Few pass this way any more. A path once followed the bank of the stream that flows sullenly and noiselessly through the woods. But it is barely visible now. Tall, gangling weeds choke it and obscure it. Footsteps have not flattened them.
It is raining, as it was on that day in April 1968 and even though the army of trees and the dense undergrowth hide them from view, the sound of race cars hurtling around the Hockenheimring half a mile or so away echoes through the forest like an elegy.
An auto festival is taking place there and the air is filled with the sounds of exhausts cracking and spluttering, tyres screaming and squealing and beseeching, and engines revving and roaring and squabbling.
These woods have borne sad and silent witness to these struggles and the casualties they sire many times but the circuit has been reconfigured and the track does not scythe through them as it used to. Now this is a place where only ghosts and secrets reside.
The stream flows slowly on. A duck flaps and fusses out of the water and flies on to the trunk of a fallen beech that lies across the channel, blocking what is left of the path that leads to the spot where Jim Clark, the Scotsman who was the world’s greatest racing driver, was killed.
Jim Clark’s final resting place (pictured) just yards from where he lost his life has been neglected
Clark pictured holding the Aintree 200 trophy he won in 1962
Mail Sport columnist Oliver Holt (pictured) believes the current state of Clark’s final resting place is an insult to his memory
The diversion around it leads into a clearing in the woods and the remnants of the banking of the old circuit. These trees, mature and august now, were saplings when Clark’s Lotus veered off the old track for reasons that were never properly explained and slammed into the forest on the fifth lap of a Formula Two race.
A few hundred yards further on, two conifers stand near the bank of the stream. A bed of nettles and a tangle of thistles surround them but a small passage has been cleared through the middle to reveal the small memorial half-hidden in the darkness.
A small stone lies there, propped up on its end. A little bronze plaque has been attached to it with two screws. ‘Zur ewigen Erinnerung an Jimmy Clark,’ it reads, ‘4.3.1936 Kilmany, Schottland — 7.4.1968, hier.’
‘In eternal memory of Jimmy Clark. Born in Kilmany, Scotland. Died here.’ Above the plaque, the last photo of Clark, ready to put on his racing goggles as he sits in his Lotus on the starting grid at Hockenheim, has also been fixed to the stone. A rather bedraggled Scottish flag hangs limply by its side.
Behind the stone, a picture of Clark, wreathed in victory laurels, stares out from the front page of what looks like a tribute edition of a magazine, protected from the elements by the kind of plastic sleeve kids use for their school folders. ‘Jim Clark. The Best of the Best’, the headline says.
Clark was the best of the best, too. He had won the F1 world drivers’ title twice, in 1963 and 1965, and was leading the standings in 1968 after winning the first race in South Africa. At the time of his death, he had won more races and set more pole positions than any other driver in history.
His dear friend and rival, Jackie Stewart, considered Clark the greatest driver of a gifted generation that also included Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt and Jack Brabham. Clark was a shy, modest man whose talent touched genius.
It was said that Clark was happier on his family’s sheep farm in Scotland than anywhere else but he could race anything. He won the Indianapolis 500 in 1965, too, and finished third at Le Mans in 1960. He was the racer’s racer. He was smooth and skilful and thorough. Death in the cockpit was racing’s constant companion in those days but no one thought anything would ever happen to Jimmy. He was simply too good.
Clark won two world titles before his tragic passing at the age of 32 in 1968
At the time of his death he had won more races and set more pole positions than any other driver ever
He had won the opening grand prix of 1968 at Kyalami, outside Johannesburg, passing Juan Manuel Fangio’s total for the most victories in the process. There was a four-month wait until the next F1 race in Spain and Clark agreed to take part in the opening round of the European Formula Two Championship at Hockenheim, located in the Upper Rhine Valley.
Ford had wanted him to race at Brands Hatch that day but Clark was thought to have contractual obligations that pushed him towards competing in Germany and had promised his Team Lotus boss, Colin Chapman, he would go to Hockenheim. The race was run over two heats of 20 laps. On the fifth lap of the first heat, disaster struck.
No one really knows what happened. Some say Clark’s rear right tyre exploded, others say that it was a mechanical issue. A marshal, the sole witness to the crash, saw Clark fighting to maintain control of his car on a gentle curve after the first corner and then careering off the track and smashing into a tree.
The one thing everyone agreed upon was that it could not have been a driver error. The car broke up and came to rest at the point where those two conifers stand now, next to the nettlebed and the thistles. Clark’s neck was broken and his skull fractured. He was killed instantly. He was 32.
His gravestone in Scotland lists him as ‘Farmer’ first and ‘World Champion Motor Racing Driver’ second. At Hockenheim, the official memorial to him, neat and well-kept, is near a fence next to a section of the new circuit. The tribute to him written next to it talks of ‘a tragedy in the rain’.
Clark died in a racing accident at Hockenheim, and deserves a better memorial than his current one which has been neglected for far too long
It is still hard to understand why the memorial at the site of the crash has come to be so neglected. It is almost as if Hockenheim regards it as an inconvenience. It must be unintentional, perhaps something to do with reforesting the area, but the neglect feels like an insult.
Perhaps I am wrong about that. Perhaps, just because Imola has chosen to turn the area around the Tamburello corner into a celebration of the life of Ayrton Senna, who was killed there in 1994, it does not mean that it is an insult for Hockenheim to have failed to accord Clark the same respect.
Perhaps Clark would have preferred it this way. Perhaps he would have loved nature reclaiming this place. Perhaps, for him, the brilliant orange of the cluster of poppies nearby and the purple rampion on the bank of the stream would have been tribute enough.
Scotland will be missed
Some have enjoyed mocking Scotland fans after their country’s exit from the European Championship on Sunday.
Fair enough. Football is tribal. Fans take joy where they can get it. I would just say this: I was lucky enough to be at Scotland’s games against Germany in Munich and Hungary in Stuttgart and the memory of the singing of Flower of Scotland before both matches will live with me for a long time.
It’s not just a result that makes football so joyful and visceral.
Scotland fans backed their team all the way in Germany, and their renditions of Flower of Scotland will live long in the memory
Murray deserves fitting farewell
Few deserve a fitting end to a wonderful career more than Andy Murray.
Following his surgery for a spinal cyst at the weekend, the odds appear very much against him making a final appearance at Wimbledon later this month.
But then Murray has never cared too much for odds.
Andy Murray is a major doubt for Wimbledon after undergoing back surgery, but he deserves a fitting farewell at the All England Club