Clark’s first race in a monoposto was dispiriting. The battery of his ill-handling Formula Junior Gemini was as flat as his mood at the cold, damp Boxing Day Brands Hatch meeting of 1959. Resorting to a push-start, he finished eighth. And that might have been that but for the coaxing of friends convinced of his talent.

His second race, fewer than three months later, would change his life forever while setting out a road map for the sport for a new decade: he won at Goodwood in March 1960 in a Lotus 18 – Chapman’s first design with its engine behind the driver – powered by a Ford production engine modified by Cosworth Engineering; the latter’s Keith Duckworth could work with Chapman – just not under the same roof.

Junior was a recent Italian construct for promoting its young driving talent. It had, however, in short order become the third rung in Britain’s rapid ascent. Within months Clark would have stood on all three: Junior, Formula 2 and Formula 1. By April 1961 he had won in all three.

He was done and dusted with Junior by the end of 1960 but F2 – revived in 1964 after a three-year absence – would remain with him to the (bitter) end. In his miracle year of 1965 he won the category’s prestigious and pecunious Trophées de France. By 1968, however, some were beginning to ask privately why Chapman was working his prize asset so (unnecessarily) hard.

And it’s true that Clark’s mood on that dank April day at Hockenheim was flat; his ill-handling car offering no chance of victory. But it was normal then for the best to regularly stick his reputation – and neck – on the line at lesser events. The F2 wins that Rindt and Stewart scored over Clark, in arguably better cars – Chapman, empire expanding, was no longer giving the category his full attention – sustained them during periods of frustration at the highest level. For Clark, it was a release, the tear-up denied him by F1’s pressures and his primacy: being beaten in F2 was a disappointment and nothing more.

The Tasman Series – a codification from 1964 of disparate ‘winter sun’ Down Under races in New Zealand and Australia – was something else again. Its 2.5-litre ‘GP’ cars were a more serious prospect than were the 1-litre and later 1600cc F2s – and perhaps even the 1.5-litre F1s – of the period, while its far-flung self-containment gave it the air of a secondary world championship albeit with an extended adventure holiday thrown in: Clark, who won the series three times in four years, also took the opportunity to learn how to fly, how to water-ski – and how to assert himself.

Having been impressed late in 1967 by the aerodynamic appendages of the first non-Lotus single-seater he had raced since that disappointing Gemini, Clark had his 1968 Tasman crew fashion and fit a small rear wing above the gearbox of his Lotus 49T. Though he complied dutifully with Chapman’s removal order – my car, my rules! – issued once word had reached the UK, Clark would soon be proved to have been absolutely right – just not quite soon enough.

Nor would he ever feel the full effect of Chapman’s inking, just the week before, of a commercial sponsorship deal with the Imperial Tobacco company, its bold livery, lurid to conservative eyes, being cagily revealed before an easygoing New Zealand audience; the Aussies would briefly get their long shorts in a twist about it. Clark naturally gave this combination a winning debut, and it would provide him with his final victory, too: the Australian Grand Prix at Sandown on 25 February.

This new promotional demand was one of the reasons why Clark was at Hockenheim. Another was that Chapman had become possessive of his prize asset, if not yet entirely understanding nor appreciative of its gradual metamorphosis. He did not want Clark to drive Ford’s new two-seater sports-prototype in the concurrent BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch – even though Ford had paid for the development of the DFV and for the creation of a Lotus superteam with the signing of Graham Hill, Clark’s most determined rival. Motor sport was becoming more complicated.

The stone cross that marked the site of Clark’s fatal accident is a small, simple affair – name and date only – which for a time became lost amid growing greenery and greed.

Resituated due to the track’s reconfiguration, it’s a gentle reminder, lost on some, of what motor racing was like, its dangers and all, between April 7, 1968 and that chilly day at Goodwood eight years before – and of the quiet gentleman genius who bestrode them.