Quote:
Originally Posted by TeamOxford
I never said that. All of the drivers mentioned in my post were Stewart's peers. The "exposure" was the same. Jackie just handled it differently. His ego was more transparent to everyone. Just read his ghost-written book "Faster".
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what I'm saying is that Stewart wasn't from that era of Graham Hill, Moss, Surtees and Brabham (guys born a decade earlier or more) who generally handled spotlight with a bit less flash and attention getting vs. the guys who came after. And that's continued to be the case, where guys like Clark may be the exception, each generation of grand prix drivers seem to seek more and more attention and recognition.
Maybe Stewart was the start of it, perhaps but he was also part of much more lethal era of racing than those guys before him. Everyone has different coping mechanisms to deal with such human extremes where death becomes a guarantee every few races, unless you've been in those shoes week in and week out I fail to see how anyone can begrudge a guy for doing things in their own way. If we're talking about a golf player or footballer with a very obvious mountain-sized ego that's one thing but we may never see a sport demand so much of human being as we saw in the late 60's and 70's of F1. Maybe other drivers of his era could judge Stewart as less than gracious but that's a very select group of men that earned it.