Two Men, Two Legends and Two Mysteries

Hi

Every so often there are talents that come into the world that are very special. You know that there will never be one quite like them ever again. They are unique in the way they do things. Cricket has had the likes of Bradman and WG Grace, Football has had Pele and Eusebio and F1 has had Ayrton Senna and Jim Clark.

I will start with Jim Clark, who was a incredibly private man. Being in the 60's the media was only just starting to form like it is know where successful sports stars lives were analysed in detail. However, despite the media pressure Jim Clark managed to maintain his privacy and therefore there was always a slight air of mystery surrounding him.

His driving ability was absolutly incredible. He had possibly the smoothest driving style I have ever seen and this was several years before the advent of traction control. If you can find clips of him driving try and watch them on a good day there was never a twitch and on a bad day there was only the occasional twitch.

He also delivered one of, if not, the finest performances in the history of F1.  I am talking about the 1967 Italian GP. In this race he suffered a puncture which put him right to the back and a lap down behind the leaders. However, unlike some drivers he didn't give up and promptly smashed the lap record lap after lap and make up the lap and unbelievably retake the lead.

Sadly, there was no fairytale ending with a car running out of fuel not far from the line meaning it was only able to coast to the finish line and was overtaken by the dueling Brabham and Surtees. It is possibly the greatest race ever and if you ever watch any of the race trust me it is worth it.

He also was also a double world champion and was looking like a third could have been on the cards. That was not to be though. In a minor F2 race at the Hockenheim race track clark was killed when his car went off the road and smashed into a tree. Due to the fact this was a fairly minor race and there were very few cameras so there is no actual footage of the crash. The only reason I wish there was the footage is so we knew what sent the great man skidding off into the trees. The theory is that it was a deflating rear tyre. 

The truth is we don't know for sure and it remains a mystery to this day. Jim Clark lived his life in mystery and it seems rather fitting that his life was ended with a mystery surrounding it. Jim Clark was one of the most naturally gifted race drivers there has ever been and the man who I will talk about next is right up there with him in every way.

Ayrton Senna. One of the most popular names in the history of sport. If you talk to the majority of people about F1 whose name do they know? That's right Ayrton. Ayrton was more media friendly than Jim Clark however by the 90's you didn't have a lot of choice.

I do firmly believe that if was given the oppurtunity Ayrton would have removed the media from his world. Ayrton was very much born in the Clark mould. Ayrton was a mysterious man and everytime he got behind the wheel you had to sit and just simply watch in amazement.

Senna has part of the second golden era after the Clark and Stewart era from the late 1960's to the early 1970's however this second golden era was meant to be safer and the cars were even more powerful. These were the days of Senna and Prost with some great talents coming through in the form of Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill.

He like Jim Clark provided one of the legendary performances in F1 that is still talked about today. I am of course talking about the 1993 European Grand Prix at Donington Park. To really understand what Senna was up against you have to understand the true scale of the task. For the previous couple of years Senna was in a Mclaren with a incredibly powerful Honda V10 or 12 engine in the back. With that engine the Mclaren was one of the best cars in the field.

However for the 1993 season Honda had pulled out and it meant that Mclaren had to use a fairly underpowered Ford V8 which has nothing compared to the Renault V10 in the back of Prost's car. At Donington he was 5th by the first turn and the promptly in just under a lap passed every car in front of him. That meant passing Schumacher, Wendlinger, Hill and Prost and he did that all in one lap. He went on to lap the entire field except Hill and win the race. A truly incredible drive.

He went one better than Clark and was a triple world champion and despite a poor start by failing to score any points at the first two races in 1994 everyone expected atleast one more world title from the great man. However the blackest weekend in the history of F1 was soon to be upon us.

The death of Roland Ratzenberger during qualifying for the San Marino GP was something that truly shocked Ayrton Senna and indeed the entire F1 world. However what happened that Sunday truly shocked the entire globe. The death of Ayrton Senna after ploughing off at the Tamburello corner and smashing into the wall another legend left us.

This crash is one of the most fiercly debated accidents in the history of the sport. Why did Ayrton crash at what was a fairly simple corner. I have read more theories on why he crashed there than I care to remember. I have heard theories that it was because of low tyre pressures causing the car to bottom out and go straight on. I have read that the steering cloumn broke on the Williams and Senna has unable to turn the car and crashed. I have also read that Senna could have been shot by a assassin and I am not making that up.

The truth is like Clark no one actually knows why Senna went straight off the road and to his death. It remains a mystery.

These two despite being years apart were actually two very similar people. Both were incredibly private, both were the best driver of there eras, both were killed in unexplained ways.

As I said in the title of this article two men, two legends and two mysteries