How Jim Clark’s F1 stats still hold up, over 50 years on

In these days of 20-plus race Formula 1 seasons, it’s astonishing that any driving career from the 10-Grands-Prix-per-year era – in Jimmy Clark’s case, only for seven complete seasons – could amass statistics that still stand strong in the F1 history books.

After all, Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes-Benz, Sebastian Vettel with Red Bull and Michael Schumacher with Ferrari have enjoyed long periods of dominance in the 21st century and have had several more opportunities – both in terms of numbers of races per season, and in career length – to take advantage of their preeminence.

Schumacher competed in 306 Grands Prix, Vettel in 299, and Hamilton in 313 so far – and yet Jimmy Clark, with just 72 GPs to his name (just three-and-a-half-season’s worth by recent standards) remains in several ‘Top 10s’ in the F1 history books.

Clark’s final Grand Prix, in 1968 at Kyalami, produced his 25th victory, beating the all-time win record Juan-Manuel Fangio had held since 1957, and gave Jimmy a 34.7 percent win rate. Over five decades later, his tally keeps him 10th in the all-time wins list, while his win percentage is third, behind Fangio (a surely unmatchable 46.15%) and Alberto Ascari (39.39%).

Clark then appears twice in the top 10 when ranking percentage of races won per season. The 70 percent hit rate from 1963 (seven from ten races) leaves him trailing Ascari in 1952 (six from eight) and Schumacher in 2004 (13 from 18), but just ahead of the most dominant seasons from Vettel (2013), Max Verstappen (2022), Fangio (1954) and Hamilton (2020).

Clark’s six wins from ten in ’65 is the ninth best season of all time. But of course, he only entered nine GPs that year: he and Colin Chapman’s Team Lotus skipped Monaco to take part in – and win! – the Indianapolis 500.

It’s also worth noting that the ’65 season also saw Clark win five grands prix in a row, a run that has been bettered only five times – once before, by Ascari, and four times since.

However, a better guide to a driver/car combo’s competitiveness may be pole positions, for the simple reason that qualifying sessions are so much shorter than races so the stats are far less likely to be skewed by a car suffering mechanical gremlins – a much…