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.