It speaks volumes about the resonance which his name carries that, almost 40 years after Jim Clark's death in a crash at the Hockenheimring in Germany, people still talk about the Scottish driver with a mixture of reverence and recherche du temps perdu.
It speaks volumes about the resonance which his name carries that, almost 40 years after Jim Clark's death in a crash at the Hockenheimring in Germany, people still talk about the Scottish driver with a mixture of reverence and recherche du temps perdu.
This weekend, for instance, in various parts of the globe, motorsport serves up the Indy 500, which Clark won in 1965, the Monaco Grand Prix, one of the few circuits where he failed to translate his majesty into the hard currency of victory, and the Jim Clark Reivers Rally on 60 miles of closed Berwickshire roads in the region, where the locals resolutely cling to memories of one of the greatest performers ever to grace the F1 paddock.
Dominic Buckley is one of those veteran competitors, blessed with his own litany of achievements, who seems happy to engage in recollections of Clark as a nonpareil, a free spirit who transcended the normal parameters of his profession.
Buckley, steeped as he is in rallying and competitive action should know, because he and his sons, Dominic Jr and Neil, have all triumphed in previous Jim Clark Memorial events, as the prelude to establishing their own, multi-million-pound international rally service business in the Borders.
"Jim and I were both involved in Young Farmers organisations here in the south of Scotland and he was similar to Lewis Hamilton in that he was entirely fearless, a man with a natural talent for every sport, who was streets ahead of everybody else," recalls Buckley.
"It tends to be the case that every generation produces one person who is superior to everybody else, whether it is Michael Schumacher in the 1990s or Juan-Manuel Fangio in the 1950s, and it is pretty pointless trying to make comparisons, given the technological advances which have happened - and continue to happen - as the decades roll by.
"All you really need to know is that Jim was special, he went out into the world and blazed his own trail and although he died at 32, sports fans wherever you travel haven't forgotten him or the gifts he displayed in a Formula One vehicle."
Clark was one of life's fearless souls, who occasionally struggled to understand the limitations of others.
After his demise, fellow driver Chris Amon lamented: "If it could happen to him, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that and it was as if we had lost our leader."
Yet it surely reflects the courage of the rallying fraternity that this weekend's proceedings will feature several competitors, including Alistair Thorburn and Callum Guy, who have escaped from serious accidents and chosen to return to the fray. Hence, while F1, 21st-century style, may not be entirely sanitised, it is considerably safer than the environment in which Clark and the modern-day rally drivers inhabit.
"The cars are so sophisticated these days that it is a different world from that of 30 or 40 years ago, but you still need to be brave to commit yourself to a rally in the middle of the countryside," says Buckley, who will take time off from his job to watch the likes of championship leaders, Gary and Gordon Adam from Dollar, and the Inverness-based duo, Jimmy Girvan and Andy Horne, scrapping for points in the Reivers race, which is the fourth round of the County SAAB MSA Scottish Championship.
"I might not be out there participating any more, but even standing on the sidelines, the competitive juices start flowing when all the cars are scrapping for supremacy at full throttle."
Jim Clark may have been a one-off, but his legacy lives on in these Memorial contests. The thrill of the chase, the intensity of the race: these are what he lived and died for. No wonder there is a frisson in Buckley's voice as he rewinds back to the 1960s.
