Auto Racing: Hero with a Hot Shoe

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But just because a fellow goes vroom-vroom, slides around the streets, breaks the speed limit and scares people, doesn't mean that he is a racing driver. Racing isn't all noise and speed and excitement. It is tedious little chores: counting revs, gauging distances, plotting trajectories. It is absolute concentration—the kind it takes to flick through a corner in driving rain at the limit of tire adhesion, the point at which one more mile-per-hour will send the car hurtling off the road. It is good driving at its best.

If a car addict is really serious about racing, he can enter one of the 9,000 stock-car or 2,000 sports-car races held in the U.S. each year. For $1,000, he can even take a one-week course in competition driving from Racer-Designer (Ford-Cobra) Carroll Shelby. For the really successful racing driver, the rewards are great. Fred Lorenzen has already won $63,675 on the stock-car circuit this year, and A. J. Foyt, who is equally adept in stock cars, sports cars and Indianapolis roadsters, won $250,000 in 1964. Another field is that led by Art Arfons, who hit 600 m.p.h. in his jet-powered Green Monster at Bonneville last October, now has his sights set on breaking the sound barrier—on land. Arfons has his hero too—Jimmy Clark—and at the Indianapolis 500, he was right there, one of the first in the line of well-wishers waiting to greet Clark after his victory. "How do you like that!" said the puzzled Scot. "This chap goes 600 m.p.h. and he congratulates me!"

"Wee Bit Slippery." Handsome, hazel-eyed Jimmy Clark is the perfect pro driver. At 5 ft. 7¾ in. and 150 Ibs., he is even the perfect size: small enough to squeeze into the 2-ft.-wide cockpit of a 1,000-lb. Formula I car, big enough to see over its bonnet. He has the hands and arms of a jockey; his eyesight is phenomenal. His reflexes are so fast that he could probably pluck a fly out of midair. Clark's business adviser, John Stephenson, remembers a midwinter ride in a sedan with Jim two years ago. "The road was wet and frosty," says Stephenson. "Suddenly we were going into a tight downhill lefthander. I figured it as a 70-m.p.h. corner—but there we were doing 90. The tail started to go, and I thought, this is a shunt for sure. Then Jim made a tiny correction with the steering wheel," and we were through the corner. All he said was, 'Wee bit slippery back there.' "