Jack Brabham
Sir John Arthur Brabham was an Australian racing driver and motorsport executive, who competed in Formula One from to. Brabham won three Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles, which he won in, and, and won 14 Grands Prix across 16 seasons. He co-founded Brabham in 1960, leading the team to two World Constructors' Championship titles, and remains the only driver to have won the World Drivers' Championship in an eponymous car.
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 only man to win the Formula One world championship driving one of his own cars. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving World Champion of the 1950s.
After the 1970 Formula One season, Brabham retired to Australia, where he bought a farm and maintained business interests, which included the Engine Developments racing engine manufacturer and several garages.
Early life
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.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. 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 Williamtown, where he maintained Bristol Beaufighters at No. 5 Operational Training Unit. 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.
Racing career
Australia
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 at tracks such Sydney's Cumberland Speedway, the Sydney Showground, and the Sydney Sports Ground, as well as interstate tracks such as Adelaide's Kilburn and Rowley Park speedways and the Ekka in Brisbane. Brabham has since said that it was "terrific driver training. You had to have quick reflexes: in effect you lived—or possibly died—on them." Due to the time required to prepare the car, the sport also became his living. Brabham won the 1948 Australian Speedcar Championship, the 1949 Australian and South Australian Speedcar championships, and the 1950–1951 Australian championship with the car.
After successfully running the midget at some hillclimbing events in 1951, Brabham became interested in road racing. He bought and modified a series of racing cars from the Cooper Car Company, a British constructor, and from 1953 concentrated on this form of racing, in which drivers compete on closed tarmac circuits. He was supported by his father and by the Redex fuel additive company, although his commercially aware approach—including the title RedeX Special painted on the side of his Cooper-Bristol—did not go down well with the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, which banned the advertisement. Brabham competed in Australia and New Zealand until early 1955, taking "a long succession of victories", including the 1953 Queensland Road Racing championship. During this time, he picked up the nickname "Black Jack", which has been variously attributed to his dark hair and stubble, to his "ruthless" approach on the track, and to his "propensity for maintaining a shadowy silence". After the 1954 New Zealand Grand Prix, Brabham was persuaded by Dean Delamont, competitions manager of the Royal Automobile Club in the United Kingdom, to try a season of racing in Europe, then the international centre of road racing.
Europe
Cooper
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 lock and lots of throttle". 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 modified Bobtail mid-engined sports car, powered by a Bristol engine, 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 sports cars 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. He avoided a large crash at the first corner and was running third towards the end of the race when the fuel pump mount failed. After more than three hours of racing, the exhausted Brabham, who "hated to be beaten", pushed the car to the line to finish sixth. The following year, he was Autocar Formula Two champion in a Cooper, while continuing to score minor points-scoring positions with the small-engined Coopers in the World Drivers' Championship and driving for Aston Martin in Sportscars. His schedule necessitated a considerable amount of travel on the roads of Europe. Brabham's driving on public roads was described as "safe as houses", unlike many of his contemporaries—on the way back from the 1957 Pescara Grand Prix, passenger Tony Brooks took over driving after Brabham refused to overtake a long line of lorries. In late 1958, Brabham rekindled his interest in flying and began taking lessons. He bought his own plane and on gaining his licence began to make heavy use of it piloting himself, his family, and members of his team around Europe to races.
In 1959, Cooper obtained 2.5-litre engines for the first time and Brabham put the extra power to good use by winning his first world championship race at the season-opening Monaco Grand Prix after Jean Behra's Ferrari and Stirling Moss's Cooper failed. More podium places were followed by a win in the British Grand Prix at Aintree after Brabham preserved his tyres to the end of the race, enabling him to finish ahead of Moss who had to pit to replace worn tyres. This gave him a 13-point championship lead with four races to go. At the Portuguese Grand Prix at Monsanto Park, Brabham was chasing race leader Moss when a backmarker moved over on him and launched the Cooper into the air. The airborne car hit a telegraph pole, throwing Brabham onto the track, where he narrowly avoided being hit by one of his teammates but escaped with no serious injury. With two wins each, Brabham, Moss, and Ferrari's Tony Brooks were all capable of winning the championship at the final event of the season, the United States Grand Prix at Sebring. Brabham was among those up until 1 am the morning before the race working on the Cooper team cars. The next day, after pacing himself behind Moss, who soon retired with a broken gearbox, he led almost to the end of the race before running out of fuel on the last lap. He again pushed the car to the finish line to place fourth, although in the event this was unnecessary as his other title rival, Brooks, finished only third. His championship-winning margin over Brooks was four points. According to Gerald Donaldson, "some thought owed more to stealth than skill, an opinion at least partly based on Brabham's low-key presence."
Despite his success with Cooper, Brabham was sure he could do better. He considered buying Cooper in partnership with Roy Salvadori and then in late 1959 he asked his friend Ron Tauranac to come to the UK and work with him, producing upgrade kits for Sunbeam Rapier and Triumph Herald road cars at his car dealership, Jack Brabham Motors, but with the long-term aim of designing racing cars. Brabham continued to drive for Cooper, but on the long flight back from the 1960 season-opening Argentine Grand Prix, he had a heart-to-heart with John Cooper. John's father Charlie and the designer Owen Maddock had been reluctant to update their car, but although a Cooper had won in Argentina, other cars had been faster before they broke down. Brabham helped design the more advanced Cooper T53, including advice from Tauranac. Brabham spun the new car out of the next championship race, the Monaco Grand Prix, but then embarked on a series of five straight victories. He won from the front at the Dutch, French, and Belgian Grands Prix, where title rival Moss was badly injured in a practice accident that put him out for two months. Two other drivers were killed during the race. At the British Grand Prix, Brabham was closing on Graham Hill's BRM before Hill spun off, leaving Brabham the victory. He then came back from eighth place to second at the Portuguese Grand Prix after sliding off on tramlines and won after race leader John Surtees crashed. Brabham's points total was put out of reach when the British teams withdrew from the Italian GP on safety grounds. Mike Lawrence writes that Brabham's expertise in setting up the cars was a significant factor in Cooper's 1960 drivers' and constructors' titles.
Coventry Climax were late in producing the smaller 1.5-litre engine required for the 1961 season and the Cooper-Climaxes were outclassed by new mid-engined cars from Porsche, Lotus, and championship-winners Ferrari. Brabham scored only three points and finished 11th in the championship. He had a little more success in the non-championship Formula One races, where he ran his own private Coopers and took three victories at Snetterton, Brussels, and Aintree.
The same year, Brabham entered the famous Indianapolis 500 oval race for the first time in a modified version of the Formula One Cooper. It had a 2.7-litre Climax engine producing compared to the 4.4-litre, Offenhauser engines used by the front-engined roadsters driven by all the other entrants. Jack qualified a respectable 17th at 145.144 mp/h, and while the front-engined roadsters were much faster on the long front and back straights, the rear-engined Cooper's superior handling through the turns and the shorter north and south sections kept the reigning World Champion competitive. Brabham ran as high as third before finishing ninth, completing all 200 laps. Although most of the doubters in the American Indycar scene claimed that rear-engine cars were for drivers who like to be pushed around, as Brabham put it, it "triggered the rear-engined revolution at Indy" and within five years most of the cars that raced at Indianapolis would be rear-engined.