Jack Brabham remembered at Goodwood
Racing Rod enjoys some history at the Goodwood Revival.
I RECENTLY returned from England where five of us met up with five British friends at the Goodwood Revival, a racing festival for cars of the 1950s to 1970s era.
Bad luck with the weather changed and the ‘Wood’ was good to us.
We were given a second chance to watch the races again on a sunny Sunday after a very wet Saturday!
This stroke of luck came about when I met a French-American, Philippe de Lespinay, who owns the Indianapolis 2.8-litre Cooper Climax driven by Jack Brabham at Indy in 1961.
At the time Jack shook the establishment by qualifying his little Cooper behind the huge 4.2-litre Offenhauser Roadsters at 145mph while the poleman clocked 147mph or 238 kmh!
It began a design revolution at Indy!
Philippe offered Ken Sink and I pit tickets for Sunday’s Goodwood provided that we pitted for him on the day. What a pleasure – and the weather was perfect.
It was a wonderful day’s racing.
Besides the highlight tribute to Jack Brabham (who died just two years ago) with a huge, three-lap display of the cars the great man drove in his time, we enjoyed some exciting races between Jaguars (lightweight E types), Ferraris and Aston Martins.
There were no less than five ERAs in the Monoposto race and 40 Austin A35s in their own race!
It was a blisteringly beautiful sunny day in lovely England.
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