IN September 1963, Jim Clark, the newly-crowned world racing champion, came home to Berwickshire to a hero’s welcome. Clark, 27, had clinched the Formula One title with a comfortable win at the Grand Prix in Monza. It was the seventh race of the season: he had won five of them, and there were still three races left. He won two of those three, and in the end took the title by a margin of 25 points.
His homecoming on September 12 saw him tour, in an open-top bus, the villages near his farm home at Edington. The retinue included 30 cars, a pipe band and, said the Glasgow Herald, “the biggest turnout of local people since royalty last passed this way”.
The welcome was free of hysteria: “His own people, Border agriculturalists, are outwardly a dour lot. So that although the pipes were playing as he left Edington, in the steading there sounded the snip of shears as sheep were clipped for a forthcoming show, and in the white fields of barley along the way, other men waved from the throbbing seats of great red or yellow combine harvesters. They knew, these shearers and harvesters, that the slightly-built man in the pale blue racing driver’s suit would understand, for he himself has put his hands to such tasks”.
In his home village of Chirnside the pipe band led the procession to the overcrowded local square, and lusty cheers interrupted the laudatory speeches.
Clark finished third the following season, but in 1965 the Borders villages were once again the scene of celebration when he regained the Formula One title. Not only had he claimed it by winning the German Grand Prix, at Nürburgring (his sixth win of the season, with three races still to come); he had also, that May, become the first overseas driver to win the classic Indianapolis 500-mile race.
The homecoming (pictured) included decorated floats recalling the many achievements of his distinguished career. Fifty cars made up a convoy of honour. A lorry, decked in sheaves of barley and parasols, bore a harvest incantation.
The villages all displayed bunting and banners; where there were not enough flags to wave, tablecloths and bedspreads were pressed into service. “Families on isolated cottage doorsteps, little groups at crossroads, and farmers harvesting in roadside fields,” said the Herald, “added individual cheers as they acknowledged the champion.”
Clark was introduced as a “champion of champions”, and with characteristic modesty said the warmth of the reception meant more to him than all his championship victories and the cheers of race crowds.
Jim Clark was indisputably one of the great Grand Prix drivers. Time magazine once described him as “the most famous Scot” since Burns. He was killed in a crash during a race in Hockenheim, Germany, on April 7, 1968.
Read more: Herald Diary
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