Jackie Stewart may not be the most obvious or well known candidate to feature in a ‘best ever’ poll from a flurry of famous Formula One drivers.
Other candidates like the late, great Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher, whose record speaks for itself, might seem like more astute choices as they are better known but I have chosen Stewart for two reasons as I want to look at this for the individual’s impact on their sport from a much broader perspective than just their competitive achievements.
Senna is a legend. There is no other way of describing the awesome Brazilian and Schumacher, for all his flaws, is still, statistically speaking, the greatest ever driver, but he has sullied his reputation with a seemingly fruitless comeback where what was supposed to be a fight for wins and championships has become an endless struggle to find a single, elusive podium in his Mercedes.
But while Senna and Schuey are probably much better known, Stewart is also a very worthy candidate for ‘best ever’ to me. The Scot is among an elite group of drivers to have won the World Championship three times – a group which includes Senna himself – but he also achieved much more lasting success during his time in the sport and changed the face of Formula One through sheer persistence.
He raced in a time where obituaries were an all too familiar feature in newspapers and motor sport magazines. He watched as many of his colleagues and friends were lost to the unrelenting and in many cases unsafe cars and tracks which were predominant during his career.
Stewart isn’t just my choice because he is a worthy F1 champion. He is my choice because he is a worthy man who displayed no signs of fear in standing up to the beaks of the sport to improve his and his fellow drivers’ chances of surviving Grand Prix racing in an age when you had a two in three chance of being killed on track.
He was the first driver to really step up to the plate and campaign for better safety standards in the sport. Even the things that are so common in modern Formula One are only there thanks to Stewart’s dogged determination. Things like medical crews, crash barriers and even seatbelts were just some of the improvements campaigned for by Stewart during his time in the sport.
His point was well and truly enforced when he organised a drivers’ strike at the now much loved Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps in 1969 after the circuit played hardball over his demands to introduce improved safety features around the track, including improved medical facilities and crash barriers.
Stewart had had his own encounter with the potential lethality of Formula One racing at the same circuit three years earlier in an incident which really shed light on just how ill prepared the sport was for accidents. He crashed heavily in his BRM, landing in a field trapped in his car with no rescue units close by to extract him. After he was eventually freed by his fellow drivers, he was taken to an ill equipped first aid centre before being taken to hospital in an ambulance which got lost along the way. During all of this, the extent of his injuries was not even properly assessed and although he was ok in the end, the experience was enough to spark him into action.
In the years that followed, Stewart lost many more of his colleagues some of whom were also close friends of his.
His countryman, Jim Clark was killed at the German Grand Prix in 1968. Then, in 1970, he lost his best friends Piers Courage and Jochen Rindt in horrific crashes in a year that saw Rindt become Formula One’s first and only posthumous world champion.
It was by no means an easy task for Stewart to change the mindsets of many in the sport towards better safety. Circuit owners and race promoters were very reluctant to implement many of the improvements he was advocating, mainly due to the costs involved in doing so.
Some even used his campaign as a way to question Stewart’s bravery as a racing driver.
But for all his achievements as a driving force off the track, he was still very much a driving force on it as well.
He won 27 of the 100 races he took part in, achieving 17 pole positions along the way. His three championships came in 1969, 1971 and 1973, very much in the heart of his campaign for safety, proving his bravery and willingness to race hard and fast in a time when every driver knew all too well that each race could be their last.
He retired following his championship success in 1973 and became a media personality in the years that followed before returning to competitive activity in the sport as a team owner with Stewart Grand Prix between 1997 and 1999.
It was the ’99 season that proved a fruitful year for his young team when it achieved pole position at the French Grand Prix and took a win at the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring.
Following that season, Stewart sold the team to Ford who entered into the sport under the Jaguar name for a few years before eventually selling up to a certain drinks company called Red Bull. That’s right. The foundations of the team currently dominating the sport today were laid back in 1997 by Stewart who is still a regular attendee to many races today.
He was arguably the greatest driver of his era – a legendary champion of his sport who made as big an impact off the track as he did on it.
He left a legacy which is still visible to everyone who watches Formula One today and it is difficult to envisage where the sport would currently be were it not for the actions of a man who was unafraid to stand up to adversity in order to make his mark.
That, for me, makes Jackie Stewart the ‘best ever’.
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Jackie Stewart isn’t as well known as Schumacher or Senna? What are you, twelve?
Why not write about something you know a little about? Which, in comparison would be anything except F1. Take the post down. Seriously. You’ve embarrassed yourself.
Good Afternoon.
There is every reason to argue that Jackie Stewart was one of the greatest Racing Drivers of all time.
His great rival of the time was Emerson Fitipaldi, who openly stated that Stewart won despite being in far from the fastest car.
Further his stats of 27 wins in 99 races ( he withdrew from the last race before the start following the death of his team mate ) does not tell the whole story.
He was on the podium 43 times out of the 99 starts,and of the remaining 56 races his car failed on a significant number of occasions when he was either expecting to win or at least be placed.
His safety campaigning, his knowledge of the car and how to tweak it, and his absolute determination and daring make Stewart a phenomenon. Ken Tirrell used to describe how he would sit at the back of the garage on his own before a race– and anyone coming to bother him got their head chewed off. This was where he prepared mentally, where he toughened up and got into the zone. The last thing he did before getting into the car was to take the Rolex off his wrist– like a boxer removing his ring from his finger— with anattitude like ” Ok they are going to get it!”.
Stewart was invited back to his former school to give out the prizes, and made a great speech to the assembled school. Whilst congratulating the prize winners he said that he specifically wanted to address those who had won nothing. He advised that this very school and it’s teachers wrote him off, predicting that he would achieve nothing. His message was that that those who do not achieve great academic results at school can go on to be the best in the world at non academic things and to have a very successful career in other ways, and that you should never be put off achieving something simply because a school or a set of teachers do not believe in you.
When at the top in Motor Racing, he was managed by part of the Mark McCormack management group. Before retiring he arranged to buy that division of the group from McCormack and so started his own companies and management group.
For a dyselxic boy from Dumbarton who was not expected to achieve much, he more than did ok. He said on a documentary recently that the hardest thing he had to cope with ever was his son, Paul, developing cancer– which he successfully beat in the end.
Stewart said that he has occasion to go into a Church every now and then. Doesn’t matter what kind of church– just a church. He said ” I used to ask God for some things when I prayed. I now ask for nothing, but thank God for everything!”
Jackie Stewart was everything in a sport— Tough, determined, maybe even a little difficult to deal with, but as good as any at any time– even without having the fastest car!
@Alex
Try looking at this post with context.
If you take what I wrote in the context of this site’s ‘Best Ever’ feature that this is intended for (i.e a poll of names from various sports to determine the ‘best ever’) then you will find that what I am saying is that Schumacher or Senna are the more likely names to immediately jump out at the casual observer as choices to vote for.
Perhaps ‘well known’ was a poor choice of words, that’s fair enough, but I stand by my opinion that a casual observer is more likely to think of Schumacher or Senna than Stewart when asked to name the ‘best ever’ in Formula 1.
The whole point of this article is to convince them otherwise…