Fast Out of the Turns

The broad-faced driver has never before been a headliner: the low-slung car is operated on a shoestring. But Australian-born Jack Brabham and his Cooper-Climax are challenging--and beating--the world's biggest names this season in the exacting sport of Grand Prix road racing, the ultimate competition for lean speed machines that can chafe off rubber in skidding turns, accelerate to 190 m.p.h. on the straightaways.

The Cooper-Climax is the product of a small British company that grew out of a garage started in 1919 by Charles Newton Cooper in Surbiton, eleven miles southwest of London. After World War II, Cooper and his son John, an intense, black-haired designer-engineer, got the speed bug and set out to develop a small, cheap racing car powered by a motorcycle engine. Gradually the cars grew faster, but they still used largely hand-me-down engines. At one point the Coopers used a four-cylinder Coventry Climax engine originally designed to pump water for fire fighters. Rebored and rebuilt, the engine finally peaked at 110 h.p.

Light & Low. By 1958, Cooper cars were fast enough to win an occasional Grand Prix. This year Coventry Climax developed a special four-cylinder, 2.5 liter, Grand Prix engine, and the Coopers started showing their tail pipes to all comers. Car and engine are designed for twisting Grand Prix courses. The Climax engine delivers only 240 h.p. v. 290 h.p. for the Ferrari, can produce less speed on long, straight stretches. But the Climax delivers relatively higher power at medium speeds; in addition, the Cooper uses magnesium castings for many components, making it far lighter than the Ferrari (1,100 Ibs. v. 1,500 Ibs.). As one driver explains, "you can drive the thing out of a corner instead of having to change down," and Coopers can zip away from the Ferraris coming out of the turns. With its engine mounted in the rear, the Cooper is a bare 12 ft. long (Ferrari length: 14 ft.. 9 in.). Since there is no long driveshaft, the driver can sit far down in the frame and give the car added stability.

The result, says Driver Jack Brabham, 32, "is a car that's safer and easier to race." As others tell it, the driver makes the package look good. The son of a greengrocer in a Sydney suburb, Brabham studied engineering, during World War II was a flight mechanic in the Royal Australian Air Force. Brabham was lured into the pits by a driving friend who wanted a good mechanic on hand, and soon found himself behind the wheel, although he confesses: "I was frightened to death."

Losing but Winning. In 1955, driving a car from the garage in Surbiton, he won the Australian Grand Prix, snapped up an offer to campaign on the international circuit with Cooper. But he met with little success until this year, when he climbed behind the wheel of the retooled Cooper-Climax, won the Monaco Grand Prix (average speed: 67.6 m.p.h.), finished second in the Dutch Grand Prix, and first in the British Grand Prix.

Last week, on a long, straight course tailor-made for high horsepower, Britain's Tony Brooks led the Ferraris to a one-two-three sweep of the German Grand Prix in West Berlin,* and Brabham failed to finish. But Brabham still leads Brooks in the world driving championship, 27-23, and British experts are betting on the Aussie and the Cooper-Climax to sew up world championship honors on the tortuous turns of the three remaining Grand Prix events.

-Driving his own Porsche sports car in a preliminary to the German Grand Prix, France's Jean Behra, screeched into a banked turn at no m.p.h., lost control on the rain-slick track, was killed when his car spun over the embankment.

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