Jackie Stewart was born in Dunbartonshire in 1939 and left school at fifteen, with teachers who thought him slow. Only at forty-one was he diagnosed as severely dyslexic. Before racing, he was a trap shooter good enough to be on the edge of the British Olympic team.
He came into Formula One with BRM in 1965 and won a Grand Prix in his first season. In 1969 he took the world title with Ken Tyrrell’s team in a Matra, and with Tyrrell’s own cars he won again in 1971 and 1973. In all he won twenty-seven Grands Prix, a record at the time.
The crash that shaped the rest of his career came at Spa in 1966. His BRM left the road in the rain and he was trapped in the wreck, soaked in fuel, for around twenty-five minutes, with no marshals, no proper medical service and spanners borrowed from spectators’ cars to free him. From then on he campaigned — against a sport and a press that often called him a coward — for full-face helmets, seat belts, barriers, run-off areas and proper medical care at circuits. Much of what now keeps drivers alive began with him.
His last season was also his hardest. In October 1973, at Watkins Glen, his teammate and friend François Cevert was killed in practice. Stewart, who had already decided privately to retire, withdrew from what would have been his hundredth Grand Prix and never raced again.
Later he ran his own team, Stewart Grand Prix, which won a race in 1999 before being sold to Ford — the team that in time became Red Bull Racing. He was knighted in 2001, and still turns up at the track in his tartan cap.
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