{"id":490420,"date":"2008-12-01T16:00:45","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T16:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportscardigest.com\/\/?p=49408"},"modified":"2024-12-27T01:25:28","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T01:25:28","slug":"jackie-stewart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.supercars.net\/blog\/jackie-stewart\/","title":{"rendered":"Jackie Stewart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Three weeks after he had won the 1966 Grand Prix of Monaco in an aging, works, 2-liter,\u00a0V-8 BRM P261, Jackie Stewart lay trapped in the wreckage of his car after having left Belgium\u2019s Spa-Francorchamps circuit in the pouring rain at 165 mph. His BRM had smashed into a telegraph pole, hit a shed, and ground to a halt in a farmer\u2019s outbuilding. Broken fuel tanks flooded his cockpit and soaked him with their volatile contents. Stewart laid there, a potential Roman candle, for 25 minutes, his leg trapped by the car\u2019s distorted steering column, hoping against hope that a rogue spark would not ignite the fuel and turn him into a human torch.<\/p>\n

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Jackie Stewart, in his Cooper, leads Graham Hill\u2019s Brabham during the 1965 F2 race at Pau.\u00a0Photo: Peter Collins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eventually, his teammates Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant freed him, but his problems were not over by a long chalk. There was no doctor or medical staff on the scene, so Jackie, who had suspected spinal injuries, was eased onto the back of a pick-up truck to wait for an ambulance. The vehicle eventually turned up and took him to the circuit\u2019s first-aid center, where his stretcher was unceremoniously dumped on a dirty floor strewn with cigarette butts and other rubbish. Precious minutes later, another ambulance showed up, Stewart was loaded aboard, and off he went to the Li\u00e8ge hospital with a police escort. But the police lost the ambulance or vice versa, and Jackie\u2019s driver did not know the way to the hospital. Mercifully, after that string of disasters, a UK Air Ambulance flew him back to Britain for treatment, without which Stewart may well have died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n