by a soulless modern cr@p building a bit of me dies. We do not need these enormous buildings and brilliant facilities to put on a great race meeting AND isn't it great to maintain something from the past so you can FEEL the history. I cannot believe they did this at Imola and Monza, those pit buildings/complexes should have been on an international heritege listing! Now there is nothing!

It is important for motorsport, and particular F1 that we DO maintain this link to the past because one of the things that really makes F1, is it's long continuous history. No other series has that.

Just imagine if they pulled down Wimbledon, or destroyed Adelaide's wonderfully quaint cricket oval for the 'standard' lets have a bigger and better one bollocks.

Yeah Silverstone has better facilities now ... whoopy (Bernie can make a few more dollars), but those wonderful old buildings are gone for ever. It's not always about the spectator numbers, it should be about the quality of the experience, the feeling of being part of something of a tradition. Look how everybody goes on about Goodwood meetings now ... a big part of that is the link with the past the track still offers.

Pete
ps: Surely we can add more toilets in auxilary buildings, and more parking and the teams can suffer a little like they do at Monaco ... otherwise they should pull their head out of their over inflated importance to world @rse

 

The thing I remember about JYS is that he had incredible vision and hand/eye coordination; I believed he qualified for the Olympic Trap/Skeet team and it no doubt helped him as a driver. I put him in the Lauda/Prost class also...

On a totally unrelated note, I think his wife was a hottie....

 

I fully agree with most of what you said and maintaining the stands etc at Silverstone as they were is not what I'm criticizing. The worst part about Silverstone was its country road to the track. Total chaos, particularly when combined with parking on the grass. Remember when Bernie was clever enough to move Silverstone into April (?) and sure enough it rained and caused mayhem and the necessary pressure on the BRDC to move things along.

Nowadays Silverstone still looks a lot the way it did (low stands, simple pits), but now has a highway leading to it. That's a good thing. Unfortunately the traffic still spills out right into the village and then onto the grass, that's idiotic.

And an army of portable toilets is just not as it should be on a permanent race track. Call me spoiled, but the basic things (easy access, toilets, food stands) is what I call essential to have a pleasant experience. Particularly if I paid a whopping $ 400 to get access.

So I'm all for preserving the historic buildings etc, but that doesn't mean you can't have some proper infrastructure nearby. They got most of that sorted out in Goodwood. Stewart isn't about preserving history, he is about saving a quid.

 

How many days do you go for your $400? ... I imagine its 4 days, thus $100 per day. Probably around 8 hours per day ... thats bloody cheap.

Compare that to a concert, which lasts what 3 hours max? + parking costs on top!

Maybe but Bernie is only about making money. F1 and motorsport in general has got really stupid pooring money into things that are just not required, ie. you do NOT need the 4 flag holding girls around your car. You do not need a heck of a lot of things. Yes you have to do the right thing by your sponsor but if that involves caviar (sp?) and special cooks, etc. then the sponsor should be reminded that that expensive does not help the car go any faster, and will not come out of my sponsorship package ... pay for it and do it yourself

Pete