MOTORSPORT: Fond final farewell to Sir Jack Brabham

Australia’s greatest motor racing figure, Sir Jack Brabham, has been farewelled at a state funeral on the Gold Coast – his adopted home of the past two decades after growing up in Sydney and conquering the world of Formula One.

It was more than three weeks since he died, at 88, but it had taken time for his family – a couple of the young ones with racing commitments overseas – to assemble.

A chequered flag draped the coffin and Sir Jack’s helmet sat atop it inside Southport’s Church of Christ.

The qualities that made Brabham a triple F1 world champion were recalled, but the service was as much about his quiet love of his family as his sporting success.

The grandsons now following in his tracks, Matthew in America and Sam in England, spoke of the inspiration he gave them and the simple, no-nonsense advice from the legend they acknowledged they were so privileged have as “pop”.

Sam told how Sir Jack would tell him just to “keep it on the black stuff” and Matthew of the instruction to “get after ’em”.

Their fathers, David and Geoffrey, and uncle Gary were prominent, along with widow Lady Margaret.

All three sons have been racing drivers too – Geoffrey, the eldest, and David, the youngest, winning the Le Mans 24-Hour sports car classic, two decades apart, among their achievements, and David had two brief stints in F1.

But Sir Jack was a hero on another level altogether – to the succeeding generations of his dynasty, to Australia and to the world, his feats often appreciated much more abroad than at home.

Geoffrey spoke on behalf of the sons and recalled the fun of their childhoods, travelling to races in the plane their father piloted himself and coming to appreciate that theirs was a different life to others.

“Every race meeting was an adventure,” Geoffrey said.

And the thing that made his father so special in his vocation was his “amazing feel for anything mechanical”.

“He always knew the limit. He stayed alive when so many others didn’t,” said Geoffrey, a reference to the era known as “the killing years” when one or more F1 drivers died each season.

In the pantheon of F1 greats it was Brabham’s largely self-taught engineering skills that set him apart from Fangio, Moss, Clark and co, who were purely drivers.

It was as the constructor of his own car that Brabham achieved his greatest feat, his third world title in 1966 (after those with the old Cooper team in 1959 and ’60), with the BT19 designed by his partner, the surviving Ron Tauranac – hence the BT – and powered by a Repco engine built in Australia.

Andrew Cannon, Australia’s consul in Monaco, home of F1’s most prestigious race and scene of the first of Brabham’s 14 GP victories, said in his eulogy to “Black Jack” that he had been “a natural winner” and “one of the most significant game-changers” in motor racing.

In his second title year he had blitzed the mighty Ferrari, did it again in ’66, and in between revolutionised America’s Indianapolis 500, converting the Yanks to nimble rear-engined open-wheelers and away from bulky roadsters.

The rather simple, light yet strong cars that he and Tauranac built also often surpassed the daring Lotus creations of the legendary British designer Colin Chapman. 

Cannon remembered Brabham as more than a great sportsman and engineer, as a champion bloke too.

While in the cockpit he was a ferocious competitor, hunched forward and with his elbows out, avoiding accidents but perhaps subtly plotting the demise of others, out of his machinery he was a gentle soul, so Australian yet worldly wise.

He was a man who didn’t waste words but had a warmth about him that touched people of all stratas who came into contact with him.

“The most accessible of celebrities,” Cannon called him.

Queensland premier Campbell Newman, who had granted the state funeral, recalled that Brabham was the first F1 driver to be knighted.

Prime minister Tony Abbott was otherwise engaged in America but told Lady Margaret in a message that “Australia has lost a legend”.

“Sir Jack led an inspirational life,” Abbott said.

“He served in our defence force, made history on the racetrack and supported the fight against macular degeneration.

“Australians will always remember his achievements and have-a-go spirit.”

The Gold Coast was too far for most of Sir Jack’s remaining F1 contemporaries and associates -- especially perhaps after Monday morning’s Canadian GP and ahead of this week’s Le Mans -- to attend the funeral, but so many had sent their condolences.

Australia’s only other F1 world champion, Alan Jones, represented the GP community in a sense, and there were many V8 Supercar identities present.

It was announced on Tuesday that the winner’s trophy for the Australian GP will be named in Brabham’s honour now.

Australia’s latest – and only fourth – F1 victor, Daniel Ricciardo, already has said it’s the trophy he wants to hoist.

Nobody would be happier to see that than Sir Jack Brabham.

The only thing that could have been better for him would be if grandsons Matthew or Sam held that trophy aloft, although they are quite some way behind Ricciardo yet.

Sir Jack Brabham is dead, and now buried, but his legend will live on, forever the hero of Australian motorsport.