By 1957 Jack Brabham was getting the hang of this European racing caper, he was the winningest Formula 2 driver in in the winningest car that year.
Cooper’s Type 43 was powered by the brand-new 1475cc Coventry Climax twin-cam, two-valve FPF four-cylinder engine.
Coopers entered Jack in nine F2 races that year and he won five of them, most were blue-riband events too: the London Trophy at Crystal Palace, Prix de Paris, Montlhery, the Rochester Trophy at Brands and Oulton Park’s Gold Cup.
Motor Racing’s fantastic cover shot – very well-used down-the-decades and perhaps taken by Geoff Goddard – above was taken at Goodwood during the Woodcote Cup on September 28, where Jack’s teammate, Roy Salvadori triumphed in another works T43. Roy also won the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone a fortnight before, other 1957 Cooper T43 winners were George Wicken and Tony Marsh.
The Haves in 1957 used a Cooper chassis and a Climax FPF engine, the rest made do with a Climax single-cam FWA or FWB engine and another chassis.
Funnily enough Lotus’ best ‘F2 result’ for the year was Tom Dickson’s victory at Snetterton on May 19 aboard a Lotus 11 FWA during a combined F2/sportscar race. The much vaunted, light, clever, gorgeous, front-engined, and fragile F2 Lotus 12 FPF (below) flattered to deceive: its best results were a second and a third placing for Cliff Allison in the Gold Cup, and Woodcote Cup respectively.
Other F2 winners in ’57 were Maurice Trintignant aboard a works Ferrari Dino 156 in the Coupe Internationale de Vitesse at Reims in July and Edgar Barth’s victory in the F2 race within a race, at the GermanGrand Prix at the Nurburgring in August aboard a Porsche 500RS.
That Dino spawned a series of V6 cars, race and rally engines that were still winning well into the mid-1970s.
By mid-1959 Brabham was looking a fairly complete professional…
Jack and (the works team) Cooper had just taken their first Grand Epreuve wins at Monaco on May 10, while Motor Racing’s cover above shows Jack on the way to victory in the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone on May 2.
By then Brabham’s Cooper is a Type 51 and the engine a 2.5-litre FPF. The F2 youth of 1957 had grown into a dominant adult by 1959. It may have been a simple motor but it was oh-so-sweet.
See here for a long feature on Cooper Types 41/43/45/51/53: https://primotipo.com/2019/10/04/cooper-t41-43-45-51-53/ More about Jack in ’57: https://primotipo.com/2020/01/28/cooper-t39-climax-le-mans-1957-brabham-raby/
Motor Racing magazine, as the covers note, was the official organ of the British Racing and Sports Car Club. It succeeded Iota and was published from January 1954 to February 1970…bloody good too!
Credits…
Motor Racing magazines – fantastic they are too – many thanks to Bob King
Finito…
primotipo... 