primotipo…

Jack and Betty Brabham during the 1954 Australian Grand Prix weekend in the Southport paddock attending to the needs of Jack’s Cooper T23 Bristol.

I’ve done Cooper Bristols to death but these two colour shots of Jack are the earliest I’ve seen – Kodachrome at its best – so I thought I’d pop them up rather than add them to an existing post and effectively lose them.

Brabham had a lousy weekend in Southport, out with engine troubles on lap 2. Lex Davison won the race in his HWM Jaguar after Stan Jones suffered a chassis weld failure that pitched him off the road and through the undergrowth, killing the car but thankfully not its intrepid driver.

CB/Mk2/1/53 was pretty trick by this stage, where is the photo above folks?

Jack had been racing it for a couple of years and made some modifications – some suggested by British mechanic/engineer Frank Ashby who was then living at Whale Beach on Sydney’s Barrenjoey Peninsula – including fitment of triple Stromberg carbs instead of the usual trio of Zeniths and taking bulk weight off the Bristol engine’s flywheel by adapting a Harley Davidson type clutch as used on his speedcar, and extensive machining. The Stromberg BXOV-1 carbs were lightly modified units of examples fitted as standard to the Holden 48-215.

Jack sold the car to Stan Jones when he left to chance his hand in the UK in early 1955 and famously regretted it. The Cooper Alta he bought from Peter Whitehead when he got to Mother England wasn’t a patch on his own car, see here: https://primotipo.com/2016/06/24/jacks-altona-grand-prix-and-cooper-t23-bristol/

Stan didn’t have it for long before selling it to Tom Hawkes in time for the 1955 Australian Grand Prix at Port Wakefield.

The rare shot below shows Hawkes in Jack’s old Cooper Bristol #8, with Brabham looking on from car #6, the monoposto Cooper T40 Bobtail Jack built at Coopers for his championship Grand Prix debut at Aintree in the British GP that July. He then brought it home and scored a lucky win at Port Wakefield after top-guns, Reg Hunt, #5 Maserati A6GCM-250 and Stan Jones, #4 Maybach 3 retired.

The ultimate spec of CB/Mk2/1/53 was created when Tom Hawkes got his hands on it. He raced it initially as was and then made changes to the suspension, replacing the transverse leaf suspension with wishbones and coil springs, added a slimline body, fitted wider Lukey alloy wheels, and critically, replacing the 2-litre Bristol six with a 2.3-litre pushrod Holden Grey six topped by a crossflow Repco Hi-Power cylinder head and a pair of SU carbs.

Tom was third in the 1958 AGP at Bathurst – the ultimate Australian power circuit – with the Cooper in this spec behind Lex Davison’s 3-litre Ferrari 500/625 and Ern Seeliger’s 4.6-litre Maybach 4 Chev V8. Sure, Ted Gray, Tornado 2 Chev and Stan Jones, Maserati 250F retired from the lead, but was the best ever AGP finish for a Holden six, a great achievement.

Etcetera…

John Sherwood and Jack Brabham, perhaps at one of the send-off functions for Jack when he left for the UK in early 1955

Brabham chats to Doug Whiteford on the Australian Grand Prix-Port Wakefield grid in 1955. Cooper T40 Bristol and Talbot Lago T26C.

This pair of shots show Jack aboard the Cooper T40 Bristol during the January 30, 1956 South Pacific Championship meeting at Gnoo Blas. Brabham was second behind Reg Hunt’s new F1 Maserati 250F with Kevin Neale third in, you guessed it, a Cooper T23 Bristol.

These cars – Type 20 and Type 23 or Cooper Bristol Marks 1 and 2 if you like – were hugely important machines in Australian racing for a decent chunk of the 1950s in original spec and modified from mild to wild…

Credits…

Old Motor Racing Photographs Australia, Dick Willis, Allen Cox, LAT photographic, Ed Steet shots via David Zeunert, Lex Denniston shot via Tony Johns, Tony Martin, Adrian Patterson Collection

Tailpiece…

Three of the 1954 AGP protagonists on the cover of Wheels magazine in January 1955. Lex Davison’s HWM Jaguar, an ex-Moss F2 chassis fitted with a C-Type engine, Dick Cobden’s ex-Whitehead Ferrari 125 s/c and Jack Brabham’s RedeX Special Cooper T23 Bristol.

Quite why yerd’ put the winner, Davison, on the cover and two DNFs I know not…the answer is probably the timelines in hand-colouring the photographs for a race held on November 7, 1954.

Finito…