The man who built his own Formula 1 car... and won

what if you built your own car many of us have had that strange and wild thought could I even do that do I have what it takes to learn and invest enough time to design and produce every single part of an automobile would I be able to successfully change the oil in my bespoke vehicle for the most part it's this dream that has led to so many of the Great and successful car companies of the past 100 years creating your own car that would be built to basically get you from point A to point B is one thing building a race car that would be able to compete at the absolute highest level of competition that's another thing altogether but that's exactly what one man did and not only did he build his own Formula One race car he actually drove it and won our Story begins right outside of Sydney Australia with a young boy named Jack brabham Jack was living the kind of young Aussie boy life that we should all try to provide our sons even if we're not in Australia he was busy going through the ranks of various moving vehicles from tagging along by behind his bicycle-going cousins on his push and go scooter to teaching himself how to ride a bicycle despite his parents taking off the handlebars and seat in hopes of slowing the kid down riding a bicycle with no handlebars or seat sounds awful by the way to racing soapbox cars down nearby Hills Jack had a knack not only for going fast on anything that rolled he showed an amazing aptitude for building at a young age from meccano sets to actual flying model airplanes powered by rubber band propellers at the age of 12 Jack's father taught him how to drive their Chrysler 77 even letting him drive the big car home from their family-owned grocery store far before he had a license at the age of 15 he found himself working at the garage which serviced his father's Vehicles while taking a course in mechanical engineering at night over time Jack proved Adept with everything automotive and he was given more and more opportunity at his job to learn the ins and outs of the car during this time he turned 16 and he got his first motorcycle a 350 cc velaset his curiosity took hold and he quickly had the entire motorcycle taken apart and running better than before and this was really the beginning of Jack's career as both a mechanic and as you know an operator or a racer he would buy and fix up any Vela set that he could find and sell them for a profit in his back shed which was now converted into a workshop but before they were sold he and his friends would ride their motorbikes for hours as far out into the bush as they could go a few years into his mechanical engineering course Jack was called into the Royal Australian Air Force to serve during the war now he really wanted to fly but he was best suited and needed really as a flight mechanic during this time Jack really broadened his understanding of mechanical Concepts and after the war in 1945 Jack's grandfather built him a workshop on his property and Jack began working himself on family and friends cars at this time he became friends with a man named Johnny Schoenberg who was a casual racer if you aren't familiar with Speedway racing well this is dangerous stuff at one point he and Jack were in route to a disposal sale and Johnny convinced Jack to come with him to check out a dirt track race the cars were tiny and rough and to Jack these guys seemed absolutely crazy he actually wasn't that interested in racing at this point it didn't really do it for him but the two did start working together with a few others to build Johnny a better car and after five months and 400 Australian dollars there it was the car would undergo lots of changes the little workshop would even start producing their own bespoke Parts even engine parts shortly after Johnny's wife convinced him to stop racing so Johnny went to Jack and asked him if he'd like to race the car and Jack had no wife to stop him at this point and they didn't have a racer and after a bit of practice Jack entered his first small race and his initial impression of these people proved correct these race car guys were truly mental if you've ever raced in any form you know what he's talking about dirt and rocks flew everywhere and Jack took dead last but once he got used to how all of it worked he started to find himself winning and winning a lot it turned out he had a little bit of that lunacy in himself Jack kept racing he was young and he was winning everything he entered with his little car this was fantastic training for his future speed car racing especially on dirt really called for incredible reflexes and awareness open cockpits and lots of crashes I mean this was really incredibly dangerous stuff and not only did it train many future Formula One drivers to be good at racing but it also gave them a sort of tenacity and fearlessness you know this wasn't just primitive go-kart racing but Jack was really good and he was getting quite a bit of local press for all of his wins but eventually he sold the car to fund a new road racing vehicle a mark IV Cooper chassis in which he dropped a BSA 500 engine then a Vincent 1000 and ultimately and 1100 twin quickly road racing would take over his life he lived off his winnings and he invested anything extra that he had right back into his car soon Jack had enough money alongside a bit of cash from his father to invest in a proper front-engine Cooper Bristol Mark II this car was advertised as brand new and it was incredibly expensive for him but on his first test run Jack watched the oil pressure drop this was not a new car it turned out Jack pulled the engine apart and found a bent crankshaft and shot bearings in taking the car apart he also found that some of the components like the flywheel for example were unnecessarily heavy of course he took his experience making his own parts to remedy this and he ended up saving about 50 pounds just by putting a different flywheel in in August of 1953 Jack made his professional road racing debut at the Queensland road racing Championship where he took the win now this would set off an incredible racing career in Australia where Jack wood could consistently stay ahead of the game by making small improvements to his car through the late 40s and early 50s Jack brabham won virtually everything with this little speed car not simply because he was a fast racer but more because he knew his car better than anybody else but the possibility of racing Beyond Australia and Beyond New Zealand particularly in Europe was becoming a reality when Jack met dick Jeffrey who was the competition's manager of Dunlop Tire Company and also Dean delamonte the competition's manager of the royal automobile club in London and they liked the idea of this talented young Aussie taking a shot in the highest level of competitive road racing so they answered all of his questions and soon in early 1955 he found himself on a plane headed for Europe just getting there was no easy feat though and to fund The Venture he sold virtually everything he had that was Automotive related including his homemade Cooper known at this point as the redex car now in retrospect Jack actually believed that he made a mistake selling that car in favor of the supposedly Superior British race cars you know he didn't trust his own skills as a mechanical engineer to see its International potential instead he opted for a 2-liter Formula 2 Cooper Alta upon advertisement from Peter Whitehead a former Le Mans Champion the main appeal of the Cooper Alta was its twin overhead cam 4-cylinder engine Jack was set to appear in the first big race of the Season at Goodwood where he ran out of gas he was really just given bad info on the car's consumption and also he wasn't used to the fueling in this part of the world then in the next race the Alta engine broke so he ditched the engine and opted for a Bristol one instead shortly after he found himself at Silverstone racing against the likes of Sterling Moss where he finished in seventh place a turning point came in his career when he found himself going head-to-head for third place with Sterling Moss at snedderton they had quite the battle and now Jack knew that he really could compete with these guys now despite trying to get his hands on a Maserati for the 56th season of Formula One Cooper came in and they provided him with a dream Formula 2 car and this car stood out for having its engine behind the driver rather than in front like virtually every car on the track Jack worked on this car tirelessly at the Cooper garage where he was becoming sort of an employee though not paid again he was learning what it took to build a race car for the highest level of competition and this idea of a mid-engine race car really made sense to him the 57 season for Formula 2 was where brabham really started coming into his own there's a pretty crazy story from this season at Monaco he was in third place when the fuel pump broke causing the car to die and he was a mere 800 yards from the finish line which is not far when you're driving a car but he didn't have a car at this point so powered by sheer determination he jumped out of the car and pushed it 800 yards to the Finish Line to take sixth place in front of thousands of cheering fans once again he was in the news there was something special about this guy these were important moments not just for Jack but for Formula 2 as well and soon Formula One racing technology Jack's lightweight but powerful mid-engine car formula was really starting to show its superiority but nobody knew that quickly this formula would take over it was 1959 when Cooper and Jack really plotted a serious attempt to take the Formula One championship in partnership with a young talented racer an engineer named Bruce McLaren they set out to build a mid-engined race car powered by a climax two and a half liter engine with the goal of taking down the biggest fastest cars in the world Jack would win at Monaco and the British Grand Prix and going into the final race at Sebring Sterling Moss was the only Rider with a Chance of taking the title from Jack if he could win though Moss was winning the race early on in the middle of the race he was forced to pull out from mechanical problems so Jack had to finish that race however he and Bruce McLaren had been battling it out for first the entire time they were neck and neck and then with half a lap left he again ran out of fuel and coasted to a stop so once again he jumped out and pushed the car about a hundred yards to the Finish Line making sure that nobody helped him and giving Jack the championship by just a few points he would also take the title with ease in 1960. this year really would Mark the final year that a front engine Formula One car would do anything this was the last year that a front engine car even took a race everyone was following Cooper and brabham's setup at this point despite changes to the rules for the season Jack had really left his mark on the racing world with this formula of mid-engine cars for racing but his story wasn't done as Cooper's success started to wane through the 60s in Formula One racing and companies like Ferrari really began to once again figure their stuff out and really get their own takes on mid-engine cars Jack began War working on a new project while still racing for Cooper despite struggling with the all-new 1500 CC limit for Formula One the decision to start building his own race cars came out of a desire to see all of his ideas worked out you know when you're not at the top you really can't have full control and he was beginning to really butt heads with the more conservatively minded Owen Matic which was Cooper's chief designer now back in Australia Jack had a successful local garage selling and customizing production cars Jack decided to partner with a man named Ron taranak a British race engineer and designer who had done work to improve earlier Cooper race cars together they started building a single-seater race car for formula Junior this was a great place to start as the engines had to be production based and Ron's experience was really in building production Racers now for this car the biggest area of improvement over the current competition in this class which was mainly from Cooper and Lotus had to do with suspend engine this car and this is something that would really influence their cars going forward the car featured fully adjustable anti-roll bar suspension making it possible to optimize the car for each race now this was 1961 and Jack's Endeavors were unknown to the higher-ups at Cooper nobody knew that he was building his own race cars so in order to stay under the radar they finished the little car and they sold it to an Australian racer who experienced some success racing it under the name mrd but it didn't take long for the news to get out that Jack was really building his own race cars now brabham's first attempt at racing his own Formula One car came in 1962 where he did take a few points marking the first time a Formula One driver had ever taken points driving a car bearing his own name this was a brabham car in total and it was powered by a climax 90 degree V8 year by year the car got faster in 1964 Dan Gurney the American driver for the brabham Racing Organization took two wins but in 65 the team took no wins now fate would move in Jack's favor for the 1966 season the FIA doubled the capacity limit for Formula One race cars now getting your hands on a monster engine necessary for what would easily be the fastest Formula One in history was no easy feat brabham reached out to the Australian engineering firm Repco now they never made a Formula One engine prior to this but they shocked the world basing this new twin cam 3-liter V8 on surprisingly enough an aluminum Oldsmobile f-85 engine paired with the brabham's latest Sleek chassis early testing showed Jack that he had a winner with this car it was reliable it was powerful it was lightweight and it really made Power nicely across the Rev range but the biggest question was how it would fare against Ferrari's V12 and Cooper's maserati-powered v12s it didn't look good from the outset the big v12s took the podiums in the first two races but Jack was just figuring out exactly how to race this new car as everyone was also kind of learning how to handle these bigger more powerful vehicles and handling would really prove to be the key for brabham's car in the third race he laid back in the slipstream to gain some sort of advantage over the v12s and then slowly overtook all of them in the corners the v12s easily made 60 more horsepower than his car so he was really forced to make up the time in the turns and soon he found himself in first and in first he stayed for four races in a row giving him a massive lead in the championship in the end Jack won the Formula One Championship this year by 14 points which is really a lot for this time driving a car bearing his own name this was the first and only time a Formula One racer has ever done so and brabham also took the Constructors Championship this year in 67 the team would once again take the constructors but brabham failed to defend his own title despite taking second and our arguably the team had a better season overall with him and his teammate both taking two wins and finishing every race going forward the story of the 60s for brabham really would be on the production side as they became the world's largest Open Wheel race car producers for customers unlike many of the Great Racers of the 50s and 60s Jack was privileged to live a long and fruitful life seems like for many of these Racers from the 50s and 60s if the track didn't kill them during this era they would end up crashing just their regular car somehow now if someone were to read only the title of this video or to say to you you know did you know that a guy won the Formula One Championship driving his own car you might think that this is describing a person who just woke up one day and decided that instead of going to their insurance job they were just going to make their own race car and that's just not how these things go these kinds of incredible Feats come from Decades of learning and digging in and testing and taking in information being willing to take input from people these things don't just happen so sorry to crush your dreams but if you don't have any experience not only can you not build a race car you probably can't build your own commuter but when I look at this story and also the story of John Britton and his incredible home build race bike and the fact that these guys along with Bruce McLaren by the way they all came from the same part of the world you know Australia and New Zealand and this area really seemed to be a kind of Haven for great Automotive minds and there's a reason for this through history parts and materials and resources have never been as easily accessible in this part of the world versus here in the West for Jack brabham this was really compounded by the fact that his adolescence happened during World War II Australia just did not provide the same kind of access for budding engineers and Racers as those growing up for example in Great Britain and this forced Jack to be inventive and creative as he built you know the kind of things that young boys build in then of course as he started building his own race cars the thing that stands out to me about Jack's story is really the progression so much changed in racing from Jack's early days to his final championship title in 66 driving his own car his prime years of racing were some of the most formative for what we now call Modern Formula One racing and Jack's ideas were really right at the heart of those major changes with that perspective it's really not that surprising that he was able to build and race you know a world-being car that's exactly what it takes to win at the highest level is that sort of open mind on the one hand I think many would look at today's formula one scene and say that it's impossible for anyone really to do the kind of thing that Jack did in his day to build a team build your own car from the ground up and take on companies with Decades of experience and millions and millions of dollars and maybe that is true maybe these days are long gone but I have to wonder if there aren't still some young Jack brabham still out there today maybe even in Australia just waiting to get their first chance on a go-kart and maybe the right people will come into their lives and Inspire them to be creative and to really keep pushing the boundaries and maybe we'll see another person like Jack alright guys hope you enjoyed this video thanks for watching be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos and yeah we'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Bart's Car Stories

Views: 117,908

Keywords: car, cars, car history, car video, car videos, history of cars, automotive history, vehicle, automotive, car channel, bart, bart's car stories, car stories, story, best car videos, jack brabham, brabham, formula 1, formula 1 history, formula one, formula 2, the man who built his own formula 1 racecar, formula 1 championship, racing history, history of racing, motorsport, motorsports, best, sterling moss, moss, ferarri, cooper, maserati, british, italian

Id: U1fndYjv8LQ

Length: 18min 23sec (1103 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023