JACK BRABHAM The scene is the Sebring circuit in December, 1959, a drab concrete old airfield, miles
The Championship is wide open this year. Stirling Moss, who has fought for so long and in vain for the title, Tony Brooks, or that stalwart Australian, Jack Brabham, are all contestants for the supreme motor racing award. Moss has lapped fastest in his Cooper in practice, and gained pole position, but Brabham in a works Cooper has been only three seconds slower round the flat, winding circuit. Way back on the fourth row of the grid is Bruce McLaren — a mere novice in this tough world of Grand Prix motor racing, but a determined and skilful driver.
Moss goes away at the fall of the flag, and builds up a big lead over the Australian, while McLaren holds on hard behind: three Coopers hold the first three places. Moss has got to win and make the fastest lap to gain the Championship.
And for a time it looks as though, at last, he is going to succeed. Then once again the Moss jinx strikes. His gearbox fails and he his next seen walking slowly back to the pits. Brabham now has a clear lead, with his fellow-dri-ver from down under slipstreaming him. The race average is over 98 m.p.h.
The Cooper is sounding as healthy as on the first lap. The chequered flag is
brought out and raised. The reception committee is ready for the new World Champion. But on that last lap fate strikes a hard blow. Out of sight of the stands, the Cooper engine coughs and spits, cuts out, runs for a few more revs — and dies. Brabham pulls in to the side of the track, out of fuel. McLaren races ahead. 'Suddenly,' said young McLaren in surprise after it was all over, 'I found myself winning.' The drama is not yet over.
Brabham climbs out and begins pushing. For more than half a mile, under the burning Florida sun, he heaves at his car, and by a miraculous effort at last gets it over the line, to fall exhausted on the concrete beside it. He has finished, and that is good enough. He is World Champion after all! Jack Brabham, the most successful and experienced of the drivers from Australia and New Zealand who have come to Europe, is now forty years old, and a veteran with more than a decade of experience in sports car and Grand Prix racing behind him — and nearly ten more years in his home country.
This quiet, studious engineer-driver began his career on four fast-moving wheels amid the hurly-burly of midget car racing in Sydney. Like Stirling Moss, the late Peter Collins and so many others, he worked his racing apprenticeship in Cooper 5oo's. Later he installed an 1,too c.c. engine in his car, and with this won the Redex Pointscore Trophy, his first major success. Next came a Formula II (2 litre) Cooper-Bristol, which served him so well for nearly two years, winning almost everything for which he entered, that he widened his ambitions and decided to try his hand in Britain.
That was in 1955, and during his first season, mainly in smaller events, he did not earn very much more than exclamatory remarks from those who watched him exercising his dirt-track inspired style — such as `hang out the tail and hope for the best'. With the help of John Cooper — and these two were to have a long friendship as well as a fruitful racing association —he entered one of the new rear-engined Cooper sports cars, fitted with a bored-out Bristol engine, for the British Grand Prix . Calm, imperturbable, and well-nigh uncatchable, Brabham demonstrated the fine balance of the Cooper, and the power of its 21 litre Climax engine throughout the 1960 season, to score his second World Championship.
At Spa for the Belgian Grand Prix, which he won by a comfortable margin from team-mate McLaren slowest car on the Aintree circuit, and lasted barely thirty laps. However, Brabham did so much better later in the 1955 season, that he was encouraged to return to Europe the following year. This time, after unfortunate experiences with a Maserati, Brabham consolidated his relationship with the Cooper factory and ran their new Formula II (i 2 litre) racing car, with more discretion and more success.
There were one or two occasions — at Oulton Park for instance against Roy Salvadori — when real championship quality was discernible. The year 1957 marked the beginning of Jack Brab-ham's maturity as a driver. Now he was with the official Cooper works team, and he started off sen-sationally at Monaco with a 2 litre car against the full 2 litre works Ferraris, Maseratis, Vanwalls and others, and with Moss and Fangio at the top of their form.
Nobody quite saw how it happened, perhaps because the little rear-engined car was considered too insig-nificant to have a chance, but suddenly it became evident that he was running third, with but a few miles to go to the flag! This Jack-the-giant-killer act was halted only by some slight mechanical complaint, but by dint of tremendous pushing he still managed to gain sixth place. There were further successes in Formula I and sports car events in 1958, including a magnificent shared victory with Moss in an Aston Martin at the Nurburg-ring i,000 km. But in Grands Prix the Coopers re-mained underpowered and not too reliable, although Brabham made an almost clean sweep with the Formula II Cooper.
He was still learning all the time — how to conserve the engine and tyres, how to play the waiting game when tactics called for this, and learning by off-the-circuit study of the subtleties of design of the Formula I Grand Prix car. For 1959 John Cooper had decided to enter a full team of Grand Prix cars, using the new 212 litre Cov-entry-Climax engine whenever possible. There have been earlier references in this book to the 'rear-engine revolution'. This was the year when it became fully established, mainly by the joint efforts of the Coopers as designers and Brabham as number one driver; but not forgetting Bruce McLaren, the team's new recruit.
When Moss's car held together, the Australian was rarely able to compete with him; but careful prep-aration before a race and careful preservation of the machine during it are all part of the race-winning formula, and this was something that Brabham under-stood. He achieved his first victory at Monte Carlo after Moss fell out, ran second at Zandvoort, third on the exceedingly fast Rheims circuit, where no one could catch the Ferraris.
At Aintree for the British Grand Prix, Brabham put up his greatest performance, taking the lead at the start, and holding it undisputed to the end. This was the sort of demonstration that would be repeated many times in the future. Clutch trouble put him out of the German Grand Prix, and (rare event indeed) he crashed and injured himself, but only slightly, in the Portuguese event. Moss took the honours at Monza, and Brabham had to be content with a third, though this also sufficed to keep him at the head of the Championship.
Then there was an agon-izing nine-week wait before the deciding round at Sebring — which ended in the Australian's favour. In 196o the works Coopers were almost unbeatable. Rarely has there been a season in which one make has been so omnipotent. And never have drivers from Australia and New Zealand so dominated the world of Grand Prix racing. Bruce McLaren as number two Cooper driver won magnificently in the Argentine, and took second place at Monaco less than a minute behind Moss.
Then Brabham took over the star role, winning no less than five Championship events in a row — though in all fairness the story might have been different had not Moss seriously injured himself at Spa. Gone now was every hint of the young dirt racer style of five years earlier. Brabham drove with the cool, studied precision of a Farina or a Moss. Off the track he was reserved (no drinking, no smoking), preoccupied, but friendly and ready to smile. In tem-perament he was about as far removed as he could be from, say, the fiery Nuvolari of the 1930's or the ebullient Mike Hawthorn, the previous holder of the Championship. But around the circuits of Europe no one was better liked. Since 1960 Brabham has given more of his time to engineering and design work, and has set up a garage and works of his own. He began building his own cars, powered by Coventry-Climax, and by 1963 these Brabhams were going very fast, in the hands of the American Dan Gurney and Brabham himself, taking third place behind Lotus and B.R.M.
