THE MOTOR SPORT INTERVIEW
Jacky Ickx
Passion is one thing. Team it with formidable concentration skills and childhood recall of competing in wet and icy conditions and you might get a driver like ‘The Rainmaster’
WORDS: ROB WIDDOWS
PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES
Jacky Ickx was an F2 entrant in the 1967 German Grand Prix in the Tyrrell team’s Matra-Ford.
he qualified third, behind F1’s Denny Hulme and Jim Clark
He is a six-time Le Mans winner, Can-Am champion, the runner-up in the 1969 and 1970 Formula 1 World Championships for Brabham and Ferrari, twice World Endurance champion and Paris-Dakar rally winner. Jacky Ickx is a soulful, philosophical and enigmatic character who thinks deeply about his 32 seasons at the top of a dangerous sport. His success in so many different disciplines, and his prowess in the rain, has given him a rare status among both his peers and the fans who have followed his career from his early days as a champion motorcycle racer.
We catch up with the man many consider to be one of motor sport’s greatest talents at his home in Monaco, where he’s lived for the last 40 years.
Motor Sport: Let’s begin with that remarkable drive in Ken Tyrrell’s Formula 2 Matra at the Nürburgring in August 1967. You made a big impression on the F1 teams that day at the German Grand Prix.
Jacky Ickx: “Before we start… You’ve described me as one of the greatest, and I am happy if you want to say that, because you cannot say any driver is the greatest, or the greatest of all time, or whatever. I have seen that people say Lewis Hamilton is the greatest F1 driver of all time but this is not possible because you cannot compare racing drivers from so many different eras. It is not a proper comparison because there were so many – Nuvolari, Caracciola, Fangio, Moss, Schumacher, Prost, Senna – and they were all in totally different cars in totally different times of the sport. ‘One of the greatest’ is enough and, of course, Lewis is one of those. The young F1 drivers are all extremely talented and gifted. They don’t need to be compared in this way.”
Okay, many might agree, but let’s go back to the Nürburgring in 1967, a circuit that you knew like the back of your hand from long-distance sports car racing.
JI: “The F2 Matra was the right car at the right place at the right time. I have always believed that weekend was part of my destiny, the start of many things that came later. First, however, I want to tell you some things about me that may help to paint the full picture of my career. I never had a dream, I never imagined that I would be a grand prix driver, a Le Mans winner. At school I was at the back of the class, looking out of the window, not knowing what I wanted to do. I thought I would become a gardener. Everyone is good at something, and my parents were waiting for me to find my destiny.