1961
Cooper and Jack Brabham trigger the Indy 500 rear-engined revolution
Together, they’d turned Formula 1 back to front. Then, Cooper and Jack Brabham kicked the doors in for another rear-engined revolution, at the revered home of the big-beast roadsters. Brabham took a rookie test in October 1960 in a lowline T53 and lapped only a couple of mph off the 1959 pole time. It only confirmed the establishment’s fears and spooked officials who thought green cars at The Brickyard were bad luck. They were – for the roadsters.
The following May, Brabham crisscrossed the Atlantic to qualify at Indy and race at Monaco and Zandvoort, then returned to start the 500, right. Coventry Climax had stretched an FPF to 2.7 litres, Dunlop had provided special asymmetric tyres and Kleenex millionaire Jim Kimberly had made John Cooper an offer that made him beam. The double world champion started from the fifth row. Lacking grunt on the straights, but speedy in the turns, Brabham fitted in. Ninth was a sign of what was to come. Colin Chapman took note.
30 MOMENTS THAT CHANGED MOTOR SPORT
2012
Lauda talks Hamilton into a Mercedes
Ross Brawn opened the door, but Niki Lauda pushed Lewis Hamilton through it. Then ‘only’ a one-time world champion, Britain’s hero was minded to stick on McLaren rather than twist on Mercedes. Hamilton was wary of Lauda, who had been critical as a pundit. But he took the call because, well, it’s Lauda, who then knocked on his hotel door at the Singapore GP.
The seeds of friendship were sown, and the three-time champion triggered the most bountiful driver-team partnership F1 had seen. After Niki’s death in 2019, Hamilton told Mark Hughes: “Without his support I probably wouldn’t have made the switch.”
1977
Patrick Head says “yes” and creates an F1 powerhouse
Frank Williams Racing Cars had enjoyed a successful first season in 1969, Piers Courage taking a brace of second places in the team’s Brabham BT26A, but the following campaigns would be difficult. The team carried on after Williams’s
friend Courage was killed during the 1970 Dutch GP, but it was rarely competitive and ran a rotating cast of drivers. Financial worries became a constant, too, and before the 1976 season Williams sold a 60% stake in his business to Canadian industrialist Walter Wolf.
Williams left and set up again as Williams Grand Prix Engineering – and promising engineer Patrick Head, below, went with him. Head’s FW06 was neat and reasonably competitive but the following FW07 embraced Colin Chapman’s ground-effect principles and took them to a higher plane. Williams became a GP winner in 1979 and world champion, with Alan Jones, in 1980. Frank was on his way to becoming one of the most successful entrants in F1 history – and Patrick Head was a crucial pivot.
1955
Mercedes pulls the plug on motor sport and creates racing history’s biggest ‘what could have been’
“The complete withdrawal by Daimler-Benz is an unhappy thing for many of us, especially those interested in technical development,” wrote Denis Jenkinson in December 1955. “But, on the other hand, they had monopolised racing to such an extent that their withdrawal will at least allow someone else to win.” It was in Stuttgart at the end-of-season celebrations for Mercedes’ near-whitewash of international motor sport that Dr Fritz Nallinger confirmed the company’s complete withdrawal, beyond the Formula 1 pull-out which had already been made public back in the summer.
Nine grand prix wins from 12 starts over two seasons, victories for the 300 SLR on the Mille Miglia, Tourist Trophy, Targa Florio, Eifelrennen and Swedish GP, plus Tulip Rally and Liège-Rome-Liége triumphs for the 300 SL… Jenks had a point. Whether we believed the official reason – mission accomplished, it is time to focus on ‘passenger-car development’ – or how much the ongoing fallout from the
