11/05/2016
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
Bernie has received credit for Lewis being on the grid at Sochi. Vital powertrain parts had to be flown to the race and they came straight off the plane and into a truck with no hassle by customs. Bernie has a good relationship with Vladimir Putin and this should be no surprise because each, in his respective domain, believes in one man, one vote; provided each is the one man with the only vote.
Impressive though that service was, it pales into nothing compared with Jack Brabham at the 1968 Belgian GP. The Australian company, Repco, which had given the Brabham team back to back World Championships was struggling with the new dohc RB860 engine and one of the problems was that Repco was 12,000 miles from the motor racing industry. There were problems with both the supply of basic parts and with quality control.
Take one simple thing, gudgeon pins. You would not have thought that gudgeon pins would be a problem, but they were in a country with an embryo manufacturing industry. Eventually the problem was solved by using gudgeon pins from a Petter diesel engine.
In Spain, Jack had a valve seat fall out because the wrong material was used by a sub-contractor and the valve seats were shrinking. Ron Tauranac says, "It was at the Belgian Grand Prix when this became clear. After practice on the day before the race, we stripped down an engine and discovered the problem.
"Jack contacted John Judd at the Brabham Racing Organisation with a request to make new valve seats, he then flew his own plane back to England with two cylinder heads and collected the valve seats. To fit them, he heated the heads in his kitchen cooker so that the seats could be shrunk into place.
"At three in the morning on the day of the race the smell of baking metal woke Betty Brabham, who was convinced that her house was on fire."
Like Lewis. Jack was a triple World Champion. Unlike any other World Champion, Jack had stripped down his engine, discovered a problem and had set about rectifying it in under 24 hours. Only a genius would have realised that his own kitchen cooker could do the job. Even in 1968 every other team would have sent out for help.
Jack flew his plane back to Belgium, snatched some sleep while the cylinder heads were fitted and then raced on Spa, the most challenging circuit in the world. He retired from the race with sticking throttle slides.
There was one other thing that weekend, Brabham became the first F1 team to qualify (and race) using a rear wing. Ferrari followed an hour or so behind during the practice period, at the same race, with a more sophisticated arrangement which allowed the wing to be adjusted from the cockpit. It was a case of two teams working in parallel and waking up to what Jim Hall's Chaparral team had been doing in Can-Am.
A difference between Brabham and Ferrari is that while Jack's business partner, Ron Tauranac, designed the Brabham BT26-Repco, Jack had an input from before the first pencil line on the drawing board. Ferrari's drivers, Chris Amon and Jacky Ickx, had to adapt to what the boffins presented.
Further, Jack did not drive a works car. The Brabham Racing Organisation was a private team which bought cars from Motor Racing Developments, owned by Brabham and Tauranac. There had been occasions when other private teams took delivery of an F1 Brabham before Jack, because they had put down a deposit first.
Baking cylinder heads in an oven and introducing wings to F1 in a single weekend puts getting engine parts through customs into perspective. Remember, Jack spotted the problem and ordered the replacements from an organisation he had in place. He piloted his own plane and personally fitted the new valve seats.
Jack Brabham worked harder, and better, than any driver in history to ensure his success which is why he had greatness not measured by statistics. By the way, the mechanic he had taken with him from Cooper to BRO was Ron Dennis.
Learn more about Mike and check out his previous features, here