Jack Brabham
(1971 First Edition) FREE TRACKED POSTAGE ANYWHERE IN AUSTRALIA $45
"In a motor racing career extending over 23 years Jack Brabham became
known as the "Quiet Australian," but his reputation as the man behind
the wheel in GP racing made his a name known world-wide. That career began with
dirt-track racing in Australia and culminated with three wins as World Champion
GP driver, while also producing a series of GP cars bearing his name to compete
against long-established and famous racing car manufacturers. One of his
contemporary GP drivers, Graham Hill, said in a foreword to the book that:
"I rate Jack as one of the great racing drivers of our time; others may
have received more acclaim; but few more success." He added that Jack had
". beaten ever one of the acknowledged stars of the day and was also doing
so right up to the time of his retirement"
In telling his story, with help
from Elizabeth Hayward, a motor racing enthusiast and contributor to
"Motor Track" magazine, he takes the reader behind the scenes to the
complexities of motor racing enterprises, while conveying graphically the
thrills and dangers of racing at the very top level. He ventures into the pits
area to explain the maintenance and repairing of GP cars. His autobiography is
an all-embracing account or life as a Formula One driver, covering a 20 year
period which many regard as one of the most dramatic, competitive and thrilling
in motor racing annals. Not neglected in the telling are his days as a
youngster in Australia and his early motor racing achievements."
FACT FILE: SIR JOHN ARTHUR BRABHAM AO OBE (2
April 1926 – 19 May 2014) was an Australian racing driver who was Formula
One World Champion in 1959, 1960 and 1966. He was a founder of the Brabham racing
team and race car constructor that bore his name.
Brabham was
a Royal Australian Air Force flight
mechanic and ran a small engineering workshop before he started racing
midget cars in 1948. His successes
with midgets in Australian and New Zealand road racing events led to his going to Britain to further his
racing career. There he became part of the Cooper Car Company's racing team, building as well
as racing cars. He contributed to the design of the mid-engined cars that
Cooper introduced to Formula One and the Indianapolis 500, and won the Formula One world championship in 1959 and 1960. In 1962 he established his own
Brabham marque with fellow Australian Ron Tauranac , which in the 1960s
became the largest manufacturer of custom racing cars in the world. In the
1966 Formula One season Brabham
became the first – and still, the only – man to win the Formula One world
championship driving one of his own cars. He was the last surviving World
Champion of the 1950s.
Brabham
retired to Australia after the 1970 Formula One season, where he bought a farm
and maintained business interests, which included the Engine Developments racing
engine manufacturer and several garages.
John Arthur
'Jack' Brabham was born on 2 April 1926 in Hurstville, New South Wales, then a
commuter town outside Sydney. Brabham was involved with cars and mechanics from
an early age. At the age of 12, he learned to drive the family car and the
trucks of his father's grocery business. Brabham attended technical college,
studying metalwork, carpentry, and technical drawing.[3]
Brabham's
early career continued the engineering theme. At the age of 15 he left school
to work, combining a job at a local garage with an evening course in mechanical
engineering. Brabham soon branched out into his own business selling
motorbikes, which he bought and repaired for sale, using his parents' back
veranda as his workshop.
One month
after his 18th birthday on 19 May 1944 Brabham enlisted into the Royal
Australian Air Force (RAAF). Although he was keen on becoming a pilot,
there was already a surplus of trained aircrew and the Air Force instead put
his mechanical skills to use as a flight mechanic, of which there was a wartime
shortage. He was based at RAAF Station Williamstown, where he maintained
Bristol Beaufighters at No 5 Operations. On his 20th birthday, 2 April 1946,
Brabham was discharged from the RAAF with the rank of leading aircraftman. He
then started a small service, repair, and machining business in a workshop
built by his uncle on a plot of land behind his grandfather's house.
Brabham
started racing after an American friend, Johnny Schonberg, persuaded him to
watch a midget car race. Midget racing was a category for small open-wheel
cars racing on dirt ovals. It was popular in Australia, attracting crowds of up
to 40,000. Brabham records that he was not taken with the idea of driving,
being convinced that the drivers "were all lunatics" but he agreed to
build a car with Schonberg.
At first
Schonberg drove the homemade device, powered by a modified JAP motorcycle
engine built by Brabham in his workshop. In 1948, Schonberg's wife persuaded
him to stop racing and on his suggestion Brabham took over. He almost
immediately found that he had a knack for the sport, winning on his third
night's racing. From there he was a regular competitor and winner in Midgets
(known as Speedcars in Australia) at tracks such Sydney
Upon
arriving in Europe on his own in early 1955, Brabham based himself in the UK,
where he bought another Cooper to race in national events. His crowd-pleasing
driving style initially betrayed his dirt track origins: as he put it, he took
corners "by using full [steering] lock and lots of throttle".[12] Visits to the Cooper
factory for parts led to a friendship with Charlie and John Cooper, who told
the story that after many requests for a drive with the factory team, Brabham
was given the keys to the transporter taking the cars to a race. Brabham
soon "seemed to merge into Cooper Cars":]he was not an employee, but he
started working at Cooper daily from the midpoint of the 1955 season building a
Bobtail mid-engined sportscar, intended for Formula One, the top category of
single seater racing. He made his Grand Prix debut at the age of 29
driving the car at the 1955 British Grand Prix. It had a 2-litre engine, half a
litre less than permitted, and ran slowly with a broken clutch before
retiring. Later in the year Brabham, again driving the Bobtail, tussled
with Stirling Moss for third place in a non-championship Formula One race
at Snetterton. Although Moss finished ahead, Brabham saw the race as a turning
point, proving that he could compete at this level. He shipped the Bobtail back
to Australia, where he used it to win the 1955 Australian Grand Prix before
selling it to help fund a permanent move to the UK the following year with his
wife Betty and their son Geoff.
Brabham
briefly and unsuccessfully campaigned his own second hand Formula One Maserati
250F during 1956, but his season was saved by drives for Cooper in spores
cars and and Formula Two. the
junior category to Formula One. At that time, almost all racing cars had their
engines mounted at the front but Coopers were different, having the engine
placed behind the driver, which improved their handling. In 1957, Brabham drove
another mid-engined Cooper, again only fitted with a 2-litre engine, at the
Monaco Grand Prix.
Brabham and
Tauranac set up a company called Motor Racing Developments (MRD), which
produced customer racing cars, while Brabham himself continued to race for
Cooper. MRD produced cars for Foruila Junior, with the first one appearing
in mid-1961. Brabham left Cooper in 1962 to drive for his own team: the Brabham
Racing Organisation, using cars built by Motor Racing Developments. A newly
introduced engine limit in Formula One of 1500 cc did not suit Brabham and
he did not win a single race with a 1500 cc car. His team suffered poor
reliability during this period and motorsport authors Mike Lawrence and David
Hodges have said that Brabham's reluctance to spend money may have cost the
team results, a view echoed by Tauranac. During the 1965 season, Brabham
started to consider retirement to manage his team. Dan Gurney took the
lead driver role, and the team's first world championship win, while Brabham
gave up his car to several other drivers towards the end of the season. At the
end of the season, Gurney announced his intention to leave and set up his own
team and Brabham decided to carry on.
The 1960 season
also saw the fruition of Brabham's relationship with Japanese engine
manufacturer Honda in Formula Two. After a generally unsuccessful season
in 1965, Honda revised their 1-litre engine completely. Brabham won ten of the
year's 16 European Formula Two races in his Brabham-Honda. There was no
European Formula Two championship that year, but Brabham won the Trophées
de France, a championship consisting of six of the French Formula Two
races.
In 1967,
the Formula One title went to Brabham's teammate Denny Hulme. Hulme had better
reliability through the year, possibly due to Brabham's desire to try new parts
first.
Despite
taking pole position in the first two rounds, mechanical problems halted his
chances of victory. Brabham outqualified his teammate, and finished fifth in
the race, and with Hulme on the podium, this meant the championship chances
were looking slim for Black Jack, as the circus went to Mexico for the
championship deciding and final race of the season. Once again, he outqualified
his teammate, and needed to win, with Hulme fifth or lower. But Jin Clark was
simply too fast during the whole weekend, and dominated the race from pole to
win, with Brabham finishing over 1 minute and 25 seconds behind. Hulme finished
third, and so the New Zealander won the championship, while Brabham settled for
second place. The team secured the Constructors' Championship, with 67 total
points scored, and 23 points ahead of Lotus which scored a total of 44 points.
Brabham
raced alongside his teammate Jochen Rindt during the 1968 season. It
wasn't a good season for him. He retired from the first seven races, before
scoring two points for fifth place at the German Grand Prix. He retired from
the remaining four races. At the end of the year, he fulfilled a desire to fly
from Britain to Australia in a small twin-engined Beechcraft Queen Air. Partway
through the 1969 season, Brabham suffered serious injuries to his foot in a
testing accident. He returned to racing before the end of the year, but
promised his wife that he would retire after the season finished and sold his
share of the team to Tauranac.
"I felt very sad, I didn't feel I was giving up racing
because I couldn't do the job. I felt I was just as competitive then as at any
other time, and I really should have won the championship in 1970. I'd
have been a lot better off if I'd stayed, but sometimes family pressures don't
allow you to make the decisions you'd like to."
Finding no
top drivers available despite coming close to bringing Rindt back to the team,
Brabham decided to race for one more year. He began auspiciously, winning the
first race of the season, the South African Grand Prix, and then led the third
race, the Monaco Grand Prix until the very last turn of the last lap. Brabham
was about to hold off the onrushing Rindt (the eventual 1970 F1 champion) when
his front wheels locked in a skid on the sharp right turn only yards from the
finish and he ended up second. While leading at the British Grand Prix at
Brands Hatch, he ran out of fuel at Clearways and Rindt passed him to take the
win while Brabham coasted to the finish in second place. After the 13th and
final race of the season, the Mexican Grand Prix, Brabham did retire. He had
tied Jackie Stewart for fifth in the points standings in the season he
drove at the age of 44. Brabham also drove for the works Matra team during
the 1970 World Sportscar Championship season and won the final race of the
season and his final top level race at the Paris 1000 km in October that
year. He then made a complete break from racing and returned to Australia,
to the relief of his wife who had been "scared stiff" each time he
drove.
Following
his retirement, Brabham and his family moved to a farm between Sydney and
Melbourne. Brabham says that he "never really wanted" the move, but his wife
hoped their sons could grow up away from motorsport. As well as running the new
venture, he continued his interest in businesses in the UK and Australia,
including a small aviation company and garages and car dealerships. He also set
up Engine Developments. in 1971 with John Judd, who had worked for
Brabham on the Repco engine project in the mid -960s. The company builds
engines for racing applications. Brabham was also a shareholder in Jack
Brabham Engines Pty Ltd., an Australian company marketing Jack Brabham
memorabilia.
The Brabham
team continued in Formula One, winning two further Drivers' Championships in
the early 1980s under Bernie Ecclestone's ownership. Although the original
organisation went into administration in 1992, the name was attached to a
German company selling cars and accessories in 2008, and an unsuccessful
attempt to set up a new Formula One team the following year. On both occasions
the Brabham family, which was unconnected to the ventures, announced its
intention to take legal advice. In September 2014, Brabham's youngest son
David announced Project Brabham, a new team planning to use a cloud
sourcing business model to enter the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship in
the LMP2 category. Despite his three titles, and although John Cooper
considered him "the greatest", Formula One journalist Adam
Cooper wrote in 1999 that Brabham is never listed among the Top 10 of all time,
noting that "Stirling Moss and Jim Clark dominated the headlines when Jack
was racing, and they still do". Brabham was the first post-war racing
driver to be knighted when he received the honour in 1978 for services to
motorsport. He has received several other honours and in 2011, the suburb of
Brabham in Perth, Western Australia, was named after him. A race circuit and an
automotive training school were also named after him in the early 2010s.
In
retirement, Brabham continued to be involved in motorsport events, appearing at
contemporary and historic motorsport events around the world where he often
drove his former Cooper and Brabham cars until the early 2000s. In 1999, after
competing at the Goodwood Revival at the age of 73 he commented that
driving stopped him getting old. Despite a large accident at the 2000
Revival, the first racing accident to put him in hospital overnight, he
continued to drive until at least 2004. By the late 2000s, ill-health was
preventing him from driving in competition. In addition to the deafness caused
by years of motor racing without adequate ear protection, his eyesight was
reduced due to macular degeneration and he had kidney disease for
which by 2009 he was receiving dialysis three times a week.
Nonetheless, that year he attended a celebration of the 50th anniversary of his
first world championship at the Phillip Island Classic festival of motorsport,and in 2010 flew to
Bahrain with most of the other Formula One world Drivers' Champions for a
celebration of 60 years of the Formula One world championship. Brabham was the
oldest surviving F1 champion.
Brabham and
Betty had three sons together: Geoff, Gary and David. All three became involved
in motorsport, with support from Brabham in their early years. Between them,
they have won sportscar and single-seater races and championships. Geoff was an
Indycar and sportscar racer who won five North American sportscar championships
as well as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, while David competed in Formula One
for the Brabham team and has also won the Le Mans race as well as three
Japanese and North American sportscar titles. Gary also drove briefly in
Formula One, although his F1 career consisted of two DNPQ's for the Life team. Brabham
and Betty divorced in 1994 after 43 years. Brabham married his second wife,
Margaret in 1995 and they lived on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Brabham's
grandson Matthew (son of Geoff) graduated from karts in 2010 and won two
ladders of the Road to Indy, eventually racing in the 2016 Indianapolis 500 and
winning three Stadium Super Trucks championships. Another grandson, Sam,
the son of David and Lisa, whose brother Mike also was an F1 driver,
stepped up to car racing from karts in 2013 when he made his debut in the
British Formula Ford Championship. The Brabham family have been involved
in world-class motorsport for over 60 years.
Brabham
made his last public appearance on 18 May 2014, appearing with one of the cars
he built. He died at his home on the
Gold Coast on 19 May 2014, aged 88, following a lengthy battle with
liver disease. He was eating breakfast with his wife, Margaret, when he
died. In a statement on the
family's website, Brabham's son David confirmed his father's death.
"It's
a very sad day for all of us", David Brabham stated. "My father
passed away peacefully at home at the age of 88 this morning. He lived an
incredible life, achieving more than anyone would ever dream of and he will
continue to live on through the astounding legacy he leaves behind."
Brabham was
the last surviving world champion from the 1950s era.
At his
request, his ashes were scattered at the Tamborine Mountain Skywalk in
Queensland Australia by his wife Margaret, Lady Brabham on 4 September 2014.
Brabham was a frequent visitor to the Skywalk.
PUBLISHER:
William
Kimber, London. Hardcover 223mm x 150mm 240 pages. Black and white photographs. Weight:
450g.
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