I was doing it with color as a color commentator with people like Jim McKay and Keith Jackson. Jim was a master of words and to work with those kind of people was just a fantastic privilege. I was so lucky. It helped my commercial life, my business life and it helped my racing life. It was a good thing for me to have done.
ABC Sports
In 1973 you were selected Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year with O.J. Simpson. How special was that year for you and what did that award mean to you?
Stewart
Oh '73 was a great year for me because I was really in the deep end with ABC. I won my third world championship. I retired as a racing driver. I then jointly won the ABC Sports Personality of the Year with O.J. Simpson. O.J. got slightly big-headed by this, and I got big-headed. But I have to tell you that finishing third was Secretariat.
It might not have been the biggest year but it was the year that O.J. ran his yardage record. I had won the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, World Sportsman of the Year, and the Scottish one and the British one. So it was a big year for me and it was the end of an era of my driving racing cars. I still had a five-year contract at that time with Wide World. I was starting of with a whole new opportunity and it was a great end of year with so many celebrations.
ABC Sports
As big as Wide World of Sports was, that must have been a pretty big accomplishment to get the award as personality of the year.
Stewart
Oh yes, it was a great thing to get that award, particularly as a non-American. To win the Wide World of Sports Sports Personality of the Year, where you had all your basketball players, football players, baseball players, your hockey players. I mean, you've got such a galaxy in America of sports personalities. There's no country in the world that could give your sports people, men or women, more focus or more illumination. To get that award that year was a big deal.
ABC wasn't doing very many Grand Prix motor races but every year they did the Monaco Grand Prix and I won the Monaco Grand Prix that year, as well as the world championship. It was the end of my career and everybody knew in October I had officially retired. It was kind of a big thing to get these awards as a non-American.
ABC Sports
In June of '73 at the Grand Prix at Monaco you tied Jimmy Clarke for Grand Prix victories in that race. Was that a special victory for you?
Stewart
Yes. Winning Monaco was always special because it had more glamor, more color, more excitement: The Mediterranean on one side the Martine Alps on the other side, the restaurants, the hotels, the beautiful people. It was at the time of the Cannes Film Festival every year, so you had the stars coming along. For me, I knew it was the last time I was ever going to drive a racing car around Monaco. Therefore, to win at Monaco under those circumstances was very important.
At that time I was of course under contract to ABC's Wide World of Sports, so it meant immediately before getting into the car I was doing an ABC Wide World interview. They had sort of hung out with me the whole weekend. The first person I saw out of the car, obviously it was the camera and Jim McKay.
So it was a big race to win for me knowing I was never going to come back to race again. Secondly, because I had made my decision that early. Nobody knew I was gonna retire, but I knew. Thirdly, equaling Jim Clarke's record was a big deal for me. Jimmy was a personal friend and of course he had died in a racing car and Fan Ju was my hero. It was a very nice thing to have happen.
ABC Sports
In August of the same year you went on to win two Grand Prix races, the Dutch Grand Prix and the Grand Prix of Germany. You eventually broke Jimmy Clarke's record. Can you talk about the impact of breaking Jimmy Clarke's record?
Stewart
Winning more Grand Prix races than any other driver in the history of motorsports was a big deal for me. The holder of that was Jim Clarke. At the Dutch Grand Prix I won my 26th Grand Prix victory. I went on to the German Grand Prix and won my 27th. That title stood for a very long time, nearly 15 years, so it was an achievement that I felt that was important to me as a driver, but important if you like, in a career situation.
I was able to, for 15 years, be the winningest driver in Grand Prix history. That was a nice thing to have because you know an ex-racing driver like myself who had a lot of commercial relationships was doing an awful lot of public appearances and lot of related business where that type of title was a currency.
ABC Sports
The first time you ever entered Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was there a special feeling?
Stewart
Yes. Indy had something about it. You go there in awe really, because you see this immense stadium. Today I think there are seats for more than 250,000 people -- sometimes as many as 450,000 people attending the event. Just to see it with empty grand stands was impressive. I went there to test drive a car, to see if I wanted to go back there again or go at all. I did that and I think it was September or October of '65. And I decided I would do it for '66.
I only attempted the race twice: in '66 and '67. I was going to drive in '68 but I broke a bone in my wrist and had to withdraw. I went to Indy thinking it was going to mend but it didn't mend. It was a big challenge.
It's the biggest event one sees in that light. Grand Prix racing attracts bigger attention, bigger television audiences. None of them attracts the same live crowd as Indy does. I don't think any of them have got the moment when you walk out of gasoline alley and into this amazing mass of faces. People right there in a full long mile and another quarter mile of grandstands. I don't care who you are, if you're not affected by that, you're not human. Back home again in Indiana and the national anthem being played, the balloons and the whole pizzazz. It's bizarre, really, but it's a spectacle unique to the world.
