F1 icon Sir Jackie Stewart suffered stroke while waiting for royal wedding

07 July 2023 , 18:34

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Sir Jackie Stewart suffered a mini-stroke last month (Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)

Sir Jackie Stewart suffered a stroke only five weeks ago... but still plans to attend the British Grand Prix this weekend.

The Formula 1 hero, 84, travelled to Jordan last month to attend a royal wedding. But the night before the ceremony he ended up on the floor of his hotel room after suffering a mini-stroke.

"I got up in the night feeling strange – I just dropped," the three-time F1 champion said. "And then I can’t remember. I was unconscious for quite a long time. I was taken to hospital in Jordan.

"My son Paul and his wife were there for the wedding, in a bedroom on a different floor. To this day, I don't know how I got to Paul's room, but I must have been somewhat alert to get hold of him."

He added, speaking to the Daily Mail: "They got me into an ambulance, but I have no recall of that either. His Majesty got the best doctors available for me.

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"I wanted to get home as fast as possible, and the Crown Prince of Bahrain very generously gave his aircraft to fly me back to Europe. By then I was pretty much okay. I wasn't walking very well, though."

Despite that health scare, though, the inimitable Scot is already back to business and has resumed working on Race Against Dementia, the campaign he set up after his beloved wife Helen's diagnosis.

He had been just as busy before, though. After attending the Monaco Grand Prix on the last weekend of May, he travelled back to the UK for a funeral before heading back to mainland Europe and then jetting off to Jordan for that wedding on June 1.

Sir Jackie Stewart at the Monaco Grand Prix just days before his mini-stroke (Getty Images)

And all that travelling, Sir Jackie believes, contributed to the mini-stroke. He said: "I was very ill by the time of the funeral. I spoke, but not as well as I should have done.

"I followed that with one night in Geneva and then went on to Jordan. And all that was after being in Miami for a very busy Grand Prix not long before. It all added up.

"I am now doing a lot of physiotherapy and I can walk almost completely perfectly. Everything's going well — I am going to Silverstone for two days this weekend."

While at that Miami race in May, Sir Jackie was involved in an incident on the grid when an over-zealous security guard collared him on live TV. But he later laughed off the incident, providing a perfect response in a social media post.

Daniel Moxon