Clark · 1965
Jim Clark wins the Indianapolis 500
On the late afternoon of Memorial Day, Monday the thirty-first of May 1965, on the two-and-a-half-mile rectangular oval of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the central-Indiana farm-country outside Indianapolis, in front of a capacity Memorial Day crowd of approximately three hundred and fifty thousand spectators on the standing IMS grandstand-and-infield, the twenty-nine-year-old Berwickshire-born Scottish Formula One driver Jim Clark, the standing reigning 1963 Formula One World Champion and the central single Lotus-Climax driver of the Colin Chapman Lotus team, drove the small Lotus-Ford Type 38 rear-engined mid-engined monocoque-chassis racing-car (the Chapman-Lotus single-seater specifically designed for the Indianapolis 500 across the 1963 to 1964 development programme) to the standing checkered-flag victory at the forty-ninth running of the Indianapolis 500, the central single American single-seater motor race of the year and the foundational race of the standing American Memorial Day weekend, at a standing race-average-speed of 150.686 miles per hour and a standing winning-margin of approximately two laps over the runner-up Parnelli Jones. The Clark victory was the first non-American victory at the Indianapolis 500 since the standing 1916 victory of the Italian-immigrant-American Dario Resta (a forty-nine-year drought in the standing American single-seater motor-racing record), the first victory at the Indianapolis 500 by a rear-engined mid-engined chassis (the Lotus-Chapman rear-engined Lotus 38 displaced the standing front-engined American Watson-Offenhauser roadster configuration that had dominated the standing IMS race from 1953 to 1964), and was the central single foundational moment of the modern transformation of the Indianapolis 500 from the standing American front-engined-roadster-tradition to the modern international rear-engined-mid-engined-monocoque single-seater format. Clark took the standing 1965 Formula One World Championship the same year on the strength of his standing six-Grand-Prix-victory record across the 1965 season, became the only driver in the modern era to win the Indianapolis 500 and the Formula One World Championship in the same season, and stands at the central single position of the modern motor-racing all-time-great-driver-rankings.
A race is rarely won by the first non-American driver in forty-nine years at the central single American motor-racing tradition. The Indianapolis 500 across the standing 1953-to-1964 American front-engined-Offenhauser-roadster era had been the standing closed-shop American-driver-American-chassis tradition of the standing United States Auto Club professional sanctioning body. The Colin Chapman Lotus team's three-year commercial assault on the IMS (the 1963-1965 Chapman-Lotus campaign across the standing American USAC-and-Indianapolis-Speedway sanctioning) was the central single international challenge to the standing American tradition. Clark took the IMS race on Memorial Day 1965 in the central single demonstration of the international Chapman-Lotus engineering-and-driving programme.
THE BORDERS BOY
James Clark Junior was born at Kilmany House in the small parish of Kilmany in north Fife on the fourth of March 1936, fifth and youngest child of James Clark Senior, a substantial mid-Fife tenant-farmer of approximately twelve hundred acres at Kilmany and Hertfordshire, and Helen Niven. The family moved to the Edington Mains farm at Chirnside in eastern Berwickshire on the standing 1942-tenant-farm-acquisition arrangement when Jim was six, and he was raised in the Berwickshire farming-country on the standing 1940s-and-1950s Scottish-Borders agricultural-life. He was schooled at Loretto School at Musselburgh outside Edinburgh from 1949 to 1952, left the school at sixteen to take up the family farming-tenant-responsibility at Edington Mains on the standing Scottish-tenant-farming inheritance-and-succession-arrangement, and through the early 1950s took up the standing Berwickshire-amateur-motor-racing-club competitive driving on the standing local-club Sunday-meetings at the small Charterhall and Crail Scottish-Borders-motor-racing-circuits.
THE LOTUS-CLIMAX PROGRAMME
He was identified as a standing-junior motor-racing prospect by the standing Lotus team-manager Colin Chapman at the 1958 Boxing-Day Brands Hatch meeting on the strength of his standing Berwickshire-amateur-club racing results, was offered the standing junior-Lotus-Climax development-driver contract for the 1959 Formula Two championship, was promoted to the standing senior Lotus-Climax Formula One team in 1960 in his twenty-fourth year on Chapman's recommendation, and across the next ten seasons drove for the standing Lotus team continuously to his death in April 1968. He took the standing 1962 Formula One World Championship runner-up position on the standing Lotus 25 monocoque-chassis programme (the standing Chapman-Lotus monocoque-chassis revolution that displaced the standing space-frame chassis tradition of the standing 1950s Formula One), took the standing 1963 Formula One World Championship on the same Lotus 25 programme (the seven-Grand-Prix-victory standing 1963 record that was the dominant single-season performance of the standing 1.5-litre Formula One era), and took the standing 1965 Formula One World Championship on the standing Lotus 33 (the standing Chapman-Lotus 33 was the standing-direct development of the 1963 Lotus 25).
THE INDIANAPOLIS PROGRAMME
Chapman opened the Lotus Indianapolis 500 campaign in 1963 on the standing commercial logic that the standing American single-seater-Indianapolis-USAC-circuit was the central single American commercial motor-racing market and that the standing Lotus rear-engined-mid-engined-monocoque chassis would be technologically competitive against the standing American front-engined-Offenhauser-roadster tradition. The standing Lotus 29 (the 1963 Indianapolis specification, with the standing Ford-Indy V8 mid-engined configuration) took the standing second-place finish at the 1963 Indianapolis 500 behind the standing Parnelli Jones front-engined Watson-Offenhauser victory; the standing Lotus 34 (the 1964 Indianapolis specification) took the seventh place at the 1964 Indianapolis 500 on the standing fourth-lap puncture-and-suspension failure. The standing Lotus 38 (the 1965 Indianapolis specification, with the standing further mid-engined Ford-Indy V8 development) was the central single 1965 Indianapolis design.
THE THIRTY-FIRST OF MAY
The forty-ninth Indianapolis 500 opened on the morning of Memorial Day, Monday the thirty-first of May 1965, with the standing 33-car-starting-grid configuration on the standing Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval. Clark started from the standing second pole-position-row on the strength of his standing 158.828-miles-per-hour qualifying-speed (the standing-second-fastest qualifying-speed of the 1965 field behind the standing 160.973-miles-per-hour qualifying of A.J. Foyt). The race opened at the standing 11-AM Memorial Day start-time under the standing IMS-pace-car-rolling-start protocol.
Clark took the standing race-lead on the second lap of the standing 200-lap race-distance on the strength of his standing Lotus-Ford superior cornering-and-acceleration-pattern over the standing American front-engined-Offenhauser roadsters. He held the lead across the standing remaining 198 laps of the race (with the standing brief Foyt-Lotus standing-pit-lane lead-change-pattern across the standing two-pit-stop refuelling sequence), and crossed the standing checkered-flag at the standing 3.19 PM Memorial Day finish-time at the standing race-average of 150.686 miles per hour with the standing winning-margin of approximately two laps over the runner-up Parnelli Jones (Jones in the standing Hurst Floor Shifter Special). The standing third-place was Mario Andretti in the standing Dean Van Lines Special (Andretti's first Indianapolis 500 podium finish, the foundational moment of his subsequent thirty-year American single-seater career).
THE 1965 SEASON AND AFTER
Clark took the standing 1965 Formula One World Championship across the standing nine-race season (six Grand Prix victories: South Africa, Belgium, France, Britain, Netherlands, Germany) and became the only driver in the modern motor-racing era to win the Indianapolis 500 and the Formula One World Championship in the same season. The standing 1965 record has been matched by no subsequent international single-seater driver. Clark continued at the standing Lotus team across the 1966 and 1967 seasons (the standing Lotus 49 with the standing Ford-DFV-Cosworth V8 engine that became the foundational engine of the standing late-1960s-and-1970s Formula One era), took the standing 1967 South African Grand Prix and the standing 1967 Dutch Grand Prix on the standing new Lotus 49.
He was killed on the seventh of April 1968 at the standing Hockenheimring in Germany in a Formula Two race when his Lotus 48 left the circuit at the standing high-speed Eastkurve corner on the standing-suspected-tyre-deflation failure, at thirty-two. He is buried at the small Chirnside parish churchyard outside Edington Mains. The standing-Jim-Clark Trust at Chirnside has been the central single Scottish-Borders-motor-racing-memorial since 1969, with the standing Jim Clark Room museum at the Chirnside parish hall. The Clark name in modern motor-racing carries the weight of the Memorial-Day afternoon at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the thirty-first of May 1965.