FRIDAY, May 30, and the north Fife village of Kilmany, provide the date and place for an act of homage to an enigmatic Scottish sportsman whose supreme talent still shines with a rare incandescence nearly 30 years after his death.

On that day and in that place, roughly 27 miles short of the Tay Road Bridge in a small park off the A914, Jackie Stewart is due to unveil a statue of Jim Clark created by local sculptor David Annand.

The vigorous sculpture of Clark striding through a racing paddock is the product of the enthusiasm of a group of knowledgeable and resourceful individuals led by Dunblane's Dakers Fleming.

While Clark is forever documented as the Duns farmer who won two world drivers' titles and 25 Grand Prix, he was born in Kilmany and then the family decanted to the Borders when he was four-years-old.

It has taken the best part of four years and cost approaching #25,000 to create this memorial, and its establishment is apt in a year when another Clark milestone is recorded.

On June 4, it will be exactly 30 years since Clark's green and gold Lotus 49, propelled by Ford's new DFV V8 Formula 1 engine, scored a dominant debut victory at the Dutch seaside track at Zandvoort.

To mark that event, un-precedented and unmatched in modern motor-racing history, Clark will be celebrated by Eric Dymock's new book, Jim Clark - tribute to a champion.

Clark died in a largely meaningless Formula 2 race when his Lotus 48 was des-troyed against trackside trees on a drizzly Sunday Hockenheim afternoon on April 7, 1968.

A gradually deflating rear tyre is thought to have pitched the car beyond the control of the man whose deft touch set him apart from his contemporaries.

In an era when there was a regular cull of drivers, at all levels, Clark's death nonetheless sent a searing shock through the sport, a communal trauma unrepeated until Ayrton Senna perished at Imola on May 1, 1994.

Both innately talented drivers died at the peak of their powers, thereby perpetuating starkly contrasting legends.

Ayrton Senna may have possessed a natural charm and eloquence off the track, but ruthlessness on it too often generated accidents and conflict.

Dymock, intent on adding substance to the enduring myth, said: ''His (Clark's) memory is sustained because his track behaviour was always impeccable.

''Jim Clark was a gentleman racer, someone who would never punt rivals off the road. He was respected and revered, but not feared.'' In a poignant pilgrimage in 1992, Senna made a private visit to the Clark memorial room in Duns, addressed the boys at the Scot's old Loretto School, and signed the visitor's book, complete with his family address in Sao Paulo.

One individual who bore him a grudge was countryman Innes Ireland, the first Scot to win a world championship Grand Prix in 1961, but whom the ascendant Clark displaced as a works Lotus driver.

Dymock's book reveals how Clark dealt with Ireland's obstructive tactics at Monza. Instead of crowding the older man out, Clark let American Dan Gurney through and with the two rivals distracted by their own battle, duly sliced past.

Whereas today, the multi-million pound circus tackles 16 world series races a year, Clark would generally contest a maximum of 10 Grand Prix annually.

From 72 championship Grand Prix starts, Clark won 25 times, an intense winning frequency eclipsed only by Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio.

Another illuminating statistic relates to a record 11 times that Clark started from pole position and set the fastest race lap en route to victory.

But thankfully, Dymock has avoided producing a factual litany for bar room debates. Instead he describes the inherent tension of nail-biting Clark, whose early career was littered with fatal crashes.

These started in 1958 with the death by fire of fellow Scottish sports car driver Archie Scott-Brown during Clark's first overseas race at Spa, in Belgium.

He went on to witness the double fatalities of Allan Stacey and Chris Bristow at the same circuit two years later.

Then the ultimate trauma came at Monza in 1961, when champion elect Taffy Von Trips' Ferrari clipped Clark's slipstreaming Lotus and somer- saulted into the crowd, killing the German nobleman and 14 spectators.

Most modern biographies normally carry an element of sleaze, or rattle skeletons from previously locked cupboards. According to Dymock there was nothing to tarnish the squeaky-clean image.

In a Grand Prix career spanning just over seven years, Clark probably earned no more than #1,000,000 and his loyalty to Lotus and its founder Colin Chapman, helped keep that income down.

Jackie Stewart, who understood the earnings potential of F1, had overtaken Clark's income by the beginning of the fateful final season.

Arguably naive in his belief in Chapman, a brilliant innovator, Clark had developed a taste for the trappings of his relative wealth before his death. He had his own plane, a Paris flat and tax exile status in Bermuda.

Dymock begs the question about whether the former public schoolboy would have returned to Chirnside Farm if and when he retired as many claimed he planned to do at the end of 1967.

Clark consciously avoided being photographed with glamorous female company, or appearing too flash for domestic Duns consumption.

Dymock commented: ''He seemed to want to preserve the image of Presbyterian caution. But, in fact, the sport had become part of him.

''He was without equal and, while not vain, he understood his own value and latterly began to allow himself enjoyment from its increasingly commercial dimension.''

Part of that came from his exposure to motor racing, American-style, and cult status as the first Briton and only Scot to win the Indianapolis 500 in 1965, the same year he dominated the F1 championship.

It is a following which remains, as testified to by former girlfriend Sally Stokes, who still gets autograph requests courtesy of her Clark connections.

On May 30, Stewart the survivor, who 30 years on is taking the Ford banner into Grand Prix battle with his own team, will doubtless relive a thousand memories when he uncovers the Fife memorial.

Homage is not an over-blown term, meaning as it does: ''formal acknowledgement of allegiance, reverence, tribute paid.''

n Jim Clark - tribute to a champion, by Eric Dymock, Dove and Haynes Publishing.