Australian Formula One Champion Jack Brabham : A Career at Glance
Born in Hurstville, Australia on April 2, 1926, young John Arthur “Jack” Brabham was always more curious about the dispatch automobiles that frequented his father’s grocery store than the fruits and vegetables they unloaded. Little John had already taught himself to drive way before he was old enough to obtain a driver’s licence; and also gained considerable skill at keeping his beloved vehicles fit for flight when he was still fairly young. The youthful Australian’s technical proclivities instigated him to enrol at a mechanical institute where he was educated in practicable engineering. Yet at school, Jack was a reluctant student and by the age of 15 he had abandoned conventional education to take up a job at an engineering outlet. The Australian then proceeded to enlist himself with the Royal Australian Air Force, where he hoped to be trained as an airplane pilot but was instead called upon to work as a flight technician. Upon obtaining his release from military service, Brabham set up an engineering enterprise of his own in Sydney with the assistance of a relative.
The Australian’s initiation into the motor racing arena came through the courtesy of a pal who regularly competed on midgets. Jack assisted him in constructing a new vehicle and after his friend hung up the racing gloves, the mechanic decided it would be worth a try to test his luck in motorsport. Brabham took to the tracks in self-built midgets and instantly proved his mettle as a race winning talent. He triumphed at four consecutive Australian championships and in 1953 was crowned a hillclimb champion. In 1955, Jack’s ever intensifying passion for motor racing prompted him to move to England. Here he met the Cooper’s who had wrought one of his prize-winning Australian vehicles, an encounter that marked the beginning of a highly fruitful, long term relationship that was to power the Cooper car enterprise and Brabham to the very foreground of the Formula One historical annals.
Brabham incorporated his technical knowledge to the Cooper Car Company F1 vehicle productions to great effect. It was the Australian’s innovative approach to car development that led a Cooper to its first ever racing triumph in 1958, when Stirling Moss powered the product to an impressive win in Argentina. The 1958 run also marked the Brabham-inspired Cooper team’s initial complete season in Formula One. The following year, Brabham sealed wins at the British and Monaco events and produced persistently solid results on his way to clinching his first world championship title. In 1960, Brabham went on to emulate the 1959 exploits in extraordinary fashion by seizing his second successive drivers’ title after triumphing at the British, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian and French showdowns one after the other.
After a less than competitive Ferrari-dominated 1961 season, Brabham abandoned Cooper to establish Motor Racing Developments, a venture he conspired jointly with gifted Australian producer Ron Tauranac. The MRD-Brabhams were immediately a hot item at many levels of motor racing, especially in Formula Two circles where they reigned supreme for quite a few years and helped to set the ball rolling for many aspiring new drivers. In Formula One, the Brabham make initially emerged in 1962, and gradually gained reliability with frequent upgrades. Jack Brabham’s investment paid off in style when his teammate Dan Gurney steered the vehicle to victories in Mexico and France.
In 1966, when new Formula One specifications came into effect, Brabham embarked on a technical venture with Australian automotive production firm, Repco, to construct a more sophisticated F1 model. The move paid off when a 40 year old “Geriatric Brabham” raced his Brabham-Repco from pole to a first place finish at the 1966 Dutch event in Zandvoort. The same year, Brabham made history by becoming the lone driver ever to land the World Championship title in a self-designed car after winning the season’s French, German and British Grand Prix.
Brabham finally bid farewell to his truly illustrious career at the close of the 1970 Formula One season at the age of 44. After selling the Brabham team to Bernie Eccelestone, Jack moved back to his Australian homeland where he set up a variety of enterprises. The Australian’s considerable assistance to British motorsport was rewarded fittingly in 1985 when he was knighted to assume the title of Sir Jack Brabham.
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