 THE MONACO GRAND PRIX LIBRARY BY ROY HULSBERGEN |
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Sir Jack Brabham |
by Pete Fenelon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Born 2 4 1926, Sydney, Australia
The only driver to win World Championship in the car he built. Jack Brabham, long-since knighted for his services to motor sport, is probably the finest driver/engineer in the modern history of racing. His formative racing years in Australia were largely taken up with homebuilt specials and near-obsolete Coopers, and it was to the Surbiton marque that he soon gravitated when he came to England in the mid-fifties in an attempt to crack the international racing game. At first his performances were relatively unspectacular, the taciturn Australian limited by the equipment available to him. Almost single-handedly he built the first rear-engined Cooper GP car which ran unobtrusively at Aintree in 1955; as Cooper evolved a relationship with Coventry-Climax their cars grew from tiny F2s into the class of the Granx Prix field in 1959-60 (with Brabham very much part of the design team) and Jack, partnered by Bruce McLaren, became almost unbeatable, scoring back-to-back championships including his 1959 Monaco victory. All was not sweetness and light in the Cooper camp though, with Brabham finding it difficult to convince Charles Cooper to spend money on development. Brabham retired from the sport at the end of the season, leaving the team in the hands of Ron Tauranac (who soon sold it on to Bernie Ecclestone). He has remained an integral part of the sport, though; sons Gary and David have both been in F1, though at the back of the grid; Geoff has been extremely successful in the USA, and all have gained much from their father's vast experience and wise advice. |
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He left to setup his own team in 1962. Initially running a Lotus and then his own Brabham cars designed with Ron Tauranac, success in F1 was intermittent until the start of the three-litre formula in 1966 but there was a strong line of works and customer F2 and F3 cars. The canny Brabham was ready for the Return of Power with a series of simple, efficient Repco V8-powered cars which took him to a third title at the age of 40 in 1966, and secured another for team-mate Denny Hulme in 1967. 
