Lunch with Jackie

By almost any measure, Jackie Stewart was the greatest racing driver of his era. Now, more than four decades after he hung up the white helmet with the tartan band, Sir Jackie remains a familiar figure. It’s not just because memories live on of his three world championship titles in five seasons, or his 27 grand prix wins out of 99 starts. It’s also because of his continuing presence in the public eye: his visible friendships with sporting heroes, businessmen, musicians and royalty; his 40-year worldwide role with the Ford Motor Company; his work as an ambassador for brands from Rolex to Heineken; and of course his three-year stretch as the creator and motivator of his own Formula 1 team. Now he’s back in the news with his launch of a trust to search for a cure for dementia after Helen, his beloved wife of 54 years, began to develop the condition.

The details of Jackie’s racing life, how he spent his 11 seasons as a driver, are well known. But aside from his four-wheeled achievements, this is a complex man who admits that he is still, with millions in the bank and a knighthood, driven by feelings of inferiority and a fear of failure.

So I proposed that I should take him to lunch to talk about the man rather than the race results. He responded by inviting me to his home in Buckinghamshire. Every house he and Helen have had – their first little bungalow in Dumbuck, his place on the borders of Lake Geneva at the height of his F1 career, now this comfortable mansion where they’ve lived for the past 20 years – has been called Clayton House. He originally devised the name to combine his two early passions of clay pigeon shooting and driving a car at over the ton.