Jackie Stewart’s drama-free mastery at the wheel | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

It’s a question to which there is no real answer save that sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. Where I am lucky, and what has sustained this column during the more than ten years I’ve been writing it, is I have a brain inclined to head off in unexpected directions at no notice at all. And usually it leads somewhere I’ll find a germ of an idea a small proportion of which turn out to be of some use – the story you’re about to read being one prime such example.

It came to me at 04.00 this morning when, having enjoyed myself thoroughly at the quiz, nature came calling. And when I returned to bed and was staring at the ceiling, my brain decided that was the precise moment it absolutely had to identify the oldest surviving grand prix winner. Then it suddenly struck me that despite the fact that at the start of this decade there were two multiple GP winners from the 1950s still alive – Moss and Brooks – now there are just two left from the entire decade that followed, Jackie Stewart and Jacky Ickx.

I almost then disappeared down an entire Jackie-themed wormhole when I realised Jackie Oliver is one of few drivers even to finish on the podium of a 1960s F1 race and therefore pondering the good luck and longevity of F1 drivers so named. But at the last minute a distant memory pulled me back from the brink and sent me off in an entirely other Jackie-related direction.

It was back in 2006 when I attended the launch of a then new DVD (remember those?) whose title ‘Jackie Stewart – Triple World Champion’ tells you all you need to know about its contents. JYS was there of course, as was his son Mark whose MSP production company had made the film.

It took place in the BRDC Clubhouse at Silverstone and when all the pleasantries were completed I wondered if it might be possible to do a lap or two of the track with the great man at the wheel. At the time, Jackie was already eligible for his bus pass and had not raced a car for more than 30 years. Happily I had 400bhp of Noble M12 at my disposal so I just jumped in beside him and waited for the drama to unfold.

But there wasn’t any. On his outlap Jackie drove about as fast as I might, thereafter there was no comparison. I remember a sensation of the car feeling as if it were on tiptoes and of it drifting all the way up to but never beyond the track limits. I’d not expected armfuls of over or understeer as this has never been the JYS way, but even when the car flicked sideways I was surprised by how little correction he applied: he just did enough to arrest the rate of yaw and then rode it out on the throttle, letting the car do all the work.

This performance stood out for two reasons: first I’m fairly certain he’d never sat in a Noble before let alone driven one on the absolute limit, the second was that from start to finish he never stopped talking, calmly and quietly about what the car was doing and what he was doing to control it.

After it was over and as I fell somewhat thunderstruck from the car, Mark Stewart was good enough to come over and offer some form of explanation. ‘Don’t worry, Dad has always had an advantage over everyone else,’ he ventured somewhat conspiratorially. What might that be I enquired eagerly. ‘He just doesn’t find it very difficult.’ That much I could see.

Jackie Stewart image by Joe Harding.