Case Study Six
Sir Jackie Stewart's Capstone
The Bridge From Chequered Flag To Changemaker
“I’m in a race I cannot afford to lose. This time, it’s not for a trophy — it’s for millions of lives.” - Sir Jackie Stewart
What do you do after becoming a triple Formula One World Champion?
Jackie Stewart’s life could easily have been written just about his speed and success on a racetrack. Three F1 world titles. The “Flying Scot.” One of the greatest racing drivers of all time. Yet as with so many Capstone figures, the real story begins after the chequered flag of their keystone race.
A childhood that left him with both an inferiority complex and a challenger mindset. Where others saw barriers, he found other routes. Where others accepted danger, he pushed for solutions.
“For as long as I can remember, I have been driven by this need to prove over and over again that I am not as thick as I was made to feel at school…. I had the idea that everyone was better than me.”
Sir Jackie has successfully bridged the gap between keystone success and Capstone impact.
Cornerstone:
An Undiscovered Superpower
Brought up on the River Clyde, just 12 miles from Glasgow, Jackie Stewart recalls school as the worst part of his life. Undiagnosed dyslexia branded him “thick.” Teachers told him he was stupid, classmates believed it, and eventually he did too:
“Everyone was saying I was dumb, stupid and thick, and in the absence of another explanation, I started to believe they must be right.”
He left school at 15 with no qualifications, retreating into his parents’ garage, where the family sold and serviced Austins and Jaguars. There he discovered a different kind of literacy — mechanical, sensory, instinctive. It brought him into contact with Barry Filer, a wealthy businessman and amateur racer driving cars like Aston Martins, Porsches, Marcos GTs and AC Aces, gave him his first drive in 1961. He won on debut and from there, a new trajectory was set.
“The only benefit was I couldn’t do the things others did. I had no alternative, no other way, so when I found something, I had more focus, commitment and ambition.”
Dyslexia forced him to overcompensate with meticulous preparation — a superpower that would later set him apart.
Keystone:
The Triple World Champion
If his Cornerstone was insecurity turned into determination, his Keystone was glory amongst tragedies.
His first Grand Prix win came at Monza in 1965. By then, he had already met Helen in a café in their hometown of Helensburgh (he was 18, she was 16). She would become his wife, his partner, and — quite literally — the stopwatch of his life. In the early years, she stood at trackside with stopwatch in hand, timing his laps with quiet precision. But more than that, she calibrated his choices, his risks, his balance.
They married in 1962, just before his ascent to the pinnacle of motorsport. Between 1965 and 1973, Sir Jackie entered 99 races, won 27, and claimed three world titles (1969, 1971, 1973).
Amazingly, he kept his dyslexia hidden, asking others to read and fill in forms for him, pretending to read the newspaper on flights, finding ways to disguise the struggle. Instead, he doubled down on preparation. He walked every circuit before race day, memorising every corner, bump and camber — developing what he called a “photographic feel” for tracks. His attention to detail gave him a decisive edge – his ability to translate the driver’s feel into valuable feedback for his engineers.
The statistics are remarkable — but the shadows matter too. Jackie and Helen counted 57 driver deaths during his era. Jochen Rindt. Piers Courage. François Cevert, killed at Jackie’s final race weekend in 1973, aged just 29. Sir Jackie had planned to retire at season’s end, but after Cevert’s death he could not bring himself to start the final race. He retired one day early.
“It’s a very, very selfish business and I do feel guilty. At the height of my career, I know that I was a wickedly selfish, self-centred person and the world had to circulate around my life. My family, my wife, my business associates, my team, my mechanics, my designers, my Ken Tyrrells, they had to all be fitting around what Jackie Stewart wanted.”
Sir Jackie’s Keystone was not just titles and trophies, but brilliance shadowed by unbearable human losses. Even then, signs of his Capstone thinking were already visible.
Capstone:
The 3Ds — Driver Safety, Dyslexia, Dementia
Revolutionising Driver Safety
In an era when death was seen as part of the job, Sir Jackie refused to accept the myth that danger was inevitable. At the time, a driver had a 50/50 chance of surviving a crash.
He campaigned relentlessly: mandatory seat belts, full-face helmets, fire-resistant overalls, proper medical centres, run-off areas, deformable barriers. He was ridiculed for it — but stuck to his convictions.
“I was accused of being a coward for demanding seatbelts, full-face helmets and medical centres. Today, they’re just common sense.”
Fatalities in Formula One have since become extremely rare as safety was bought to the forefront of racing due to Sir Jackie’s tireless pursuit of reform.
Raising Awareness of Dyslexia
After retiring, Sir Jackie’s two sons were diagnosed with dyslexia. At 43, he was finally tested and diagnosed himself.
“Suddenly I thought I had been saved from drowning. I am not stupid, not thick, not dumb.”
He reframed dyslexia as difference, not deficiency. The same condition that haunted his childhood gave him the preparation habits that made him a champion. He has used his platform to advocate for early intervention, awareness, and recognition of alternative forms of intelligence. He is President of Dyslexia Scotland with the mission to inspire and enable all people with dyslexis to realise their potential.
“If my story can help people who can’t read and write, then I’ll see that as a success.”
Leading the Race Against Dementia
In 2016, Lady Helen was diagnosed with dementia. Sir Jackie responded with the same urgency he once applied on track.
“This is a race we simply have to win. Just as in Formula 1, we need urgency, innovation, and teamwork to find the breakthroughs.”
Over 150 million people are expected to live with dementia by 2050. Someone is diagnosed every three seconds. He founded Race Against Dementia, a charity accelerating global research towards prevention and cure.
“I now face one of the biggest challenges of my life. I will put all my efforts into finding a cure for this horrendous illness. I know first-hand the devastation that dementia brings to entire families when they realise there is currently no cure.”
Its fellowship programme recruits world-class researchers, applying F1 principles: attention to detail, teamwork, resilience, innovation. Fellows are mentored by F1 leaders and supported through an official partnership with the sport.
This is Sir Jackie’s Capstone. Not nostalgia. Not legacy. Urgency. A system redesign, again.
“I’m in a race I cannot afford to lose. This time, it’s not for a trophy — it’s for millions of lives.”
Closing:
The Bridge Beyond the Chequered Flag
I have seen Race Against Dementia up close — hosting a day at Silverstone with its fellows, then sharing a barbecue at Jackie and Helen’s Buckinghamshire home. In his gardens, where memorial benches mark fallen drivers, a more recent bench honours Queen Elizabeth II, a family friend and regular visitor.
The gardens also surround a purpose-built accommodation for Helen’s care. Jackie tells me: she was by his side throughout his racing career, helping him race; now it is his time to care for her, his childhood sweetheart and wife of over 60 years.
Sir Jackie Stewart’s Keystone was his racing career — world championships defined by focus, single-mindedness, personal ambition, and the cut-throat drive to win. But his Capstone is the bridge beyond: from personal victory to systemic change, from racing glory to racing for lives.
“Find something you can be the best at. Anything. There is always something you can do no matter how small or unusual. And find other ways of doing things. It can be a more successful route.”
That is why his story belongs here. Sir Jackie shows us that Keystones might be selfish, but Capstones must be systemic. The true measure of a life is not how many times you cross the line first, but what you build for others after the chequered flag.
“The vivid bright colours go with the deepest of dark colours, that’s where you get the taste of reality in the deepest sense. Although it had its sorrow, deepest sorrow, that highlighted the reality of the good life, the life that was given to me just by driving a race car.” — Sir Jackie Stewart