Jim Clark didn’t do second. He finished runner-up once in his 72 world championship grands prix from 1960-68, and 82 per cent of his final tally of 274 points came in victory. In short, if he finished, he won.

And very often he was wondering why his rivals were going so slowly. It came so naturally to this modest man who was never false either in or out of the cockpit.

The bulk of his success was achieved in agile but fragile cars possessed of narrow power bands and perched on narrow tyres the primary trait of which was durability: he won three GPs in succession in 1963 on the same set of Dunlops. Speed had to be harvested and husbanded in a miserly fashion. Stirling Moss had shown the way – shallower entries, trail braking, carrying speed – and Clark took it to the next level. Indeed his was the new model that persuaded the cavalier Moss of the necessity for equal equipment; whether his semi-works deal with Ferrari for 1962 would have provided that is forever theoretical.

Moss’s extended absence and eventual enforced retirement through injury opened the door upon which Clark had been politely knocking for a few months. Whereupon he bolted: regular rocket starts and soaring first laps followed by holding patterns of apparently effortless control and faultless consistency. He could charge when necessary, it’s just that rarely was it so. Tending to lead from gun to tape, usually he had it taped by the first corner.

No other racing driver has made domination appear so easy. It might have been mundane but for the beauty contained within. Reclined in elegant machines wrapped tightly around him, Clark exuded graceful serenity. Engines were cosseted. Gearboxes cajoled. Pads caressed. Brakes were released early rather than buried too late in seeking the final tenth. Man, not machine, was its source in this instance.

That’s not to say that he did not benefit from superior equipment. Colin Chapman’s Lotus mined a rich seam of mechanical grip beyond the reach of others. Nor can it be denied that Clark received preferential treatment over bamboozled team-mates. But if opposites attract – and country boy Clark and the urbane Chapman were poles apart in myriad ways – then for sure the best simply seek out the best.

In an era bejewelled by Jack Brabham, Dan Gurney, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Jackie Stewart and John Surtees, Clark shone the brightest. But for oil leaks in the deciders of 1962 and 1964 he would have been F1 champion four times consecutively. His titles of 1963 and 1965 were signed and sealed early. At a time when reliability could not be relied upon, he routinely strung together victories. Notoriously indecisive in life and in the habit of chewing his nails, he had no such worries when at work – except that he was operating in the sport’s most dangerous era.

Clark detested high-speed Spa-Francorchamps, with its capricious microclimate and innumerable unprotected traps for the injudicious. Yet he won four straight GPs there. The faces he pulled as he passed the pits in the thunderstorm of 1963 spoke volumes – as did his lapping of the entire sodden field. And Stewart – the Robin to his Batman – is adamant that Clark would occasionally speed up while leading in 1965 in order to dissuade a relatively inexperienced rival, cherished friend and compatriot from giving more earnest chase. Spa could bite, as Stewart would discover in 1966.

Clark was wary, too, of the almost doubling of power wrought by the introduction of the 3-litres. Yet he won first time out in the groundbreaking Lotus 49/Cosworth DFV package. A changing tax status had prevented his sampling the car beforehand and he qualified only eighth for that 1967 Dutch GP at Zandvoort. He took the lead on lap 15.

Tellingly, he had during practice refused to drive it until the problem – a broken ball-race in the right-rear hub – that he had sensed the previous day, but which had eluded his mechanics overnight, was traced and fixed. He was not the most technical, and an ability to drive around problems could queer testing sessions, but his sixth sense was strong.

The courage of his convictions and self-worth were strengthening, too. His relationship with Chapman on a more equal footing, he seemed increasingly comfortable in his own skin and more worldly – Tasman tan, Colgate smile – and ready, in a way different from the more businesslike Stewart’s, for F1’s impending shifts of slicks and wings, improving safety and sponsor’s stickers…

Like Moss, Clark was 32 when his career was cut short. Sadly there the comparison ends.