If Jack Brabham were immortal, he would have been 100 today. He was born in Hurstville, Sydney, on April 2, 1926.
Many thanks to Stephen Dalton for the reminder. The date should have been at the front of my mind, as Jack and the cars he and Ron Tauranac designed and built – and Jack’s pending 100th – were the focus of the Racing Past celebrations throughout the Australian Grand Prix carnival a month ago.
In the absence of a dedicated article, this one ‘in stock’ will have to do, key Brabham into the primotipo search engine and that will keep you going for a couple of days…
Onya Jack!
Tiger in ‘yer Tank!
Jack Brabham is trying to focus on the start of the February 12, 1967, Lakeside 99 Tasman Cup round, but is set upon by a couple of tigers intent on getting into his tank…
Esso babes, high heels and all, doing their promotional thing in the hot Queensland sun. It wasn’t too bad a day in the office. Jack was second behind Jim Clark’s Lotus 33 Climax FWMV 2-litre V8 in his Brabham BT23A Repco 640 2.5 V8, with Frank Gardner third in Alec Mildren’s Brabham BT16 Coventry Climax FPF 2.5. Brabhams occupied five of the first six placings, but not the one that mattered.
More on that race meeting here:https://primotipo.com/2019/01/18/lakeside-tasman-meeting-12-february-1967/
It’s the year before the FIA/CSI threw open the floodgates and allowed commercial advertising on racing cars, but even in those faraway days, Brabham’s commercial relationships included Repco Ltd, Esso, Goodyear, Lukey Mufflers, plus whatever freebees he/they could wrangle here and there.
We’re still at Lakeside, where the pair of tigresses are doing the rounds of the paddock, an undertaking fraught with danger, I would have thought.
It’s a ten-point caption competition, really? You can see Sonny-Jim is trying to think of a zinger that will get him a drink in the bar later on. I figure, ‘Can I measure yer’ tail’, probably wouldn’t have done the trick.
Etcetera…
Repco-Brabham Engines Pty. Ltd. and the Brabham Racing Organisation mounted their only full assault – two works-backed cars doing the full eight-round series – only once, in their commercial relationship between 1963-68, in 1967, and fell well short of the mark.
It’s ironic that an engine program originally designed for the 2.5-litre Tasman Cup and Gold Star Championships only ever yielded one Tasman round win, at Longford that year, where the photo above was taken. Yes, there were some Gold Star round wins, but not that many. Still, a couple of World F1 Drivers and Manufacturers Championship wins in 1966-67 plus multiple Australian Sports Car and Hillclimb Championships were reasonable levels of compensation for the investment made!…
Yep, they were Rice Trailers, but Repco-Brabham Engines Pty. Ltd. designed them!
Credits…
Len Lukey/Luke Manton Collection
Finito…
primotipo... 