Rumblings

Goodwood's Revival was a Jim Clark love-in, but what was the man really like? DOUG NYE remembers racing's most revered driver

- DOUG NYE

Despite the ever-present risk of retreating into rosy-glow nostalgia, the Monday morning after this year's Goodwood Revival meeting leaves me with a pressing need. Anyone with half a heart who saw the Jim Clark tribute supported by 50-odd sheep - in honour of that extraordinary sportsman's wool-farming background - storming towards Madgwick Corner '50 wide' must surely have been impressed.

The biggest Jim Clark fan I know is Dario Franchitti, the three-time Indy 500 race winner (2007, '10, '12) and four-time IndyCar champion (2007, 2009-11). He had been sitting in Jimmy's 1965 race-winning Lotus-Ford 38, having a quiet moment imagining what the great man himself must have been thinking on the Brickyard's startline just before their rolling lap, 60 years ago. “Then I suddenly came to, and sheep are streaming past the car! I was totally disorientated. That was just surreal - it was as if fandom had at last just blown my mind..!”.