Playboy Interview: Jackie Stewart

Motor racing may be the most popular spectator sport in the world: In all its forms, from quarter-mile drag races to 24-hour endurance tests, it draws more than 50,000,000 paying customers a year. You could add all the regular season admissions for major-league baseball to those for pro football, counting every ticket sold at every ball park and stadium in the U. S., and still not reach that figure. Only horse racing claims to attract greater crowds and many of them are lured more by the promise of the pari-mutuel window than by the love of horseflesh. In America, the biggest auto-racing event is the Indianapolis 500, which brings out 300,000 people for one day; but for millions of the sport's aficionados, especially in Europe, the name of the game is Grand Prix. It's in a league by itself, with the most demanding tracks, the most sophisticated machines and the greatest drivers, who compete not once a year but 12 or 13 times, from early in the year until November, on four or five continents. The man at the top of that heap, the undisputed champion of Grand Prix racing, is a 32-year-old Scotsman named Jackie Stewart, who earns more money than all but a few corporate presidents. Around the world, he's as famous as any movie star. He's the dinner guest of royalty; when he walks through an airport anywhere in Europe, Africa, Asia or South America, people chase him for autographs. All this, as he himself says, "just for driving around in circles."

In any given season, only about 25 men are ranked as qualified to drive Formula I Grand Prix cars--delicately precisioned instruments often consisting of a mammoth 450-horsepower engine mounted in a thin fiberglass shell barely large enough for one man, and then only if he's cramped into a half-lying, half-sitting position. To many people, including some sportswriters who have argued that motor racing should be outlawed, this combination of speed, power, noise, grace and, most important, danger, adds up only to insanity. But for those millions of fans, the sport has created a mystique around the drivers, who routinely face risks--and win awards--that most men can only dream of. The dangers are very real. In 1962, Stirling Moss, one of racing's handful of superstars, was forced to retire after a near-fatal accident. In 1968, Jim Clark--who had been dominating the sport as Stewart does today--died in a race in West Germany. In 1970, three Grand Prix drivers were killed, among them Germany's Jochen Rindt, who was awarded that year's driving championship posthumously.

It was a racing accident, in fact, that almost kept Jackie Stewart out of competition altogether. The son of a Scottish garage owner and Jaguar dealer, Jackie had loved car racing since boyhood. He used to follow his older brother Jimmy, himself a successful race driver, to the tracks--always carrying his autograph book in hopes of meeting Juan Fangio, Moss and the other greats. But Jimmy had a serious crash, and that, combined with severe pressure from his mother, persuaded him to retire. So Jackie--who had dropped out of school at 15 to work as a mechanic in the family business--decided to compete in a safer sport: trapshooting. By his 21st birthday, he had won several European championships and was aiming for a spot on the British Olympic shooting team. But when he narrowly missed qualifying, he decided to return to his first love and began racing--under the pseudonym A. N. Other. By the time his mother found him out, he was a winner.

In 1965, his first full Grand Prix season, Stewart finished third in the World Driver's Championship. The next year his rise was interrupted by a major mishap at the Belgian Grand Prix--but not before he had made his rookie appearance at the Indianapolis 500, where, with only 15 miles to go, he was leading by nearly a full lap when his engine failed. In 1968, he managed to finish second to Graham Hill in the world championship--despite having run out of fuel on the last lap of one Grand Prix and missing three others with a broken wrist. In 1969 and 1971, he did win the championship, each time capturing six of 11 races. This year there are 13 scheduled, and the first of them was in Argentina, which he won. If he continues at the pace he set in those two championship years, he will equal the all-time, 25-victory record of Clark, one of the most illustrious names in the history of auto racing.

Stewart has earned a reputation not only on the track but off, as racing's most articulate booster-businessman and as the most militant--and controversial--crusader for stringent safety precautions in a sport that has always tended to pride itself on an almost cavalier attitude toward its dangers. To explore Stewart's view of his life as the fastest driver in the world--and of the chances he takes to maintain that position--Playboy sent free-lance writer Larry DuBois to interview him. DuBois reports:

"Stewart, his wife, Helen, and their two young sons live just outside Geneva in a big, beautiful country home. I caught him there right at the end of a rare interval: He'd been home for most of three weeks, without having to fly off for a race, car test, speaking date, business deal or one of his many promotional engagements. There are months during which Stewart spends only a night or two at home, and he was relishing the unaccustomed vacation with his family.

"From Geneva, we flew to Buenos Aires, where the Argentine Grand Prix was to inaugurate the new racing season. Since he had a race coming up in six days, I was afraid he might be tense, distracted, moody--and perhaps touchy about questions dealing with the risks he faces. Not at all. He was relaxed, open, even-tempered--a delight to work with. At first, noting the determination with which he approaches all his interests--racing, business, golf, good clothes, good food--I thought he was compulsive, a man struggling for some reason to achieve the best of everything. Gradually, I came to see his motivation as simpler: He's merely a highly energetic enthusiast who enjoys himself so much that he just naturally succeeds. He controls his racing cars and his life exactly as he wants to and, in both instances, control is what he considers paramount.

"I saw that control demonstrated the day we arrived in Buenos Aires. The track was deserted, except for a few workmen, so Stewart borrowed a friend's car--a standard model, not a racer--to take a few laps and 'get the feel of the geography,' as he put it. He invited me along. I don't suppose, in the ten laps or so we did, that he ever got over 85 miles per hour; but still it took my breath away, because quite often he was going at that speed up to a few yards before a 90-degree corner. Meanwhile, Stewart was chatting away as if we were sitting in the back of a tourist bus. He says it's a synchronization of reactions that allows racing drivers to handle speeds that would paralyze other people. As we squealed around one curve at top speed, we saw--about 30 yards in front of us--a dump truck blocking all but a few feet of the track. Stewart swerved, accelerated past and sped on--still talking. When I recovered sufficiently to ask 'What about that truck?,' Stewart's straight-faced--and I think sincere--response was, 'What truck?'

"Finally, on the day of the race, even Stewart wasn't able to master all the pressures. Other than 'Good morning,' he had nothing to say to me, nor to anybody else. On the way to the track, he sprawled out in the back seat and stared into space. At the racecourse, the autograph hunters and photographers got none of his usual jaunty responses. He ignored them.

"Stewart had qualified for the front row on the grid, and he beat everyone to the first curve. After that, the real race was for second place. Lap after lap, he pounded along--slicing fractions of a second off everyone else's time, consistently building his lead. By the end of the 95 laps--about 200 miles--he was coasting along with a 26-second margin, which is roughly equivalent to winning a baseball game 9--0.

"When the race was over, Stewart was back to his usual relaxed state: in high spirits, but not demonstrating any special elation. We ran for our lives from the crowd that was waiting for him in the parking lot--it reminded me of those scenes a few years ago when hordes of teenagers mobbed the Beatles--and headed for the airport. At last, comfortably seated on the night flight to New York, Stewart celebrated by taking exactly two swallows of champagne. Then he changed the subject to more important things, such as the fact that after a day's business in New York and one more night flight, he'd be home again for a day or two--before going off to do some tire testing in South Africa. This attachment to home and family didn't seem to jibe with the stereotype of the racer as a swinger off the track--an apparent contradiction I asked him to explain."

[Q] Playboy: Much of the public regards racing drivers as a devil-may-care bunch leading very dramatic and, well, racy lives. How close is that to the truth?

[A] Stewart: It may be that way even in the minds of some of the drivers, but it's probably even more so in the minds of the beholders. If that's the case, perhaps that's why we get such big crowds around the world. And so many attractive women! So don't knock that image. Let's build it up!

[Q] Playboy: Seriously.

[A] Stewart: Seriously, the truth is that the sport has all these things. It is very glamorous, and glamorous people follow it. It's very colorful and is done in colorful places. It's exciting, with the noise and the speed and the danger, and it does attract some of the most beautiful women in the world. This has been part of my life for so long that I don't even notice it except when I take a friend to the track and he says to me, "Hey, Jesus Christ, these women are spectacular, and they're all following the drivers around." Racing has everything the dreams imagine and the films show. And some of the drivers want to conjure up in the minds of the fans and the women the idea that they are heroes and gladiators--they're no fools. Well, they're not gladiators, but they're not run-of-the-mill guys, either. They've chosen a very difficult road to travel, a road that's exciting and daring.

[A] But racing has a lot more, and the dreams and movies about the drivers are interested in seeing only one side. I've written a book called Faster that's going to show, I hope, the other side, which is an incredible amount of dedication, hard work, exhaustion and sadness. In the book, I'm going to put this good-life aspect into perspective, because it's important that motor racing be portrayed accurately. Of course the drivers go to parties and they attract women. And some of them drink, though few of them drink very much. Basically, we're professionals, and I want to be sure the reader sees us as that, as real people, as serious people, not just as harebrained dilettantes. You know, you have to be quite mature mentally to be successful in this line of work. You need to have more than just natural driving talent. You have to be a thinker, with an almost computerized mind. If you aren't, you might never live long enough to become a top performer. And many of us are businessmen. Many of us look at our careers as carefully as a project would be planned in the board room of a corporation.

[Q] Playboy: Some of the old-time drivers have complained about that attitude. They say the young drivers today are unexcitingly competent technicians, more like astronauts than the roguish "gentlemen drivers" they like to remember.

[A] Stewart: Motor racing today is just so damned competitive, the technology is so advanced and the stakes are so high that there isn't much room for dilettantes anymore. The cars are so evenly matched now that if a driver thinks he can play at his racing, he's going to get beaten, and beaten badly. But I don't think people will ever see us as merely competent technicians. The idea that there are men who risk their lives for the sake of winning is exciting, I think, especially in modern society, which is so restricting. There are few activities left that allow a man to extend himself to the limit of his abilities, to put himself in precarious positions, and when the drivers appear at the track, there's always an enormous crowd watching to see what we're like, how we move. They're extremely curious about the kind of men who have put themselves in this position. There is a certain feeling of passion, an emotional thrill, for the spectators. But not for any driver who wants to be successful. Because he knows that emotion of any sort is the most dangerous thing to have in a race.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Stewart: Emotion is the opposite of control, and the senior commodity in this business is control. My life is control. I exist because of control. When somebody becomes emotional and allows his heart to rule his head, he starts doing stupid things, perhaps getting overconfident and thinking he's better than he is, misjudging the limits of his ability and the car's. It may be a lovely feeling, but it's not the way to win, because you become the passenger in that car, not the master, and you may start to feel you're demonstrating your courage, and there's no place for courage in motor racing.

[Q] Playboy: That's a surprising remark.

[A] Stewart: Well, motor racing is dangerous, and if you choose to do it, perhaps you're a different breed from the man who wouldn't stick his neck out, even for the rewards racing offers. If that's what is meant by courage, OK. But not if by courage you mean pushing yourself and the car into that corner just a little bit faster than you know you're both able to handle. That may seem courageous, but it's really foolish. Heroes with bravery like that aren't for motor racing. They endanger not only their own lives but the lives of others.

[A] In fact, the most important thing for a racing driver is honesty. You must be very, very honest with yourself. You have to recognize when you must stop. If somebody is faster than you, you have to be honest enough to say, "I'm sorry, but I can't drive any faster today. But let there be another day!" You have to be willing to admit when you've reached the ultimate of your ability and the car's. You can't start stretching yourself beyond that, because that's when you're likely to have an accident. Now, it's very difficult for a man to say, "I can't go any faster," but there are times when you must say it, really believe it and really stand by it, because if you don't, you've lost control. So when I'm racing, I've completely eliminated my emotions.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you at least nervous before a race?

[A] Stewart: Of course I am, and the intensity of the nervousness is like that of a person about to go in for major surgery. But by the time the race actually starts, I see things through absolutely cold, crystal-clear eyes, without fear or apprehension of any kind. It's a strange feeling, a feeling of being totally removed from the scene and looking at it from the outside, as though I'm no longer a part of my body. But this is an acquired talent it's taken a long time to perfect, and it helps me immensely. If you ask people in racing, "What does Stewart do best?" I think they'll say the way I start the race. I don't mean just getting the car off the line, but the way I complete the first five laps at a speed that generally breaks me from the opposition or that keeps me close to them if their cars happen to be better than mine. Generally, the other guys are oversharp, overnervous at the beginning and they have trouble settling in and acclimatizing themselves to the car and the track. So on the first few laps, that fine edge of coordination isn't there, and it shows in their cars.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of psychological countdown do you go through before a race to get yourself to this state of nervelessness?

[A] Stewart: For me, the countdown really begins the night before the race. Finally, I start to realize, "Hey, we've got something happening." I go to bed at a normal time, around midnight, and I sleep well, but I have to read myself to sleep. Not with heavy material but with a story of some kind, an adventure that will grip me. Alistair MacLean, Harold Robbins, Len Deighton, people like that are big favorites for doing this. I want something that will carry me away on a carpet, get me out of reality, or else I might not sleep so well. I might get really uptight. I'll waken early, maybe at five or six, with a tension about me that I don't understand, and then I'll realize that it's because it's the morning of the race. Then I lie on one side, and I toss and turn, and I lie on the other, and I toss and turn.

[A] The best way to describe me at that point is that I feel like an overinflated beach ball. The ball is much too hard. If you bounced it on the sidewalk, it would bounce back crazily, out of control, and you'd have to struggle to make it bounce back up to your palm and no higher. This I can't have. I have to deflate that ball. So rather than lie there and go on tossing and turning, thinking about where I am in the grid or how I'm going to handle the first corner, I'll climb right back into my book and escape. I'll read myself back to sleep eventually, and every time I wake up that morning, I'll go through this same process again. If the race is at two, I'll get up maybe at 11 and have a massage.

[A] As the morning goes on, I'm constantly trying to reduce this tension I feel, and slowly the ball is becoming more docile. It bounces up to me a little slower now, and it begins to come right back to the palm of my hand. I try to obliterate other people from my mind, to forget everybody else. I don't want to discuss anything with anybody. Gradually, I become almost numb. By the time I get to the track, I've punctured the ball. And I'm trying to put a hard gloss on its surface so that nobody can penetrate it. I have to protect my nerves now from all the stimuli around me at the track.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of stimuli?

[A] Stewart: It's a kaleidoscope of color and of feeling. You can drown in your own sensations. Every sensation that's possible to have, you can have before a race. The noise is incredible; the engines are revving in short, throbbing bursts all around you. The fans are cheering, and their emotions are so highly charged that when the car of the driver who is the local favorite is wheeled out, you might have 100,000 people on their feet. And then, when the driver himself--this tiny figure--walks up the pit lane, somehow the entire crowd will recognize him all at once and they'll go wild for him. When he actually gets into his car and drives off for the warm-up lap, everybody is throwing their hats and programs into the air, and you'd think they would rush across the track and stampede over you if you told them to. I mean, it's an atmosphere of hysteria. In the pits, the smell of the engines and the grease and rubber is so powerful that it can be nauseating if you're anxious, or as sweet as perfume if you're high on your own excitement. There is an atmosphere of terrific tension and anticipation because of the recognition of such potential power and of such imminent danger.

[A] Occasionally, there is a last-minute problem. A car has a water leak or a petrol leak, or the battery is flat and the engine won't start, and suddenly there are enormously frayed tempers and a grim scrambling for tools. Whatever is wrong, mechanics have got to fix it, and fix it now, and fix it right. And they're operating under pressure that would be unbearable for someone who wasn't used to it. But they're professionals, and they're moving with certainty and coolness, which makes for an even sharper contrast with the hysteria of all the amateurs, the hangers-on who have worked their way into the pits, the photographers who are getting in everyone's way and clicking their cameras, trying everyone's patience. Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to distract everyone, the glamorous girls, the dolly-birds, are all strutting and letting themselves be seen.

[A] To me, though, all these things have become rather impersonal by now and I shut them out easily. The more difficult part is to shut out the kids, the autograph hunters, the well-wishers who want to get through to me, who want my personal attention, who want to feel they're in there with me. I've got to work very hard not to be flattered, amused or annoyed by either their persistence or their enthusiasm. That might destroy my balance, my synchronization. I'm sure that if I weren't racing and I witnessed all this energy, color and glamor, I would be very excited by it. But I've been through it so many times that I see it in a flat way. I move right through without feeling anything, and by the time I get into the racing car, which should be the tensest period, that rubber ball is totally deflated.

[Q] Playboy: Then the flag drops. What are you thinking about?

[A] Stewart: Your mind has to digest all the elements you're up against--the track, the car and the speed. You've got to be aware in advance of the idiosyncrasies, the undulations, of the track, remembering what happens just over the top of the next hill; maybe there's a stretch that's damp from overhanging trees, and you've got to watch out for that. The car will behave differently, perhaps more clumsily, than in qualifying, because now you're carrying a full tank of gas, so you're mentally readjusting your braking distances. Your mind has to make such an incredible number of such complex calculations that you'll never have time for them if everything is happening to you in a big rush. So the greatest requirement is to eliminate the sensation of speed. Speed should not exist. By that I mean you must synchronize your mind quickly to the speed before the others do, so that instead of a corner rushing up to you, it comes to you slowly and passively. For me, it's like watching a film in slow motion. I can react unhurriedly because what appears to the spectators as very fast appears to me as deliberate and fluid.

[A] I'm always impressed when I see Rod Laver return a serve. There's not a hell of a lot of rush about his actions. Even if you've hit a cannon, he returns it almost as if it were an insult that you should have put such a dribbler into his court. That's what I mean by synchronization, and there's more to it than just having fast reactions. I couldn't even see one of those serves. All I'd see is a big blur, like anyone else. In my case, I'm synchronized to a race track, so I can take in much more than someone who isn't; I can see the trees, the flag marshals and occasionally, if I pass a mass of people closely, I can pick out friends among them or even individual faces of strangers. I may see one man who stands out, and he seems to be willing me on in a very special way. I can see the expression on his face; I can almost hear him, he's so vibrant in what he's doing.

[A] You know, I've never taken drugs; there's no place in my life for them. But it's almost as if I understand what people experience on them. I believe I come very close to getting high while I'm racing, the intensity of my sensations is pushed so high on the barometer. It's like having supersenses. When something goes wrong, say a tire is going down, it doesn't just happen. I can feel it beginning like a sneeze coming on, and then it happens slowly, because my senses are living at the same speed as that tire going down, and I can handle it while the effect is still going on.

[A] I even smell things more intensely. Once, I was racing the British Grand Prix in an uncompetitive car. It just wasn't going to beat the others for me, and there was nothing I could do; near the end of the race, I was lying in about fifth position. I had my face mask on to protect against the fire risk, three sets of thermal underwear and a set of overalls. The cockpit was smelling of oil and sweat and petrol, and as I came round this corner at about 120 miles per hour--which makes you particularly aware of your surroundings--out of nowhere came the most incredibly clear aroma of new-cut grass. It was very, very strong, like somebody had dumped a lawn mower at my side, and I wondered how in the hell I could ever smell that in those circumstances. But it came in so strong and with such beauty that I knew I wasn't imagining it. Perhaps another driver had spun off the track and rolled across some grass, and this damaged grass had let off its vapor, which had drifted I don't know how far. Anyway, it had come through everything and my senses--or supersenses--had devoured it. It was the first time this had happened to me. Now it happens often. I can only assume that this is the sort of heightened senses that people experience on drugs.

[Q] Playboy: Or perhaps during sex? The thrill of driving a racing car has often been likened by writers to some sort of sexual pleasure. Is that a valid simile?

[A] Stewart: It's been said often, but I think it's nonsense. I don't really feel that racing has any relation at all to sensuality. And yet one of my most accurate descriptions of how to make a car do the things you want it to is to compare it to the sex act.

[Q] Playboy: What's the similarity?

[A] Stewart: Well, for descriptive purposes, at least, a racing car is very much like a woman. It's a highly bred mechanism--very nervous, very highly strung. To get the best out of it, you must treat it with smoothness and caution. It's so finely engineered that all sorts of things can upset it. Let's take one corner, for instance. You're approaching at maximum speed, maybe 200 miles per hour, and you've got to decelerate sharply to go round. You don't wait until the last second and then stamp the brakes and make the car's nose go diving down. You press them progressively so that the car slows down gently and gradually. And as you're gearing down, you're not banging through the gears, you're taking them smoothly. So you've started her doing what you want her to do, but you're coaxing, not thrashing her into it. You're courting her. You've started caressing her that little bit. She's getting the idea. She knows now that she wants to go into that corner, but she doesn't want to be rushed. She wants to be taken nicely. She's almost taking you into it.

[A] Once you get to the corner, you don't abruptly turn the steering wheel in a way that's going to upset this balance you've achieved. Slowly, you put the car into a roll. You're really bringing this woman on now, she's really beginning to enjoy it. This is what she was made for, this is her purpose. You're taking the very best out of her, but it's a unity, because you're also bringing yourself to your finest limit. Now you have to take the most important part of the corner, the apex. Here you are, you've brought this car from 200 yards back, and from 200 miles per hour to perhaps 100 miles per hour, to this spot, which can be measured in inches, and this precise spot is the climax. Just before you arrive there, maybe you're going to apply a little bit of power because she's coming, but you haven't really reached it yet; her pace has to be brought on a little bit, and that last bit of extra power does it. The whole car reaches its climax. She's done everything you've asked her to do. She's done it beautifully, and you've done it with her, and the timing has been perfect. You both sort of sit back and sigh. You've achieved unity with each other. You've really enjoyed it.

[A] But that's only part of the problem, because there's an exit to this corner, and the exit is as important as the apex, and if you don't do it right, you're not going to get the best performance on the next straight. So you just don't leave this car at the climax. You've got to be nice to her afterward; you've got to spend more time with her after her climax than you spent before it, so you slowly bring her back into a more level attitude toward the road, without jerking her rear end down. And this same sensitivity, this same precision, has to be achieved not just once but on every corner of every lap. You can't view it as a one-time stand. You have to build a relationship that lasts the entire race.

[A] The fact that the car is like a woman, of course, means that you can do all the right things with her and she still may not respond. Suddenly, for no reason at all, that bitch can turn on you with as much suddenness as a woman can, and put you into an embarrassing situation, perhaps even destroy you without any warning at all. You can't conceive that she would do it to you, but maybe you haven't been paying absolutely perfect attention to her and that's why she's whipped round on you. Well, you're losing her. She's not going to do it for you. It's an emergency and you have to apply all your subtleties and skill to bring her back under control again. Sometimes you just have to divorce that corner. It's finished for you there. So you say, "We're not going to make it here tonight. So let's just get out of here, because if we don't, we're going to have a crash." You must remember, though, that at this point there isn't much time for sweet-talking. The whole process I've described might take a maximum of four seconds if you're coming off the fastest straight through to the exit of the corner.

[Q] Playboy: That description doesn't seem to make nonsense of the driving-as-sex image.

[A] Stewart: I don't describe it that way because of its relation to sex in any real way, but because sex is an experience people can relate to. It's a good way of drawing a picture they can understand. I assure you I don't think in those terms when I'm on the track. The last thing I'm thinking of then is passion.

[Q] Playboy: You were telling us a while ago about your state of mind at the beginning of a race. Do you lay out a careful strategy beforehand?

[A] Stewart: Not really. I just try to get in the lead and keep it, if I can. The whole business of driving a racing car to its absolute limit against a man in close proximity is to embarrass him, to demoralize him, to get onto a piece of track that he wants but can't use because you're on it. It's terribly important to demoralize the opposition. You've got to get them thinking that they're competing against you, rather than vice versa, so that they accept your pace as the pace of the race. I'm lucky enough to be a clean starter and get in the groove immediately, so I try to quickly open up a gap. The first lap is a flier. The second lap you take with caution, but not enough to let them catch up. You have to be cautious here because you were leading the field that first lap and had a totally clear road; the second lap, you don't know who may have had an oil leak or who has put dust or gravel on the track, so you're inspecting. The third and fourth laps are fliers again. The fifth you rest a little and see what they're going to do--retaliate or follow your pace. It's psychological.

[A] Let's say that I've managed to open up a gap of five or six seconds after several laps. It's important that I hold this gap or open it up. Perhaps I drive ten laps within a tenth of a second of each other. This can be demoralizing to somebody behind me, because there aren't very many drivers who can be that consistent, so he might begin to feel I'm not going to make any mistakes he can take advantage of. But he isn't losing ground, either. He's staying with me. So he begins to think, "Aha, I've got a chance." Well, you mustn't let him think that. So you hit him with a fast one and take a half second off him in one lap, and that can be demoralizing, because he thinks, "I've driven my heart out, I've had it right on the limit, and I thought I was going to do it, and shit, there he goes, he's off again." He thinks at that point maybe he'll be satisfied with keeping a safe second place, and if I do that to him, I'm home free if my car keeps going, because I've got him psyched. I've got him thinking that the race will be run at my pace, and if I can do that, I can win races.

[Q] Playboy: Is a half-second gain in a lap really enough to be demoralizing?

[A] Stewart: Oh, absolutely. What if I'm back there, right on my limit, and staying even with the leader, who then starts to move away from me? I'm not going to be encouraged. A second a lap is a very long time in our business. I won the French Grand Prix last year by less than a minute, which was a hell of a margin. Near the end, I was so far ahead that I cooled it. They started picking up a second a lap on me, which may not seem like much, but for me it was a regular holiday. It was clear enough what I was doing that the crowd reacted with an annoyance so strong that I could sense it. They thought I wasn't putting up my best performance.

[Q] Playboy: Did that bother you?

[A] Stewart: No. I just thought, "The bastards, here I am winning the race, doing everything I can." What they didn't understand was that I was giving my best, because this was the best way to win. The idea is to win a race at the slowest possible speed; there's no point in pushing the car or being a hero. You've got to learn to pace yourself.

[Q] Playboy: Even if you pace yourself, do you sometimes get so exhausted it hampers your driving?

[A] Stewart: I haven't yet, but some drivers get tired after about 60 laps--about two thirds of the race. I can see when that happens, and I'll take advantage of it if I can. A driver who's tired makes occasional errors of judgment. He'll leave his braking until too late, for instance--but not every time, not consistently. If he's doing it consistently, you assume it's an error of technique, not tiredness. People seem to think that sitting in a race car isn't an athletic activity. That isn't true. If I have to do five consecutive laps right on my limit--bang, bang, bang, bang, bang--I'll be out of breath. I lose four or five pounds in a two-hour race. My arms ache, my neck aches, my legs ache. You just can't go 90 laps, say, without taking some moments of relaxation. At Monte Carlo, for instance, there are three spots on the track where I can relax for a few seconds without losing any time, and I really need those few moments. On one lap, I'll roll my neck a little, anything to remove the enormous tension on it, because you're practically in a lying position in the car, but with your head up. Next time, I'll do deep breathing, just to get my lungs working in something other than short, quick breaths. Another time, I'll take a hand off the steering wheel and give my wrist a shake. Other times, I'll use these same three places to catch a look at my dashboard gauges or my rear tires, to make sure their profile is flat. If the profile is in any way concave, this means we've had a loss of pressure, and if I spot that, it can be a lifesaver. These are the sorts of details that people don't realize go on.

[Q] Playboy: What are some of the other tricks an old pro learns?

[A] Stewart: I'm a young pro; there aren't too many old ones. But you learn how to use landmarks in the most effective way. Some people like to think that racing drivers just have superb judgment about when to brake, when to accelerate, and so forth. But if I left it at that, I wouldn't be able to gain those hundredths of a second I need each lap, so after I've familiarized myself with a track, I'll choose a little crease on the road, or a manhole cover, or a difference in color between road surfaces, or whatever, as the spots where I do these things. You learn things like, if you're going over a hill, don't shift gears on the way up. Shift on top as the rear end comes off the ground just that tiny bit. At that instant, your wheels aren't exerting power to mother earth, so you won't lose any thrust as you shift. You also learn that if the weather is cloudy, you'd better keep an eye on the crowds up ahead of you, and if you see them reach for their umbrellas, you know it's started to rain where you're going, and you're ready for it. That can be a lifesaver, too.

[Q] Playboy: You have a reputation for being a good rain driver. Is that a type of race you enjoy?

[A] Stewart: There's a lot of bullshit talk about how so-and-so likes rain, he's praying for rain, because he knows he's more competitive in the rain. Don't you believe it. When it starts raining, he's shaking in his boots like everyone else. Sometimes I'm more competitive in the rain than the other drivers, but only because they hate it even more than I do. There you are, going 150 miles per hour, following the spray from the car in front of you, which you can barely see and hardly recognize in the fog and mist. This has happened to me many times. And don't let anybody tell you they enjoy the sensation. Once I was doing 160 or 170 miles per hour and came up behind another car. I couldn't see it at all. All I could see was his spray, so I knew he was there. I pulled out from behind this spray to pass him and there was an ambulance traveling at about 30 miles per hour right in front of me on the same piece of road I needed. I mean, the shock!

[Q] Playboy: Did you miss him?

[A] Stewart: Yes, but I'm buggered if I know how. The alarm system goes off in your brain and from there on, it's up to your reflexes. You don't have time to think about it. Your adrenaline is working at a pretty high pitch when something like that happens, but you don't panic, because you recognize in an instant what's gone wrong and your body knows how to correct it. I ran one rain race in 1968, the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, and the fog and the rain were unbelievable. The rain was so heavy that drains were getting choked. You never knew how much water would be on the track compared with your last time around, since Nürburgring is 14 miles long, with 176 corners. If one corner would stay the same for two laps, you figured you had it sorted out, then a drain would choke and minutes later, when you came round again, there would be a river on it that you weren't expecting. I drove the whole race with my internal alarm system going. But I think it was the best race I've ever driven.

[Q] Playboy: How so?

[A] Stewart: I won it by four minutes, which is very unusual in this business. And it was a race where I could have been off the road at any moment. Even under the best of circumstances, Nürburgring is the most demanding, difficult, frightening race track in the world. I said earlier that I don't consider courage an important word in motor racing, but I'll tell you, you do need courage at Nürburgring. From the first lap to the last, it's a bloody nightmare.

[Q] Playboy: Describe it for us.

[A] Stewart: The entire race is practically impossible. Nobody, in my opinion, has ever done a faultless lap at Nürburgring. And nobody, in my opinion, has ever driven that track really fast. I was the fastest qualifier at the German Grand Prix last year, and I won the race, but I know damn well that I never drove it balls-out for even the full distance of a lap. It's just too much. The long descent to the Adenau Bridge, for example, is a place where I have to clench my teeth to do it quickly. I have a great temptation to take my time down that hill. I'm not sure how much time I would lose; it might not even show any difference on a stop watch back at the pits, some seven long miles away. But you can't do it, because if you let off a little bit on one corner, you'll end up allowing yourself that privilege on other parts of the circuit, and it will add up to an extra 30 seconds per lap. So you clench your teeth. At one point in the descent, you're actually off the ground--and you're going around a corner at the same time! You're going round the corner in the air! And the car comes crashing down while it's still under cornering force. I mean, I would just hate to think what this is doing to the car's suspension. You're down at the bottom of the hill before you realize that it seems as though you haven't taken a breath, you haven't let a whisper of air out of your lungs during the whole descent. It's one of the most excruciating moments of motor racing for me, but at Nürburgring, it's just another corner; the whole course is like that.

[A] The wildest corner of them all, though--perhaps the biggest freak in motor racing--is a corner called the Karussell. You approach it up a steep grade at about 140 miles per hour. Going uphill, and lying down low in this racing car, you can't even see the corner. It's like a dog-leg hole in golf, where you tee off without seeing the green. Well, there's this bowl that the car goes flying down into, with a bank of probably 30 degrees. Suddenly, you're in the air, flying into this bowl-shaped semicircle. You knew it was there, because you've memorized the course, but it still takes a lot of faith to just plunge off into it. It's hard to tell when to brake, because as you approach, you're running alongside a hedge, so you've got no braking landmarks--other than some fir trees way off on the other side of the Karussell. You have to aim the car at a certain one of those fir trees; in fact, Dan Gurney was the one who told me which fir tree to use. Once you see this hole in the ground, you're in it, and the car literally drives itself around the corner on its own g force. There's no suspension left at all. The car is hard down on its shock absorbers, the whole thing is banging, vibrations are distorting your vision, and there you are, down in the middle of this hole. The car takes the aim you've given it and the forces your course puts on it, and if you come out too early, it can throw you helplessly over the top of the hedge. To go through there is a freaky experience, but you can't give up on it if you want to win.

[Q] Playboy: When you're driving, are you confident that you're the best driver and will win if the car holds up?

[A] Stewart: When I go into a motor race, I never think I have a chance of winning. Obviously, I realize I'm competitive, but I never think of myself as superior to the opposition. I always think they've got something on me. It's very much my natural feeling to be apprehensive about having success. I think this is basically a Scottish trait. Scotsmen are pessimists about their abilities and they think they have a very good chance of being beaten.

[Q] Playboy: It's hard to believe that, with two world championships to your credit, you haven't been forced to concede--if only to yourself--that you're really the best. Isn't that sort of self-confidence a necessary trait in a sport as competitive as racing?

[A] Stewart: I've been accused more than once of not truthfully answering that question, because I always say what I just said. A lot of people have told me, "You're only saying that to create an impression of modesty. You've got to be thinking you're the best." Most racing drivers do go in thinking that, but in my particular chemistry it just doesn't happen. And if it begins to, I stop it fast. OK, I'm world champion, but what the hell. There have been a few world champions--one every year. So I don't get infatuated with my success. I did that when I was a teenager competing in the European trapshooting championships. That was my first affair with success, and boy, did I enjoy it. And you know, I got a little big-headed--here I am, better than the other guys and so much younger than they are--and then I lost in the trials for the Olympic shooting team. It was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, but it really made me grow up. It made me realize that when you start saying, "Look at me, I'm the greatest," someone is going to jerk the carpet from under you.

[A] I'll never forget a Formula II race in Spain a few years ago. I had a two-lap lead near the end and I had this tremendous feeling of how the crowd was rooting for me, and I remember nodding my head to them and lifting my hand to acknowledge their cheers. Just then the battery went flat and I lost the race. I always blamed myself for not winning that race, because I'd been thinking, "You're the king of the castle." I've never allowed myself that privilege again.

[Q] Playboy: When you finish a race, especially one you've won under difficult circumstances, do you feel elated?

[A] Stewart: Not at all. My reaction is totally neutral. Because I've numbed my whole mental and physical being into nonexistence, when I finish a race, my mind is still numb. I'm still not allowing my sensations to enjoy themselves, and that's why I operate well under strain and pressure. It takes me a couple of days to feel I've really won and I've really done well, and at that point I feel a tremendous high of personal achievement. But at the end of a race, I'm just glad it's over.

[A] This emotional neutrality has another advantage, which is that when I retire from a race early with mechanical failure, I'm not bitterly disappointed. People sometimes ask me how I felt in 1966, the first time I drove the Indianapolis 500, and was leading by almost two laps with only 20 miles to go when my engine packed up on me. That cost me a lot of money--well into six figures--but I wasn't despondent. I remember thinking as I coasted, "Well, that's too bad, but at least they'll remember that I've been here." In some small way, it's a relief sometimes when something like that happens. I lose. But the race is over, I'm out, I'm safe. Maybe the next day I'll say, "My God, what a disappointment." But when you're walking along after getting out of the car, you think, "The tension's off, you're free, you haven't done anything wrong, you're here, you're in one piece," and there's just this tremendous feeling of life within you.

[A] In 1970, I had to drop out of the race in Hockenheim, Germany. It was a hot day and I hadn't been doing very well, but I had been fighting back from behind and I was really exhausted when I had to leave the race. It was the first time I'd been in Hockenheim, which is where Jimmy Clark was killed in 1968. Jimmy was my closest friend in racing. We shared a flat in London for a year; he helped me break in; we were both Scottish. So I had a very bad feeling about Hockenheim. I wasn't frightened; it was just that Jimmy had been killed there, and I didn't want to go. But I had to, because it was the German Grand Prix. The whole week, I hadn't even visited the spot where Jimmy died, although I'd driven past it every lap. It should have been a pilgrimage for me to go there, but I hadn't made myself do it.

[A] My wife, Helen, was there, and when I dropped out of the race, I said, "Great, come on, let's go." We drove immediately to the Frankfurt airport and I got the passenger-service people to get me a place to take a shower; I remember standing under that shower. I had undergone the pressures of a Grand Prix and I was very, very tired. But unlike Jimmy, I had come through the day complete; I had survived. And suddenly life meant everything to me. It swept through me like a torrent, starting at my head and going all the way down my body and out my toes. "Oh, my God," I remember saying aloud, "but life's sweet!" I wouldn't have been anywhere else in the world but in that shower.

[A] I remember the whole evening. We caught the plane to London and then went to a movie. What a treat for both of us! And walking around town, watching all the people, the frustrated politicians in Hyde Park shouting out their lungs--this, to me, was life. I really was high, and Helen was going along with it, but she told me later that she couldn't quite understand the intensity of the joy I was experiencing. I was seeing people so clearly I could see right through them. I'd gone so deep into this little personal pocket of pleasure that the real world didn't exist anymore. I honestly didn't know what city I was in. And if I can get this height of pleasure even now, out of just remembering that experience, then you can imagine how intense it was at the time, this feeling of ecstasy at simply being alive.

[Q] Playboy: Which brings us to the threat of sudden and violent death that every racing driver has to face. Is it a difficult thing to do?

[A] Stewart: When things have been down, I've occasionally thought about it from Helen's point of view. I've thought, "Jesus Christ, am I going to come home from this?" But it's something 1 divorce very quickly from my mind, because I really don't want it in my mind. If I spend too much time thinking, I'd better pack up. because I might not be coming back. I'd be better off in another career. I haven't yet arrived at the point where it's constantly bugging me, but if and when I do, then I'll give up racing, because I'm damned if I'm going to live like that. But you see, there's a paradox: I'm very conservative, a real militant about safety on the tracks, and even I wonder how a man could be so concerned about safety and still drive fast enough to win races.

[Q] Playboy: So do we. What's the answer?

[A] Stewart: The answer is that I'm a Gemini. I don't follow astrology; I don't know the first thing about it, but I hear that Geminis are supposed to be rather split personalities, and that is certainly true of me. I dissect my life in a way in which I see all the problems and risks, and I do everything within my ability to minimize them, knowing full well that motor racing will never be completely safe, because of the speeds involved. But at the same time, when I seat myself in a racing car, I must drive it to the absolute limits of its ability and mine--because that's my job, that's my satisfaction.

[A] Maybe all racing drivers are Geminis, because we see in the cold, harsh light of an unprotected bulb what our lives really are. We're pawns used by our own pleasure for other people's pleasure. We know all too well the dangers, the fears, the tragedies and sorrows our lives can bring to others. We know that we're like highly paid matadors and that when we're 45, if we're still around, we might have nothing to do--if we haven't managed ourselves well--other than walk down memory lane, which is not an enduring enterprise.

[Q] Playboy: So why do you drive?

[A] Stewart: Because it's the thing I do better than anything else in the world. And I don't ever have to come to terms with myself, to face that cold, real world where everyone has to work for a living. Work! Not play! Not do the thing that almost everyone would do if they dared, but because they don't, are willing to pay for the privilege of watching me do. Here I am, being paid large sums of money--far more than I could get from anything else I could ever do--to drive exotic racing machines that give me enormous pleasure and satisfaction. I travel to all parts of the world, I meet exciting people. I live in a style that few people are privileged to enjoy. Why should I leave that dreamworld for the real world? Modern society doesn't have very many areas where a man can extend himself to the edge of life. Most men are wrapped up in a sort of cocoon, where the risks and satisfactions of life are dulled. But in racing, you feel like you're taking sensations from life that are a little keener than most other men are able to grasp. And you don't want to give that intense pleasure away, any more than you'd want to stop having sex because some doctor told you it could be damaging to your health. You want to enjoy it again and again, and that's what motor racing is all about.

[A] You have to have a way of eliminating the harsh realities or they might become unbearable, and that way is best described as like going under an anesthetic. You sort of give yourself an injection. You know you're going to get it. You know you shouldn't want it, but you say. "Oh, let's have it," and suddenly this cold, cold world, with its nasty sides and edges, dissolves and out of that comes this beautiful vapor that allows you to do things in a beautiful garden of pleasure and plenty without acknowledging what lies beyond it. Every now and again a storm hits the garden and a burst of snow and wind comes in and wakens you from your dream. You experience a tragedy--a friend who's been killed, somebody who's been taken from you--and you see the torture, agony and sorrow that this has brought to you and to people close to you and to him, and you think how hopelessly stupid the whole thing is. You know: "Why, why, why do I want to do this to people?" But then you're so fickle and so infatuated with the whole thing that the easiest and most painless way out is to reach for that syringe and blank it all off from you again. I know it's there, but please don't let me see it. If I don't see it, I don't know any better. I'm having a lovely time, so don't wake me up.

[Q] Playboy: Author Robert Daley once titled a book about auto racing The Cruel Sport. Some of the drivers criticized him for being melodramatic. Do you agree with them?

[A] Stewart: No. I think it's a good title. A very dramatic title but, to a large extent, an accurate title. He got it from Dan Gurney. Dan once told me that he lay in bed one night and counted the number of friends and associates he had lost in motor racing. The total came to 57. I suppose we've all lost about the same number. If that's not a cruel sport, I don't know what is.

[Q] Playboy: Some people argue that it should be outlawed.

[A] Stewart: People also die in football and mountain climbing and boxing and bullfighting. Why shouldn't those sports be banned as well? There will always be people who want to outlaw and restrict everything. But humanity should allow itself a few areas, within a sport, where men can extend themselves to the edge of life. I think it's a worthwhile luxury. Is it foolish to take such risks? Of course it is. But is it worth those risks? Of course it is. Is it a ludicrous profession? Of course it is. But what would be more ludicrous than golf? Why in hell should you hit a little ball, walk after it, take another bang at it, walk after it cursing and swearing, and then tap it into a little hole? But millions of people get enormous pleasure out of doing just that. In my case, I drive around in circles, and I get more satisfaction out of it than I would out of anything else I could be doing.

[Q] Playboy: Even after your serious accident at Spa in the Belgian Grand Prix of 1966?

[A] Stewart: While I was in the hospital, I must admit that I thought, "Am I in the right business? Isn't there something better I could be doing?" But that apprehension lasted a short time. If it had lasted longer, I probably would have given the whole thing up then and there, because I don't consider myself brave. I'm basically a coward, so I probably wouldn't have had the strength to go on, just for the sake of proving to myself or anyone else that I could.

[Q] Playboy: Do you blame yourself for that accident?

[A] Stewart: I couldn't honestly blame myself, but I certainly couldn't blame my mechanics. It was almost an act of God. The race began under completely dry weather conditions, but the track is about eight miles long, and halfway around the first lap it began pouring with rain. One minute the track was completely dry, the next minute it was awash. On that one lap, eight of us aquaplaned, which is what happens when water forms a wall beneath the tires and you're no longer in contact with the pavement, and we all went off the track. Some spun all the way through the same corner I did, but they didn't hit a thing. It was just how lucky or unlucky you were and how much water happened to be on the track at the moment you went past a certain point.

[Q] Playboy: What happened after you spun off?

[A] Stewart: I bounced off a couple of walls and a house. I was stuck in the car with the steering wheel twisted over me, and I couldn't get myself out. I was barely conscious, and I had a broken collarbone, a dislocated shoulder and some cracked ribs. The fuel tanks were full and the car became like a bathtub filled with petrol, soaking me from my waist to my ankles in high-octane gasoline. The dashboard was destroyed, so I couldn't switch off the electrical system, and I could hear all these things ticking away, and I knew that one spark from any of them would set off the whole thing. Luckily, I wasn't conscious all the time, so I didn't realize just how much trouble I was in, but I do remember thinking, "Oh, God, get me out of here." There was a helicopter hovering overhead, and I felt sure it had come to rescue me. But, ironically enough, it was a helicopter shooting footage for John Frankenheimer's film Grand Prix. And since seven cars had spun off with me, there were no ambulances available. It was 35 minutes before I got out. Finally, Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant, an American driver, had spun off near me and they came over, but they couldn't get me out without tools. They finally borrowed some from a spectator's car.

[A] By that time, I was literally screaming to get my clothes off, because all this thermal underwear was like a sponge holding the fuel, and if you've ever been soaked in petrol for half an hour, you know how it eats away your skin. You can imagine what it was doing to the most sensitive parts of my body. Eventually, they got me out and took me into this farmyard and laid me out in this old trailer. I was about half conscious and I remember three nuns wandering in and trying to get my clothes back on again. They obviously didn't know what was happening. They'd just wandered in and seen this naked man lying there. They gave me a nasty turn, because I thought, "Jesus Christ, if these nuns have come, it must be bad news." They didn't understand English and I couldn't push them away, because I couldn't move. Then Graham came back in and took off my clothes again. Can you imagine what those nuns were thinking? They probably thought Graham a bit odd, to say the least. Finally, an ambulance came, and six hours after the accident, I was in a London hospital getting the best specialized attention. It was quite an experience.

[Q] Playboy: One of your colleagues once said in an interview that the accident took the fine edge off your driving. Do you agree?

[A] Stewart: I think it had an effect on my driving, but I think it was a good effect. I don't think it's interfered at all. It just made me realize I was vulnerable. I think every racing driver, until he has some sort of major accident, thinks he's totally indestructible. An accident, in some respects, is necessary in the maturing of a driver. Until he's had an accident, he thinks that life is made for him alone, and there's no way he's going to be involved in a shunt and maybe get killed. After recognizing that he's vulnerable, he drives a little more within his limits.

[Q] Playboy: You mentioned earlier your crusading for safety on the track. Does that stem from your own accident?

[A] Stewart: Since I've always placed a good deal of importance on my own well-being, I was interested in safety from the beginning. By 1964, I was already wearing thermal underwear saturated with fire retardant, flameproof overalls and a crash helmet, all of which were relatively new developments in motor racing. But the accident taught me that the facilities at some tracks were terribly inadequate, and it was after that that I began to take an active interest in the subject. I live quite a busy life, and the number of hours I put in going around race tracks prior to events trying to talk officials into seeing hazards takes a hell of a lot out of me, because most of the time I'm just arguing. To me, that is bloody exhausting.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of improvements are you after?

[A] Stewart: If I relate them, the reader will find them so simple that he'll have a difficult time comprehending why we haven't already got what we're asking for. The trouble is that too many people in this business, people who have been in it perhaps longer than I've lived, see many things as natural hazards, as part of the game. "If these guys didn't have any dangers, there'd be no excitement," is what they think. Their attitude is that, compared with 20 years ago, we're wrapped in cotton wool. These people are against me, very much against me, both in Europe and in America.

[A] Of course, motor racing can never be 100 percent certain. It will always be dangerous, but my argument is that if a car does go off a road for any of the three reasons that happens--driver error, mechanical failure or factors outside anyone's control, such as oil on the track or another driver having an accident--then the trees or telephone poles and other hazards must be protected by some sort of barrier to slow down that accident. In other words, once the accident has happened, its effects can be minimized. You can't expect a car to hit a tree head on without badly injuring or killing the driver, so you must put up a barrier that will allow the car to take a glancing blow. If that's done, the chances are that the driver will recover. I've also suggested nets in some places, so that the car's velocity is arrested like a tennis ball at mid-court.

[A] If the accident is serious, there should be proper fire-fighting equipment and proper facilities to remove the driver from his car quickly. We've been racing since the turn of the century and cars have been catching fire since the turn of the century, and yet there's nothing like enough fire extinguishers with proper proficiency at many tracks. A blaze from 50 gallons of fuel sometimes cannot be put out. The bloody air force can put out 2000 gallons of burning fuel in three minutes, while we're talking about not being able to put out a tiny fire while the driver sits there and burns to death with injuries no more serious than a broken leg. The drivers should also have good medical facilities on the scene, because very few people die instantly, and if they can be kept going by someone very skillful who's on hand, then there's a chance of recovery. These are so simple it's amazing they aren't taken for granted. But they're not. I've been to race tracks where the medical officer in charge has been an out-of-work general practitioner or a gynecologist. Now, I know we're a lot of cunts, but we don't need a gynecologist when our car flies off the track. This sort of carelessness is, to me, scandalous.

[A] There is a group called the Grand Prix Drivers Association, and we're just reconstituting it to take a more active role in safety. My feeling is that if a track doesn't meet our safety standards, we should see to it that the race doesn't take place. We'll lose a lot of race tracks, but after that, only the healthy ones will survive, and that's all that matters. I mean, when you start talking about people dying, totally unnecessarily in some cases, that makes me wild as hell. On television last year, I criticized terribly a race track in America. I got letters for weeks saying, "Do you realize you've destroyed this man's life work? He's put everything he's got into that race track and you come here and do this. Who the hell do you think you are?" So I'm blamed for his inability to see that he's left trees unprotected, fall-off areas and places where spectators are likely to be killed in an accident. But that's the way it is. Some track owners don't see these things.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps they do, but they know that your safety precautions would cost a lot.

[A] Stewart: Of course, but what's expensive--life or money? Jimmy Clark's accident wasn't driver error, and had there been a barrier there or some sort of protection, so that he didn't catapult straight into trees at 140 miles per hour, Jimmy would almost certainly be with us today. There are now barriers along that piece of track to protect drivers from the woods. But that's no good for Jimmy, because he's already dead. It might save the next driver, but why wait until a driver dies before you do something? My feeling about this is real bitterness.

[Q] Playboy: Part of that bitterness must stem from your personal relationship with Clark.

[A] Stewart: That's certainly what brought it all home. It was the first time Helen and I really felt personal grief, and we weren't prepared for it; we didn't know how to get over it. We just couldn't believe it. Jimmy was never going to have an accident. He wasn't the type of man to have an accident. He was too good, and the character of his driving didn't make it in the cards for him to crash. And then, suddenly, it happened. First to Jimmy in April 1968. Then to Mike Spence in May. In June, Lodovico Scarfiotti died. And in July, Jo Schlesser. It was a very difficult period for me and for Helen.

[A] I was very close to Jimmy. He was a very unusual man, a man of great character, a tremendous introvert who protected himself totally against people. On the track, he made decisions with the precision of a Swiss watch. But off the track, he was the most indecisive man I ever met. He couldn't make up his mind to do anything. The number of meals we lost because all the restaurants were closed before Jimmy decided which one he wanted to eat at couldn't be counted. My favorite story, and it's true, is about when we arrived in Florida once, going to race Sebring together. We were in this big American car with Jimmy driving and we came to this railroad crossing. You could see ten miles in both directions, and we stopped, and we looked right and we looked left, then we looked right again. Finally, Jimmy turned to me and asked in all seriousness. "Well, what do you think?" That's my memory of Jimmy.

[Q] Playboy: Has the grief of his death--and of the others--made you shrink from making close friends with other drivers?

[A] Stewart: By now, it has. I don't avoid becoming friends with drivers, but I'll never get so close to them again. I'll never allow myself the privilege of so totally enjoying them. The simple fact is that I'm frightened, because it's hurt so badly so often, and it's hurt Helen so much. Both of us were very close to Jimmy. We were also very close to Piers Courage, Jochen Rindt and Bruce McLaren, and the wives were all close friends. First, Bruce died in 1970. We hadn't gotten over that when Piers died two weeks later, right in front of us in a race that Jochen won and I finished second. We all saw the car and the fire, and we knew it was him. Jochen, who was a neighbor in Geneva, was certainly the closest to us, and then, at the end of the season, he died. By then, we had been hit so many times that we were terribly vulnerable emotionally. You can imagine the depression that fell on us. I'll never forget it as long as I live. In a way, it's even more powerful than if it were a member of your family who died, because it's something that you're doing as well, and this is where it illustrates to you what it does to others around you. You feel you don't want to race anymore.

[A] But then it all disappears again. Something happens and that anesthetic floats back in. The day after Bruce's memorial service in London, Helen and I had to attend Piers's funeral, and after we returned to our hotel, a phone call came through from America. The man who ran the Chaparrals wanted me to come over right away and do a race for him in a new type of car, and we made a deal right on the phone. My life just came out of this hole, my emotions came out of that grave and back into the dreamworld, and here I was, saying excitedly, "Jesus, I'm going to drive that Chaparral in America." I can remember the excitement of saying to Helen, "Great. I'm going over to the States, and I think you should come with me." I didn't think she should be left alone at a time like that, so we went over together and she spent her time lying by a swimming pool and getting away from it all.

[Q] Playboy: She can never really get away from it all as long as you continue to race. Doesn't this life put an unimaginable strain on her?

[A] Stewart: I've never met anyone who would be able to come close to Helen. She's very aware of the dangers, but she's handled them in a tremendously mature way, and she's done this naturally, without the help of psychiatrists and without my help, really, because I'm a very selfish person when it comes to things like this. She's learned how to control her emotions, to only let them go ever so occasionally in the case of despondency or sorrow. She's had an enormous capacity to endure this without driving herself or me to some neurosis, which would be easy to let happen. I'll never know how she's been able to do it, because the life of the wife, or the mother, of a racing driver must be about the most torturous that anyone can have. But she didn't marry a racing driver; she married Jackie Stewart, garage hand. So she's seen every step on our ladder; we've achieved it all together. And every rung of sorrow has brought us closer, and we've helped each other get past every rung.

[A] Occasionally, we talk about it. I want her to know why I'm doing what I'm doing, and where I'm going. I want her to feel as secure as possible. She knows I enjoy my life and she knows I don't want to give it up yet--not yet--although for her and our two sons, I know I should. And she has every right to ask me to do it, but she never has--I suppose because she knows there would be nothing worse for them than for me to stop motor racing against my will, before I'm ready.

[Q] Playboy: Unless a racing driver's wife is a saint, though, there still must be considerable strain on such a marriage.

[A] Stewart: On the contrary. Our family life is extremely close. When I'm home, I'm intensely together with Helen and the kids. I can't say I get more pleasure from my family than a man with an ordinary career gets from his; I would have no right to say that. But that's the way I feel. I live so close to the edge of life that the pleasures I enjoy with my family are so high and so deep that at times it frightens me.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Stewart: Because how can it be this good? How can it last this long? How can it go on like this? Because if it's so good, something's got to break; and because of the life I lead, that threat is hanging more over me than it would be over an accountant or a bank manager. I'm never far from that threat. I play it down, but it's there. Maybe that's a dour Scot speaking. Or maybe it's a canny Scot. Or maybe I'm just a pessimist at heart.

[Q] Playboy: Or maybe you're just feeling as anyone would in your position.

[A] Stewart: Not really. Not anyone. Because to me, my family is the most important of all the things we've talked about. They're my roots, my base, my anchor. They give me something to hold onto, something to grasp. They make me feel like I always have something connected within me. They're what really allow me to be as stable as I have to be in order to be a racing driver.

[Q] Playboy: How would you feel if your sons were to become racing drivers?

[A] Stewart: I wouldn't like it. I think one racing driver in the family is quite enough. To be the father of a racing driver must be almost as difficult as being the wife or mother of a racing driver. I wouldn't want to have to watch my son climb into a car that I knew was bloody dangerous. I've come through it this far with what I consider great good fortune, and I've escaped all sorts of things, and I wouldn't want to go down that road again with my sons. I hope they have a hunger for success, but I also hope that they satisfy it by being businessmen or, if they must be sportsmen, let them be professional golfers.

[Q] Playboy: Do you sometimes feel guilty about what your career puts your family through?

[A] Stewart: Yes, I do. I feel that I'm unjustly exposing them to pressure, strain and danger that they don't deserve and that I should no longer allow them to suffer. Many people say to me, "You've won two world championships, 19 Grands Prix. Why take chances anymore?" In a way, my subconscious is saying the same thing to me. But the anesthetized dilettante who lurks within me waiting to drive again doesn't want to be asked that question and doesn't want to answer it. The thinking side of me knows they're correct, but maybe I don't have the guts to stop. How do you give this up before you're ready? This is my life! This is my pleasure! I'm so bloody selfish that racing still has premier significance to me.

[Q] Playboy: Do you rationalize that you're really doing it to ensure your family's financial security?

[A] Stewart: Oh, yes. That's a great excuse, to say that it's for their future. There's truth in it, of course, but do you need one million, or ten million, or 20 million? It's easy to say that I'm accumulating money for them, but if I were realistic, I'd have to say that I already have enough money to almost never work again.

[Q] Playboy: In this connection, some of the purists among fans and drivers feel that the increasing commercialization of racing is turning it into a corporate advertising device rather than a sport. As one of the most commercially sponsored drivers, what do you say to that?

[A] Stewart: I say good, because this is the way motor racing has to go. In the past, it was the sport of the wealthy amateur, but it's getting too expensive for him now. When we line up to start the race, there is $2,500,000 in equipment sitting there. So I'm pleased that commercialism has come into motor racing with a capital C. We now have race sponsors, team sponsors, driver sponsors, sponsors in almost every area. The racing buffs, the fanatics, will always come out to a race, but motor racing needs a fresh public, the people who've been exposed to it and excited about it because of nationally televised races, magazine ads, and so forth. If we can attract this new public and give them their money's worth, then we're going to increase the prosperity of the whole sport.

[A] It's extremely important to me that these manufacturers see the benefits of motor racing as an advertising and promotional vehicle, because it's extremely important to motor racing. I get very annoyed at some of the drivers who don't take seriously our obligations to the future of racing, such as when a sponsor gives a reception for the drivers and many of them don't turn up for it. To me, that's not only rude, it's unprofessional. I don't think we're allowed that privilege if we're going to build up our sport.

[Q] Playboy: From all sources, what sort of income does a Grand Prix driver make?

[A] Stewart: I should think good drivers in Grands Prix earn about $100,000 a year from their retainers and their prize money. They may also drive other races that add to that.

[Q] Playboy: And you?

[A] Stewart: I'm retained by Goodyear, by Ford, by Elf, the French petroleum company, and by our team manager, Ken Tyrrell. Besides the Grands Prix, I also drive in the Can-Am series in America.

[Q] Playboy: So much for the sources. How about the income from them?

[A] Stewart: I can't tell you. It wouldn't be fair.

[Q] Playboy: To whom?

[A] Stewart: Well, I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: So tell us, then.

[A] Stewart: All right. I think I might possibly get into seven figures this year. It's a lot, whatever it is. Out of that come various commissions, my office expenses, my secretaries, like any other business. But my overhead is much lower than other businesses because I'm a one-man band.

[Q] Playboy: How important is the money as a factor in persuading you to continue facing the risks of racing?

[A] Stewart: I wouldn't race for free, if that's what you mean. But the money itself isn't all-important, even though I've always been hungry for it. I've also always been hungry for success for its own sake. I wasn't particularly well suited to school, and I left at the age of 15. But I was highly ambitious. If I hadn't gone into racing, I suppose I would have worked very hard in the family garage business and built more and more garages until I was a big success. Maybe some of that ambition comes from the fact that my brother was eight years older than I and was a successful racing driver. Maybe that's what drove me to become a successful shooter--so that the family would recognize I could do something. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'm psychoanalyzing myself too much. I don't do that a lot. Anyway, I don't suppose I ever dreamed of being as successful as I have been, and you know, it's never as pleasurable as it is in your dreams. People who dream of success experience much more in their dreams than I do in reality.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Stewart: Because, in a way, I don't allow it to be as good as the dream. I downplay it to myself. I refuse to let it dominate me.

[Q] Playboy: You said that the dream of success is better than the reality. How good is the reality?

[A] Stewart: A hell of a lot better than just dreaming about it, if you get what I mean. But I have a new dream, and I'm not sure the reality is going to come.

[Q] Playboy: What's the new dream?

[A] Stewart: To get richer!

[Q] Playboy: To ask what you yourself asked rhetorically a few minutes ago: How much is enough?

[A] Stewart: I want to put enough aside for Helen and the children for the rest of their lives. If anything happened to me, I would want her to live in the manner we live now, and by that I mean she should be able to go to Acapulco or St.-Moritz, or wherever she likes, (concluded on page 194)Playboy Interview(continued from page 94) whenever she likes. If she needs $100,000 a year to live on, she should have it. I've just built a swimming pool, a sauna bath, a projection room and a little apartment onto our house, and that's cost me over $100,000, I suppose. That's expensive for a little extension on the house, but I like it. Our house is getting close to half a million worth. It's very well appointed, and I've made it this way because I want it, I need it, and if I make this sort of money, bugger it--I'll have it, because that's what I choose to have.

[A] But I'm not spending foolishly. I don't have a Lear Jet lying around, because I don't feel I can afford a Lear. I'm a Scotsman, so no matter how much I have, I'm still insecure financially. Of course, I could live much more cheaply than I do now, but why should I? I've worked bloody hard, and when I go around the world, I don't want to economize. I want to stay at the Palace Hotel in St.-Moritz and the Villa d'Este on Lake Como and the Sonesta Tower in London. Hotels are my home for much of the year and I choose them well. I choose my travel well. I choose my food and my clothes well. I tend to look after this sort of thing, and that costs money.

[A] I get annoyed with those who write that there's nothing to racing but the good life, but I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't love it all. Motor racing in the international set is a life that offers an incredible variety of people and places. I must admit I feel gratified that no matter where I am, there are people who think enough of me to want my autograph. Also, in Europe and most of the world, motor racing is classless in the sense that anybody can become successful in it, and after they become successful, they can enjoy meeting heads of state, monarchs, the tycoons of the world and people of great artistic talents. I have some very good friends in that world. I enjoy these people. They are all wonderfully exciting. They all have something different to offer. I went to visit Roman Polanski filming Macbeth. I'd never read Macbeth, and Roman literally acted out the whole play for me. He was on the floor, in the chairs, all over the place. It was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. That's why I like to meet these people. Not because of who they are but because of the kind of people they are. I adore being with Peter Ustinov, because the man is incredible. He is one of the most desirable dinner guests in the world, because he is a supreme conversationalist with the most beautiful and original sense of humor. The point is that there's so much out there in the world, you must really take all you can from it and digest it. It's made my life very enjoyable.

[Q] Playboy: How much longer do you think you'll race?

[A] Stewart: If you had asked me that question a couple of years ago, I could honestly have said I didn't know. Now, that's not really the case. I have no ambition to be an old racing driver. I want to be an old retired racing driver, and I've realized in the past several months that I have to face the fact of retirement in the not too distant future--one, two or three years, perhaps. I doubt very much that it'll be five years. Right now, my curriculum is so busy that I'm not allowed a lot of free time to analyze the future. And I mean curriculum. I know where I'll be on the 11th of June and the 31st of October. I can tell you the name of the hotel and the phone number, and I can almost tell you the flight I'll be taking. I spend 900 hours a year in an airplane. That's one tenth of my life, more time than most pilots fly. I'm not sure how much longer I want to do that.

[Q] Playboy: Have you thought about what you want to do after you quit?

[A] Stewart: Motor racing has meant a lot to me and I wouldn't want to divorce it completely. I'd want to do some things to make it a bigger and better sport. One idea I have is to start a company with the purpose of advancing safety in racing. Driver education is another area I'm interested in. The average street driver is behind the wheel of the world's most lethal weapon and, in most countries, his knowledge of how to deal with that car in an emergency is appallingly slim. A really excellent drivers'-education program, done internationally, could save a lot of lives.

[A] I like business, and motor racing has opened the doors for me, but I know it's because I'm Jackie Stewart. I hope I can present, to people I'll be dealing with, some sort of intelligence and strength of character that will allow them to see that I stand on my own two feet as a businessman and not just the feet of a famous racing driver.

[A] And I'm going to have a serious try at acting. I hope I'm going to be part of an adventure film this year about a racing driver. Alistair MacLean is writing the screenplay and I'm enthusiastic about that prospect. If I turn out to be a good actor, I think I'd like that career.

[A] Whatever I do, I don't suppose I'll reach the great heights of sensation and satisfaction that I've had from racing; few things in the world could match that. But I've lived that life. I've loved it, but I've done it. Somewhere out there, there's another life, and I'll find it, because this one is finishing up. One of the nicest things that ever happened during my racing career was when Dan Gurney retired. I remember how happy I was for him, that he had made that decision while he was still on top and in one piece. I wrote and told him from the bottom of my heart that I thought it was the ambition of everyone in racing to do it the way he had done it, to be as well liked around the world as he is, and then to hang up his helmet without anything going wrong. I think it was just great, and I'd like to do it that way myself. And I will.